Pentecost 2024

 

 

Acts 2.1-21, John 14.8-27

 

Pentecost is traditionally the time when the Church recalls and celebrates the Holy Spirit descending in power on the disciples as they waited in Jerusalem. Jesus had called them to take his message out into all the world. They didn’t even know how to begin, but the Spirit swept away their questions and propelled them out into the streets; they couldn’t do this, but God could.

 

This isn’t the first time the Bible talks about the Holy Spirit, though. The Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament, is full of the Spirit. The Spirit hovers over the waters of chaos at the beginning of creation, and it fills the prophets with the knowledge of God’s word. The Gospels, too, tell of the Spirit overshadowing Mary when she hears she is to bear God’s son, and descending like a dove on Jesus at the moment of his baptism. The Spirit is everywhere in the Bible, not seen, but very much felt in people’s lives, the transforming power of God, God’s “here and now” presence in his creation. People may struggle to describe the Spirit, but the Spirit’s actions are life-changingly real to them.

 

In the story we heard from the book of Acts today, the Spirit comes like a rushing wind and flames of fire, but it also brings the rather puzzling gift of speaking in unknown languages. Visitors from every corner of the world hear the message the disciples proclaim and understand it, as if it is being spoken by a native speaker, someone like them.

 

Who are these people? Some may have grown up in other faiths, but felt drawn to Judaism – the proselytes the story refers to - but many came from Jewish ex-pat communities, founded over the centuries around the ancient world. Some of them, though not all, may have spoken or read Hebrew, but their first language, the language they used day to day, was whatever the majority around them spoke – Parthian, Phyrgian, Libyan, or whatever. And however devout they were, their way of understanding and practising their faith would have evolved over time too.  It’s the same for migrant communities everywhere. They may look back to their countries of origin with nostalgia and affection, but when they go back they often find they don’t really fit in any more. They’ve changed and so have the communities they came from.

 

Language is often a symbol of that gulf. Second generation migrants don’t tend to be “at home” in their parent’s language. It’s not their mother tongue anymore. And that doesn’t just mean their vocabulary changes. Our mother tongue, the language we learn first, both reflects and shapes the way we think. We sometimes say, “I know where you’re coming from”, if we think we understand someone,but it’s only really true if we come from the same place ourselves, sharing a language, a background, a culture, similar life experiences.

 

Whether they expected it or not, these visitors “from every nation under heaven” almost certainly felt a long way from home in Jerusalem, further from home than they expected, maybe a bit homesick  But in the midst of this alien land, they were transported right back to the deserts, mountains, pastures, coastlands, of the land of their birth when they heard their own language spoken, and not as if in translation, as a second language, but as if by someone who came from there too.

 

That’s the point of this detail of the story. It isn’t just there to amaze us. The author doesn’t even try to explain how it could happen. He is trying to tell us a deeper truth about the God whom he follows and serves; the truth that God is at home with us, each of us, with us, wherever we are from, wherever we are, wherever we are going.

 

God is at home with us because we are his creation. According to Genesis 2, after God had made a person out of the dust of the earth, he breathed his own breath – a word that can also be translated as Spirit – into that person to bring them to life. And that same Spirit still dwells within us. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, we are told that the Spirit prays within us “with sighs too deep for words”. We don’t have to struggle when we can’t find the words to express ourselves to God, because God already knows us; his Spirit is there in the depths of our being; God knows us better than we know ourselves.

 

The belief in a God who speaks our native language, who knows “where we are coming from”, who speaks from the depth of our experience is a huge comfort, of course. But it doesn’t just affect our personal spiritual lives, giving us comfort and reassurance. It should also affect the way we look at the world around us. That’s because if I believe that God speaks in my mother tongue – the native language of a 64 year old, white, Englishwoman from Devon, a priest, wife and mother, with my own particular life story – then I have to believe that God also speaks in your mother tongue, from the depth of your experience too, and that you therefore have wisdom I need to hear, coming from a perspective that I don’t have.

 

It's often tempting to think that the answers we’ve discovered to life, the universe and everything, the solutions we’ve found to the problems that beset us, should apply to everyone else too. If they aren’t like us, then they should be, and we will do our best to make sure they become so, even if it means doing a violence to their own sense of self. It’s the essence of colonialism, the belief that we know better than others what will make them happy and successful – or even that we know what “happy and successful” looks like for them. It can lead to all sorts of problems when we think like that, especially if we have power, as we try to squash others into our mould. A belief that God may be speaking in someone else’s mother tongue challenges us to listen, deeply and humbly, for their sake, but also so that we can hear the wisdom of God that speaks through their lives and experiences.

 

Today, and every day, God speaks in the mother tongue of each of us, knowing “where we are coming from” because that’s where God comes from too. We may sometimes feel alienated or out of place, as if we don’t fit in the world. We may feel like strangers, or be treated as if we don’t belong. We may treat others like that too. But the Pentecost calls us to see that God is at home in each one of us. And that changes everything, just as it did for Jesus first followers on that Day of Pentecost, long ago.

 

I’d like to finish with a sonnet by Malcolm Guite, written for this day, which reminds us of that God whose “mother tongue” is love.

 

Pentecost - a sonnet by Malcolm Guite

 

Today we feel the wind beneath our wings
Today the hidden fountain flows and plays
Today the church draws breath at last and sings
As every flame becomes a Tongue of praise.
This is the feast of fire, air, and water
Poured out and breathed and kindled into earth.
The earth herself awakens to her maker
And is translated out of death to birth.
The right words come today in their right order
And every word spells freedom and release
Today the gospel crosses every border
All tongues are loosened by the Prince of Peace
Today the lost are found in His translation.
Whose mother-tongue is Love, in every nation.

 

Amen