"THE LANGUAGES OF THE PENTECOST PATHWAY"

"" Language is an interesting and, sometimes, tricky thing. Since I've made several trips between St. Louis and Delta, Alabama in the last couple of months, I've been reminded of how different the same language can sound in different areas. In the south, of course, we say friendly things like, "Ya'll come back now" and "Say hey to yer momma and them..." or, if we're extremely agitated, we might say, "I'm fixin' to have a fit...." In some parts of the south, like Louisiana, they use words like "ratcheer." An example of that would be when Juliet says, "Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou?" and he responds, "Why, I'm ratcheer in the bushes."

But it's not just the south that has linguistic oddities. Rev. Bob graduated from "Hahvard"...where they "pahk the cah in the yahd." Becky Drefs' family lives in Wisconsin, where one might say, "I'm going to Milwaukee...do you want to go with?" "Oh, yah, you betcha!" And, of course, Rev. Sue and Marie, who moved here from New York, have brought us the much beloved, "Ayy...forgetaboutit!"

The translation from one language to another can sometimes be problematic. A few years ago, when Pepsi Cola tried to use their slogan, "Come alive. You're in the Pepsi Generation," over in China, it came out as "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead."

Language, according to one linguist, is the soul of a people. It pulls us together and gives us identity. But we have to know the rules of the language to be a part of the community. If we don't, we can feel left out.

There are two stories from the Bible about language that may be able to help us discover what God wants to tell us about the "language" we use with one another.

The first story is from Genesis, chapter 11, about "The Tower of Babel." In this story, which takes place a long, long time ago, most everyone spoke the same language. Then some of the folks get together and decide it's time to make a name for themselves and so they decide to build a huge tower and enclose the community from any possible outsiders. Here's what they say: "Let's build a city with a tower that reaches the sky, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all over the earth."

Using their common language, they communicate quite well among themselves. And so they insulate themselves from the world by using their language to build up walls and a tower. According to the blueprint, their tower should reach all the way up to God - they arrogantly try to put themselves on an equal level with God!

Well, God is quite aware what this language thing is leading to: an exclusive club. And God is not pleased. Language was supposed to be a gift to help people make friends, to resolve differences, and to grow together in peace. But that clearly is not what's happening with this group...so God changes their grammar book.

One morning they wake up to discover that no one can understand what anyone else is saying! They're all speaking different kinds of seeming gibberish! Each person knows what they're trying to say but no one else has a clue. One guy yells, "Ya'll bring somore bricks ratcheer." The other guy just scratches his head and says, "Forgetaboutit!"

Needless to say, the whole project collapses because no one knows what the other is saying. Everyone stomps off muttering to themselves in words only they can understand. That's the first story about human beings and language.

The second story is the one we heard read this morning from the Book of Acts. More than a hundred people are together waiting for something that Jesus had promised would come to them. Unlike the folks in the first story, these people are not arrogant; they're frightened and anxious for God's Spirit to work among them. And then it happens. God erupts like the force of a mighty wind and a raging fire. Suddenly, as the people offer their prayers, everyone is speaking a different language; together, it sounds like gibberish - a weird sounding babble. God has changed the grammar books again.

Now all these people suddenly speaking different languages create quite a mess. There are a whole lot of people around these folks who have come to Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost - the great Jewish festival held fifty days after Passover. When they hear this group, speaking in all these different, confusing languages, they're shocked. "What's this commotion all about?" Someone speculates, "Why, this Babel crowd is drunk."

But Peter declares, "Oh, no, we're not drunk...it's way too early for that! No, what you're hearing is what God has promised us - that, "in the last days," God says, "I will pour out my Spirit on all people - men, women, old and young. All will receive my Spirit." And then what? Then they'll begin to speak in every language group about the powerful good news of God!

These disciples of Jesus had been hiding out, separated from others, speaking one common language: Hebrew. At Pentecost, God's Holy Spirit comes to them speaking other languages...languages that sounded like babble to those within the group but, in the ears of outsiders, those different tongues tell them about God's power and love. The words that tumble out of Jewish mouths are suddenly, theologically speaking, a mix of Arabic and Palestinian...Puerto Rican, Zulu, Albanian...rap, rock, and street language. They are filled with the Spirit and begin to speak about God in fresh, new languages. And so the story ends with a small group that suddenly mushrooms from a handful to a neighborhood full of believers because God gives them new languages through which to communicate God's love.

When we put these two stories side by side, what do they say to us? I wonder if the two stories are not the two possible paths at a fork in the road on our journey together as a church.

One of the roads we can choose to travel down is the Babel Brick Road. There's lots of company on that road. We only need to speak one language and once we've got it down, we're in. For the Christian church, that one language used to be Latin. People only sang in Latin. Only read Scripture in Latin. Only prayed in Latin. Only preached in Latin. For a long time, the church kept on speaking that language even though the rest of the world had moved on to new languages.

An individual church can still travel down that road. You know, once we establish how we worship, for example, then we just keep doing exactly the same thing. Problem is, the further we travel down that road, the more insulated, isolated and out-of-sync we are to everyone around us. We can get so used to only one way of communicating our faith and conducting worship that eventually we can't change our language...and we build a Tower of Babel - a tribute to nothing but ourselves and our arrogance.

The other road - the Pentecost Pathway - has, at least among churches, a lot fewer pilgrims. This road requires that we learn new languages and that we always seek to be in vital contact with those who don't speak our language.

That's why, in this church, we speak "organ" sometimes and "praise band" other times. Music is one of the foremost ways to touch people's hearts and open ourselves to God's Spirit. We have to hear a variety of musical languages in order to allow many hearts to be touched...not just mine...not just yours.

We use banners and flowers and changing colors to bring different visual elements to our surroundings. Art is another kind of language that has to be spoken. We vary the order of worship - the tone and feel of our services throughout the year so that the voice of God doesn't become just background noise that we tune out because its rhythm is too routine. We try, in various ways, to speak a little Baptist, a little Catholic and to, hopefully, throw in some words that you can understand if you've never been to church before.

We're not always successful at this. I often feel that my role as pastor here is to be a language teacher. And I'm struggling to speak new languages even as I try to teach them. Together, we will stumble over syllables and be confused about some pronunciations. But the more we can try to speak all kinds of languages in worship and in sharing our faith, the more new and different lives will be touched and changed by God's power in this place.

Now, I'll grant you: trying to speak many different languages can be frustrating if we only focus on the many different needs and interests we're trying to serve. In order to truly communicate as God would have us do, we must look beyond our many differences.

The great blessing of Pentecost is that it overcame the curse of Babel. At Babel, human beings had united to work against the will of God and their unity was destroyed. We all became captives of our different languages, divided by our inability to hear or be heard, to understand or to be understood. The diversity we celebrate so frequently and loudly was, in that sense, not a blessing but a curse, and it has served to do little in this world but to maintain differences and build a wall of ethnocentricism behind which we too often hide in an effort to protect ourselves from others.

At Pentecost, diversity was redeemed by a power that transcended it - the power to understand, to hear in one's own language, one's own accent, and one's own regional dialect the wonderful works of God. The gift of understanding did not diminish the diversity of the gathered crowd; they did not cease to be Medes, Persians and Elamites. They were not reduced to some vague generality without past or place. No, they did not become less than they were...they became more than they had been, for they became at one with all of those who heard and understood that God was alive and active in this world and eager that all of them should participate in the purposes of God's love for this world. At Pentecost, the church was given the power to look beyond our diversity to the unity that we have through the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

In this place today, none of us are being asked to be less than we have been. We are meant to be different people, with different feelings, thoughts, viewpoints, and ways of expressing ourselves and our faith - speaking different languages, if you will. But the Holy Spirit of God is eager to flow through us so that we, too, can transcend our diversity to achieve a unity that can only come from God. Many languages...one message.

On the Pentecost Pathway, its not always easy to use so many languages. We will trip over our tongues, put our feet in our mouths, mispronounce the words and screw up the syntax - no doubt about it. But we must keep trying to speak God's message, in as many different languages as possible, so that all of those around us - not just in here but "out there" - can hear the good news of God's love as clearly as we have.

May it be said of this church, as was written of another, "This is a messy church; we never know what's going to happen next it seems. But I keep coming here because this place, like no other, is where love abounds and grace happens every single week." Amen.

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