The Language of God

The Language of God--June 19, 2019

"When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each." [Acts 2:1-6]

There is no official language of heaven.

Hmmmm.  Just let that thought sink in for a moment.  As the New Testament describes it, there is no single official language of God, but rather, when God works with human beings, God is willing to speak to us in a whole host of languages--whatever it takes to get through to us.  We can't ignore that part of the Pentecost miracle story, because presumably God could have done it differently.  You have to figure that any time you get a scene of unmistakable divine intervention in a story--like an unexpected wind, hovering flames, and supernatural language skills--that God chose to do things this way rather than some other way.  And it sure does seem telling that on the Day of Pentecost, the gathered crowds from all over the world could hear "in the native language of each," rather than God making them all learn the language of Simon Peter and the disciples.  

You see that, right?  The crowds ask, "How is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?" rather than asking, "How is it that each of us has learned to understand Aramaic that this Simon Peter guy is speaking in?"  The direction of the miracle is significant--it is God's choice to let every one there continue hearing and understanding in their own language, rather than supernaturally giving them all a crash course in a single "official" language.

That's actually a big deal that sets the New Testament faith apart pretty significantly.  In Judaism, for example, one of the deciding factors for which books were understood to be "Scripture" was whether they had first been written in Hebrew or not.  The books that were originally written in Hebrew had a stamp of authenticity, even though translations into Greek, Aramaic, or other languages eventually happened, too.  Or in Islam, the Qur'an is required to be in Arabic, or it is considered a not-quite-as-authoritative translation.  Even in medieval Christianity, we let ourselves get duped into believing that only Latin was acceptable, and therefore that only those who had been trained and educated in Latin (priests, bishops, and monks--curiously all men, too!) were able to "correctly" read the Bible.

But at its Spirit-led beginning, the Christian community was different: there was no "official" language, but rather God chose to meet people where they were and to give them full participation in the Christian faith regardless of whatever their native language was.  That's a big deal.  It means that God chose not to enforce uniformity, even though that surely could have made things easier for the early church.  If there had been a language requirement, there would have been less potential for confusion when things got lost in moving from one language to another... and we wouldn't have Christian groups fighting over whose translation is the "right one"... and we would all know all the songs in the hymnal without skipping over the ones with words we can't pronounce.  Yes, all of those things could have happened if the Spirit had tweaked the miracle just a bit to give all the hearers the ability to understand one "official" language, rather than giving the speakers the ability to speak in many "un-official" languages.  But that is not how the Spirit chose to do things.

And I am convinced that is important.  We have a way of wanting to use language as a litmus test for acceptability so that we can be gatekeepers.  "You want access to the good things we have?  Then you must learn the official language.  You want to share in our way of life? Then learn to talk like me."  If that's not conventional wisdom, I'll eat my hat.  We do it with actual literal languages sometimes, and we do it with the code languages of church life, too--the way we church folk slide into jargon without explaining the strange words and phrases we use, from "narthex" and "liturgy" and "intinction" and "Advent," to "being washed in the blood," worshiping a "Lamb who was slain," or striving for "stars in my crown."  And we don't even realize sometimes how much we use that language to keep people out, to control who "really" belongs, or to puff ourselves up with mastery of the "in-group" language while expecting new faces to learn it all by osmosis somehow.

But when the Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, God made a decisive break with all of that kind of thinking.  The early church was, from the moment of its inception, multilingual.  Yes, that means we have additional work to do--we have to translate our Scriptures into whatever language is being spoken in whatever place we go to... and we have to learn hymns and songs from all over the world instead of only from my country and style... and we have to learn to accept the fact that God's vision includes people of different languages, backgrounds, cultures, and languages.    And apparently God thinks that is worth it.

We forget, too, we American Christians, that this policy of God's is what allows us to be welcome as we are, too. We sometimes assume that, as inhabitants of a superpower/empire in the 21st century, that the dominant language of our culture is God's language.  There are more than a few Christians, too, who will swear up and down to you that the old 1611 King James Bible is the Bible God reads.  But the Christian faith didn't start with us--and it will not end with us.  The Gospel wasn't first spoken in English--nor is it the most widely-spoken language for Christians even today!  But the fact that we can think and read and pray and sing to God in English, the fact that I can write about God in English, is only possible because God made the choice not to require us all to learn Hebrew... or Greek... or Latin... or some angelic dialect of heaven.  Keeping that in mind--that I as an English speaker am a relative newcomer, and that my language was once the "new" tongue someone had to translate the Gospel into--maybe, that will keep me appropriately humble in the ways I deal with other people around me today.  We are often harshest toward those we see as newcomers when we have forgotten that we were newcomers and late arrivals to the party ourselves.  And that hypocrisy does not look good on us; the body of Christ was never meant to be draped in it, and yet so often it is our go-to outfit choice.  

It is worth remembering that God's chosen policy on the multiplicity of our languages and ways of speaking of God is to meet us where we are and to find a way to get through to us with the words we already speak, rather than making us all learn an "official" language of heaven.  That is simply how love works: it goes to whatever lengths it needs to in order to get through to the beloved.  And, dear one, you, and I, and this whole world of billions and our many tongues, are beloved.

So... what is the language of God? Yours.  And hers.  And his. And theirs. That is by God's choice.

Lord Jesus, send your Spirit among us again to reach out to people whose words are different from ours, and to go to whatever lengths are necessary to learn to listen to one another, as well as to speak each other's languages.