Acts 2:1-21
Happy Birthday Chruch!
You may or may not know it, but Pentecost is usually looked upon as the birthday of the church. It was the time when the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples and sent them out into the world. Jesus was born, died, had risen. These were important things, but they were not the event that marks the birth of the church. It was this sending out into the world that truly made the church. If the disciples had not gone out, if they would have just stayed in the upper room, the church would have died. It was in being sent out that the church was born.
The disciples were sent out into the world, but the Holy Spirit did not send the disciples out into the world unprepared; when the Holy Spirit sent the disciples out; the Holy Spirit gave them a gift. The gift that was given was pretty dramatic! After the Spirit descended upon the disciples, the disciples were no longer speaking in their own native language, after the gift of the Spirit, the disciples were able to speak in the languages of all the people who were listening.
I have always thought this was a good example upon which to base the church. This story shows that the church – from its very beginning – was based on more than just keeping the Good News about Jesus to itself. The church was to be about bringing the Good News out to the people of the world. The disciples could have just stayed in their room and reminded themselves of how great it was to have Jesus, the Son of God, as their savior. Or they could have just talked to their friends about Jesus. But the church was to be so much more. The church was to be a beacon to the world! The church was to spread the news of Christ to the Nations.
During Pentecost we get do all of this talking about speaking in tongues. But for most of us in mainline denominations, the whole concept of speaking in tongues seems to be itself, speaking in tongues. I was never very comfortable with the whole “speaking in tongues” thing. It just seemed too weird to me. I know that there are other Christian brothers and sisters that take speaking in tongues very seriously, but I couldn’t understand what good it would do to be uttering things in a language that nobody seemed to be able to understand.
Well, I think this shows part of the limit in my thinking. If I were to stand up here and speak to you in French, Greek, or Sign Language, it would help none of you. You could sit there for hours, even days, and not get an idea of that I was saying. But we need to remember that the disciples were not just talking to themselves, they were out talking to the people of the city.
This still doesn’t seem to have an effect on us. If we walk to the neighbor’s house, we could speak English to them and they would not have too difficult a time understanding us. Why do we have to get this lesson in speaking in tongues?
This question was bothering me until I remembered a commercial I had seen on television. You may remember seeing this commercial; it had gotten a lot of play in its time. It involves a mother and a daughter trying to have a conversation. The mother asks the daughter why the cell phone bill is so high. The daughter responds with “WTBD?” The mother says, “What’s the big deal? Who are you texting 50 times per day?” To which the daughter says, “IDK, my BFF Jill?” It then dawned on me; this girl was speaking in a different language! Children today have a new language. They not only text in a new language, they have a new way of speaking and a new language of music. They have a whole different way of communicating with the world and with each other.
I had always been told that speaking in tongues was some kind of Spiritual language or some ancient language, but maybe we need to think about tongues as the language of those around us. Within the church we have a language of ritual; we have a language of faith. We have a language of music and we have a language of holiness. And this language has worked for a long time. But now, we cannot assume that everyone speaks the same language. We cannot assume that the things we take as basic to the understanding our faith are even part of peoples’ awareness. Even people who may claim to be Christian may no longer speak our language.
An example of this comes from a colleague of mine. He had performed a wedding and had someone come up afterward and tell him how wonderful the service was. The person was especially impressed with a certain prayer that was used in the ceremony. When questioned as to which prayer this was, the person said, “Oh, the one about ‘Our Father in Heaven’” and then questioned if my colleague had written it himself.
It is a different world out there, different than the one that we grew up in.
Now some would say that all we need to do is to keep doing what we are doing and trust in the Holy Spirit to open the ears of the hearers so that they may understand. This sounds good, and I do trust that the Holy Spirit can truly open peoples’ ears so they can hear what was said, but it seems to be too difficult. What seems easier is for us to listen to see how the Spirit may be moving us in new ways of speaking. How might the Spirit be asking us to change?
This thought of changing may be scary to some. Some may hear this and think that I am suggesting a wholesale dismissal of church traditions. And if I were to do that, I know that Bishop Eddie would be pounding on my door demanding an explanation. No, learning to speak a new language need not be that radical.
I saw an example of speaking a new language while I was in New Orleans a few years ago. St. Anna’s Episcopal Church in the French Quarter had a seeker service every Wednesday evening and this service was very well attended. I will have to say that music during the service had a definite “seeker” quality to it. But that was it. The service had bells, incense, and prayers. The service had all the trappings of a high Episcopal service. It was all there. Now what made it a new language were the explanations that were given in the bulletin. Each action was accompanied with the meaning of the action printed out for the seeker to read. In doing this, the congregation spoke the language of the seekers who attended the service. The congregation did not assume the seekers would know the language of the liturgy, and they did not assume the seekers would automatically learn the language. But they also didn’t totally abandon their language either. Following what I would consider the lead of the Spirit, they spoke the worship service in a manner that the truths which were present in the liturgy would be understandable to those who attended. In the reading from Acts, we are told that the people understood the words of the disciples. We can guess that the disciples were not watering down the message nor changing the message. What we need to see is that the message was being spread in a manner that the people in the city could understand.
The Holy Spirit still calls us as the church to reach out to the world. The Holy Spirit still gives us the gift of tongues. The Holy Spirit still calls us to use this gift in the building up of the community. Speaking in tongues doesn’t need to be something that we are afraid of. Speaking in tongues doesn’t need to be something for those other Christians across town. Speaking in tongues means being aware of those who are around us and finding new ways to help them to understand. Speaking in tongues means finding new ways to speak the truth we have been given.
The gift of the Spirit was given on Pentecost all those years ago, but it is also something that is here today. The Holy Spirit was present in the upper room but it is also present, right here in Swampland MI. The disciples went out, speaking the truth in the language of the people. Let us also go out and spread the truth to a world that needs to hear.
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