Speaking Your Language [Acts 2:1-21 - Pentecost C]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Acts 2:1-21

 

Speaking Your Language

 

But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”  Which makes me question whether the others were familiar with the general concept of intoxication.  Because, typically, drunkenness does not endow one with heightened linguistic abilities or the grasp of previously unknown languages.  At least that is what I have been told.  I guess I don’t really know; I don’t drink. Then again, also I don’t speak Phrygian.  Is that a coincidence?  Would I speak Phrygian if I imbibed a healthy dose of that new wine?

 

There was someone in that chaotic crowd, described in our reading from Acts, who did speak Phrygian.  One Galilean, for one day and probably never again, spoke the language of a people very far removed from the Galilean hills.  One Galilean, after being set on fire and then blown out the door by a powerful gust of interior wind, started speaking the native language of an ancient people located in what is now west-central Turkey.  A rural peasant, likely with very little formal education, instantly obtained sufficient fluency to preach a sermon in a foreign language.  And on any other day, in any other place, that would have been astounding.  But on this day, on the Pentecost forever enshrined in the second chapter of Acts, and in that city, the holy city of Jerusalem, it was a shockingly common occurrence.  120 people, apparently packed into a single room with way too many matches, burst out into the streets with the same newly-acquired talent: to speak in languages they themselves did not understand.  On that day, in that place, everybody was doing it.  

 

And on that day, in that place, there was someone who understood every Phrygian word that was spoken.  Somewhere in that chaotic crowd, there was a person who could not believe someone was speaking their language. 

 

In the third century BCE, Antiochus III, the sixth Emperor of the Seleucid Empire, transported hundreds of Jewish families to Phrygia to defend the monarchy against local revolts.  In exchange for their service and loyalty, these Jews were granted cultural allowances, the freedom to practice their religion, and financial rewards.         

 

By the first century, many Jews from that Phrygian community ventured to Jerusalem, to be closer to the Temple.  And because Pentecost, or Shavuot, as it is called in Hebrew, was a pilgrimage feast, it is not surprising that there was in that crowd at least one Jew whose native language was Phrygian.  And at least one Jew who spoke Arabic.  And Egyptian.  And Numidian, the language of those living in Libya in the first century.  Because of the long and complex history of exile and diaspora, there were Jewish communities, not unlike the community in Phrygia, spread across that entire region of the ancient world.

 

Regathered in Jerusalem, during this pilgrimage feast, this crowd represented the amazing diversity of the first century Jewish faith and people.  But within that diversity the people in this astonished crowd did have things in common.  And one of those things was very likely language.  The Galileans spilling out of the upper room are given, by the Holy Spirit, the ability to speak in other languages.  And that is exactly what they did.  They spoke in far-flung local dialects and languages considered foreign to Palestine.  And that was totally unnecessary because it is almost certain that those Jews in that crowd, present to celebrate a Jewish festival, would have understood Hebrew, Aramaic, and even Greek.          

 

And yet God does not go with one of those well-known languages; God does not speak to those gathered in a convenient lingua franca.  God does not bless the crowds with Google Translate or even those headsets they use at the United Nations.  Instead, God chooses 120 people, all from the same disdained rural region, to speak in languages they did not know or understand.  And to do so all at the same time, so that the streets are overwhelmed with a cacophony of street corner sermons, streams of sound crashing and clashing and bleeding into one another.  There is a message in that madness but this feels like a strange way to get that message across, though it certainly did get the people’s attention – although perhaps not as effectively as the flaming heads. 

 

It was a scene.  Loud.  Chaotic. Confusing.  Wonderful.  All were amazed and perplexed saying to one another, “What does this mean?”  And that is a fair question: what does this mean? 

 

The strange truth is: mostly what the people heard on that Pentecost was unintelligible.  Just a bunch of sound.  The Phrygian in the crowd, for example, could not understand a word spoken by the Galilean shouting in Arabic or the person shouting in Egyptian or the one shouting in Numidian.  He could only understand one voice, but it was the one meant for him. 

 

And that one voice, like a melody soaring above a sea of distortion, cut through all of the other noise.  It was like finding a loved one in a sea of strangers.  In the symphony of sound, each person in the crowd, or at least each person willing to listen, heard the Gospel message, the Good News, in their own language.  One voice cut through the noise and spoke directly to each individual heart.  That voice did not speak in some universally adopted language, the language of business or the language of Empire; it spoke in the native language, the language of tribe, the intimate language of home. 

 

What that tells me is that God knew that crowd.  God knew each and every person in that crowd and spoke to each person in their own language, in language they could understand.  God spoke directly to each heart and to each soul.  Rather than write it in the sky, God whispered into their ears.  Rather than post a flyer, God issued personal invitations.  Rather than wait for them to walk through the doors of the vast Temple, God met them on the street and even spoke their language.

 

And the people were amazed.  They were astonished.  Because even though they were raised far beyond the borders of the holy city, they were not strangers to God.  They were known.  And that message, from God’s lips to their hearts, changed their lives.  The point of Pentecost is not the chaos in the crowd; it is that to God there is no crowd.  There are people and, through the Spirit, God sings a love song to each one.    

 

But a few in the crowd refused to sing along; some let God go to voicemail because they did not recognize the number.  There were some in that crowd, present for one of the most amazing miracles in history, who were not amazed.  They just sneered and accused the Galileans, the ones channeling the Holy Spirit, the ones speaking in the intimate languages of tribe and home, of simply being drunk - which is to say, they refused to believe it was of God.  Because these others already knew God and they knew God didn’t speak with a lowly Galilean accent.  God didn’t hang out on dirty, crowded streets.  They knew God so well that they didn’t need to listen to the cacophony that spilled out of some upper room.  They knew God well enough to write it all off.  They knew God so well that they missed it; they missed the still, small voice spoken for them; they couldn’t hear their love song; they missed the miracle of Pentecost; they missed the beautiful, new thing God was doing in the world. 

 

And, make no mistake, God is always doing beautiful, new things in the world.  The miracle of this story is found in the uncertainty.  Those who think they know God too well miss the miracles.  They don’t see them.  They can’t hear them.  But those willing to still be amazed, often find that God speaks in the most unexpected accents.