So what does the story of Pentecost have to say to us? Maybe this year more than any other, it sounds like a religious story whose meaning doesn’t extend beyond a Zoom sermon. Yes, this day marks the culmination of Jesus’ promise to send us a helper, a comforter, his Holy Spirit. And that Spirit is our connection to the Divine to which, in these troubled times, we desperately need. But, this miracle of suddenly being able to speak Japanese or Portuguese seems…distant. Our problems are with those that speak English just as we do. Right?
Language is a funny thing. There’s no pure one-to-one between two of them. French, for example, has words and phrases that don’t have a literal equivalent in English. We can render them, but what I read or hear through translation isn’t really what a native French-speaker hears. It’s an interpretation.
Even in our own language, the words don’t always carry the same meaning. “I’m sorry,” varies in its meaning depending on how it’s said. And my meaning may not be received by my wife if my voice and face convey something different. There’s what is said and what is heard, I suppose.
Those present on Pentecost, we’re told, heard the words of the Twelve in their own language. The story conveys that, perhaps, what Peter, James, and the others were saying wasn’t necessarily in Greek or Egyptian or Parthian or any other foreign language, but those people from those lands who spoke in that other tongue heard what they said in a language they understood.
Something happened between the speaker and the hearer. Something, someone intervened.
The disciples, we read, spoke in other tongues themselves right after tongues of fire burned their own. Funny that it says tongues, isn’t it? It’s almost as if it’s less about language and more about how it’s said.
This is a day about speaking and listening. But, likely as not, you (like me) are not the talker but the hearer.
On Pentecost Twelve guys who were no one special, no one of influence stood before the crowds and spoke the words burning on their tongues. They spoke passionately, through love, of what had happened, and what it meant for all of them. There was someone very special to them. He died. He’d been killed. But that wasn’t the end of the story. No, something new happened, and is continuing to happen. And you can be a part of it.
Those who listened that day were a mixture of classes. Each had their own background, experiences, baggage. They’d heard people screaming in the street before. They’d heard of “new ways” before. Some might have even heard about the tragic death of this man of which they spoke. But, this time, they allowed love to touch them, translate for them. And they heard the words that were being said.
Love, it seems, helps us to understand. It did then. It still can.
Let we who have ears, hear.