"In Our Own Native Language"

Dr. George Sinclair
Pastor

Acts 2:1-21 or Gen. 11:1-9; Ps. 104:24-34, 35b; Rom. 8:14-17 or Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17 (25-27)

May 23, 2010

When I was in high school, Senor Lett tried to teach me Spanish. I say he tried because getting Spanish into my brain was like pouring concreto.  I’ve been to Mexico twice and amused locals were kind enough to direct me with sign language.

In college, my German professor found my brain little more porous.  Then came Hebrew which not only looked like chicken scratch but the chickens walked backwards. Thankfully there was Greek which provided words which actually looked like words, some even sounded like words and read right to left, which was a big improvement over left-to-right- Hebrew.  Still, while I memorized sufficient Greek to stumble through the New Testament, I would hardly call myself a Greek-speaker.  I need many aids and lots of time to translate and most of the Greek I know comes through my eye not my ear.  I am an English-speaker through and through.

There are between three and ten thousand living languages. The estimate ranges widely and the term “living” fits because languages are not static.  They come and go and morph. 

There are 192 members of the United Nations.  Several other nations are not in the UN but still, world-wide, nations number less than 200.  In some ways, it is surprising that there are so many more languages than political entities.  Perhaps language resists the blender of state run homogenization.  Language tells us where we’re from.  Southerners especially appreciate what others may call “provincial” or “parochial.”  Southerners tend to be proud of where they are from.  “I’m a native of . . .”

When we moved to Illinois, one member of our church routinely, and with a twinkle in his eye, asked Paula to say a few words just so he could enjoy her Southern drawl.  When we moved from the Midwest to the foothills of North Carolina, we noticed that folks there, even college graduates, used words like rite, nite, whyte, and rhyce, and our favorite, Jesus Chryst.  One of my friends once asked me if I was going to the fare.  And I said I didn’t know there was a fire.  And he said, “No, the fare, at the campgrounds with the Tilt-a-World. Was I going to the fare?”

Last summer we attended a U2 concert in Dublin. To get to venue, we walked through a tenement.  Some kids drawn by the large, bustling crowd were playing on the sidewalk.  One shouted to me with no apparent prompting other than my shorts and Tommy Bahama shirt—“America!” And I said, “Yes.” And he referring to my size says, “Compton!”  And I shot back, “Alabama.” And he breaks into Sweet Home Alabama.

Language is not the sole marker of culture, but it is a primary one.  Language tells us, and others, where we are from, that we are natives of somewhere.  Language tells us we are “us.”  Language tells us that others are “not us.” Language tells others that they are “not us.”  Language divides as much as it unites.

The story Sidney read from Genesis tells of a time when there was “one language.”  That’s a rather remarkable idea: one language for the whole earth. Tim James would like that.  A lot of folks would—“Let’s get united. Let’s speak one language.”  Getting together can be a good thing. We can collaborate, cooperate, coexist, coordinate, coalesce.  And aren’t those things better than combat, conflict, competition, and domination?  A new world order run by the UN or the World Council of Churches or your favorite Global Power: Big Oil, Coca Cola, Google, The World Bank, wouldn’t that be a good thing?

When people get together, good things can happen.  I’m glad I can drive across the Bay unimpeded.  A hundred years ago, I couldn’t enjoy the Eastern Shore with the same ease I do today.  Cooperation and taxes built the Bay Way.  Getting together has benefits. In Genesis, the people who wanted to build the tower seem to have a good motive: “Let us build ourselves a city.” Nothing wrong with cities. Cities are good.  The tower builders also wanted a church with “its top in the heavens.” The Tower Builders respected heaven. They wanted to be close to heaven. They wanted heaven on their side. They also wanted to “make a name” for themselves.

Now what could be wrong with that, with “making a name for ourselves?” Is that a bad thing? For example, making a name for ourselves is one of our strategies for growth. We want word to get out about GSPC.  We want to make our name known.  Is that a bad thing? 

According to Genesis, the Tower Builders wanted to make a name for themselves to keep from being “scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”  The Tower Builders were worried about being “scattered.”

“United we stand, divided we fall.”  There is strength in numbers, particularly when numbers stand together, when numbers unite.  Good things happen when we’re together, things like security or a nice bridge over a bay, a church, a nation.  You remember the Revolutionary War leader, I forget his name at the moment, the one who said, “Gentlemen, we either hang together or we hang separately.”  Fear of being scattered, or hung, will make people unite.  One world. One language.  Sounds like a plan. But as with everything else we touch, getting together has a downside.  The LORD was the first to see this.  “The LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built.”

God came down to see.  Was the Tower really that puny?  Surely God has great eyesight. Or maybe he’s kind of like an inspector. The tower and the city caught his attention: “Um, what’s going on down there? What are those ants doing?  “Better go see. Take a closer look. So God “came down.”  And he didn’t like what he saw.  “Look, they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing will now be impossible for them.”

“They have all one language . . . nothing will be impossible for them.” 

What was God worried about?  Was God worried he’d be out of a job? Isn’t that God’s job: to make “all things possible?”   If nothing is impossible for people with one language, then God doesn’t have much to do.  A people united with one language can pretty much do anything and everything they want.  Is that so bad?  Isn’t that what parents want for their children—independence?  They graduate and we get a raise. They get a job and we don’t have to write checks.  Why wouldn’t God want one language?  Sounds like a good thing, right?  The UN. The United States. The World Council of Churches. The World Bank. The European Union.  Why does God grow suspicious when people unite?  Why worry about one world with one language?

Luther said it’s because human beings are “curved in” on themselves.  Calvin said it was because we’re prone to idolatry.   Said otherwise, cities with towers don’t stand still. They move toward other cities.  Consequently, according to Genesis, God “confused” the Tower Builders so that they could not “understand one another’s speech.” Moreover, God “scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.”

Flash forward to the Day of Pentecost, a Jewish harvest festival celebrated seven weeks after Passover.  Pentecost celebrated Moses or, more properly, the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai.  It was a spring harvest festival, a Jewish Vacation Bible School, a Bible Sunday, if you will. 

“They were all together in one place.” They would be the apostles, certain women including the mother of Jesus and his brothers and some other believers, about one hundred and twenty in all.  They were together, in one place, when they had an audio-visual experience of a lifetime. 

You remember the AV guys in school? They were the lucky ones, always getting out of class to run a movie for the science teacher or the kids in the lower school.  Audio-Visual. On the Day of Pentecost, the audio was “a sound like the rush of a violent wind” and the video “divided tongues, as of fire.” The one hundred and twenty had an AV experience—wind and fire. We should not imagine a tornado and birthday candles. Not the picture Luke has in mind.  He has in mind Elijah or a call like Elijah’s. 

Remember Elijah? He fled Queen Jezebel who had ordered a contract on him. He ran into the wilderness forty days and forty nights and came to Horeb alternately known as Sinai “the mountain of God” and spent the night in a cave.  Elijah thought he was the last prophet left and soon he’d be gone.

The Lord, well, the Lord says to Elijah, “Watch this.”  In a re-run of God-on-Mt. Sinai, when God put Moses in the rock, God passes by Elijah. “There was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting the mountains and breaking the rocks, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire (and here translators are not of one mind) a sound of sheer silence.” The Hebrew may be read “a low buzzing sound.” The King James Version famously translates: “a still small voice.”  And we think, “Ah ha. Elijah heard the voice of conscience.”  But that’s not what the story says at all.  After the fire and the earthquake and the wind, it’s all quiet, like after a big rain and you can hear each drop dripping which is what happens to Elijah. He is surrounded by the sound of sheer silence. So he listens. “He wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.”

Elijah doesn’t just meditate, though, if that’s what you call listening. Rather, Elijah hears a voice or a voice calls him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”  And Elijah does what caught people do. He dances as fast as he can: “I’ve been very jealous for you, Lord. And it’s gotten me in all kinds of trouble. And I’m the only preacher left. And they want me dead.”

So, what does the Lord say? “Go.” The LORD sends Elijah straight back to where he came from and gives him work to do.  Nothing is impossible with God, even crossing a border to challenge a dangerous queen with a contract on your head, not even that.

I don’t think it’s coincidence that Luke has a big AV event on Pentecost—wind and fire.  Luke calls on a deep memory of prophetic call.  Luke locates us with prophets of old, with prophets like Elijah who prepare the way for the Lord, prophets called with wind and fire.  But that’s not primarily how prophets are called or how they hear. The audio-visual only gets their attention. Prophets are called by a Voice, not “a still small voice,” but the Voice of the Lord, the Word of God. And they are sent to announce God’s Word.  Here’s how Luke said it, “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” 

On the Day of Pentecost, the Spirit did the impossible. The Spirit made one hundred and twenty prophets—some were apostles, some were members of Jesus’ family, some were just regular old believers like you and me—but they became prophets.  That is the miracle of Pentecost—the Spirit makes prophets. The Spirit makes us proclaimers—men and women, slave and free, young and old. Yes, the New Testament acknowledges that “not all are prophets.” There is variety in the body. But that’s not Luke’s point, not here.  On Pentecost, on the Birthday of the church, Luke proclaims that God does the impossible. God makes prophets. We’ve been called. We’ve been sent. We’ve been commissioned to proclaim Good News so that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Now here’s the thing and the tricky part or a tricky part about what proclamation does or what it doesn’t do.  Proclamation does not level off, tear down or otherwise destroy cultural differences.  God likes difference, otherness, color, variety, oddity, peculiarity, diversity, plurality, call it what you will.  All of those folks who overheard the prophets in the Upper Room, they were from every nation under heaven—east, west, north, and south—folks from every compass point. They each heard the prophets speaking in their “own native language.” God doing the impossible.  Luke repeats that phrase three times in six verses: “How is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?” Because God does the impossible.

For a world made increasingly small by trade and global technologies and in one made increasingly volatile by scientifically driven tower-making, few questions are more important:  “How is it that we hear, each of us, Gospel words, in our own native language?”

I do not profess to know the full answer, but I will hazard a partial one. If hearing the Gospel does not destroy “native language,” if hearing the Gospel allows us to keep our “native language,” then Christian prophets should take great care when they cross borders and encounter other cultures.  The boundaries are there for a reason—God’s reason.  We are red and yellow and black and white for a reason. We speak German and Spanish and English and Arabic and Chinese for a reason.  God does impossible things. God makes all things possible even hearing of Good News “in our own native language.”  We live by faith in the God who makes all things possible not by faith in our ability to make the world one.  Amen.