Sermon: All the Languages

First Presbyterian Church

May 28, 2023, Pentecost A

Numbers 11:24-30; Acts 2:1-21

 

All the Languages

 

 

One of the things that sometimes needs to be set straight about Pentecost is that no, this is not the first time the Holy Spirit is invoked in scripture. Today's first reading provides one such counterexample, as a stressed-out Moses pleads for help and God invokes that Spirit to be bestowed upon seventy elders of the people of Israel so that they might share some of the burden of leadership. That Spirit's appearance is made manifest in an outburst of frenetic prophesying, one that spills over to include two men back in the camp, not numbered among those seventy. Joshua (in a typical fit of church leadership) wants to have those two men silenced and that unexpected outburst of Holy Spirit squelched, but Moses (in a typical fit of pastoral weariness) stuffs that idea, crying out that he wished everyone could prophesy. It's not how we typically expect to see the Spirit play out, to be sure, especially since this prophetic outburst is only a one-time thing, but it still serves to remind us that the Holy Spirit is not a new thing as the disciples show up for this Pentecost morning.

While the Holy Spirit isn't new in this case, there are certainly some distinctive features of this particular Spirit-event that are worth noting on this one day of the liturgical year when the Spirit comes to the forefront. In last week's sermon I noted how the Ascension of Jesus got all of four words in the ancient creeds, and in one case the Holy Spirit doesn't do a lot better. The Apostles' Creed, one of the oldest statements of faith in Christendom, has this to say on the subject: 

 

I believe in the Holy Ghost...

 

That's it. Thankfully the Nicene Creed does a bit better, giving a whole paragraph to the subject. The church has some history of not really paying attention to this particular member of the Trinity, perhaps to its own harm; it is the Spirit most of all that is the most direct participant in the day-to-day life of the follower of Christ, and it is this Pentecost in-breaking of the Spirit that marks the ongoing truth of this presence and participation.

Since we last heard from this group, we know that they have indeed remained in Jerusalem as they were instructed. Acts also mentions in an interesting aside that they elected one of their number to replace Judas, the traitor against Jesus whose grisly death is reported in an aside. And they have waited, probably wondering what exactly they were waiting for. Now they're about to find out.

The description itself lingers: "a sound like the rush of a violent wind"; "divided tongues, as of fire"; and then, the sound of all the languages.

Let's be clear; this group of followers is speaking languages they don't know, but that other peoples outside of Judea or Palestine do speak. Ecstatic utterances in tongues that require interpretation (what we commonly call "speaking in tongues") come later in Acts; this event is one of miraculous speech and hearing.

Those tongues matter because just outside their windows there is a crowd of folks gathered in Jerusalem for the festival of the harvest that was Pentecost in the Jewish tradition, a group ripe to hear something good each in their own language.

Have you had that experience of being in a crowd with people speaking any language but your own? The particular challenge of this was pressed home for me many years ago when I was in Quebec City for a conference back in my academic days. The conference itself was held in English but going out for dinner or frankly anything else meant being among French speakers. While some also spoke English well enough to understand me, that wasn't always the case. I'm horrible with languages, and French is one of my worst. At least in this case the worst that came to me was that I declined the sugar I very much wanted for my coffee. 

These people were Jews from, as a Judean would have seen it, all over the world. The list of locations provided here literally denotes a whole range of nationalities from the east, north, west, and south of Jerusalem, a way of evoking that which we sometimes metaphorically call "the four corners" of the world. Before these followers of Jesus get sent out into the world, the world has come to them. And because of this outburst of the Holy Spirit, the world at the windows is able to hear good news, each in their own language.

This is not always a thing the church or the world has taken to heart. The Western world in particular has a particular imperial history of forcing their own languages upon those peoples whom they encounter, or frequently whom they conquer. On the North American frontier, those seeking to drive out or subjugate the Native peoples made a very specific and fixed point of pushing to  eradicate the languages those so-called "savages" spoke. An Indian, in the vernacular of the time, could only be tolerated if every trace of "Indian-ness" was driven out of them, and it was presumed that one of the surest ways to do so was to take away their language, especially in the "Indian" schools that appeared on those frontiers (one of which was just up the way in Lawrence, since changed into Haskell Indian Nations University). The students at such schools were forbidden to speak their own language, being forced to speak English, or possibly French in Canadian schools. This, of course, was in addition to numerous other oppressions visited upon them, quite literally as a means of separating them from their families and their peoples for good.

What happens in today's scripture is the complete and total opposite of that act of emotional violence. Those seekers who came to Jerusalem, thanks to the working of the Holy Spirit, were welcomed in their own languages. They weren't stripped of who they were, weren't denied their own humanity and worth, in order to hear the gospel. One could even say that this Holy Spirit outbreak was for these listeners, the ones who heard the commotion of that sound like a violent wind and wondered what was going on, as much as it was for these followers of Jesus, or maybe even more so. 

We don't really know how it worked from here forward, as the believers (including possibly those who became believers on this day) were scattered from Jerusalem into, well, all the world. There were certainly going to be language barriers to be faced as these followers of Christ spread further and further out from Judea. But these followers knew from experience that the Holy Spirit would find a way for them to communicate with those waiting to hear the gospel. 

Do we have that same confidence? Does the church today, which can struggle with getting a worship service posted onto Facebook or YouTube, have the confidence to find a way into a world of Instagram or TikTok or whatever social media outlet comes next, outlets where exactly the folks who don't darken the doors of the church find a kind of media "home"?

On the flip side, it can be a scary thing to find ourselves in a world where, more and more, it seems like most folks out there aren't speaking our "language," whether literally or more figuratively. While Pentecost can mean an awful lot of different things in the life of the church, sometimes it can be hard to remember that the Holy Spirit has experience with helping Christ's followers find the right language to speak, if we will listen and submit to that work. It might be disruptive, and it might take us out of our comfort zones, but it has been done, and it can be done. 

At the same time, the Holy Spirit also has that experience of preparing those who listen, those who seek to hear, those who call upon the name of the Lord, to be able to hear that word in their own language and to be ready to respond. 

For all the languages, and the Spirit's ability to speak them, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #289, On Pentecost They Gathered; #292, As the Wind Song; #66, Every Time I Feel the Spirit