How many languages do
you speak? Who speaks more than one language fluently? Anybody
speak more than three languages?
I only speak European
languages – English, of course, and French, but also some German.
And all three languages “work” the same way. German is very like
English in a lot of ways, and very different in others. French is
very different, but it still works the same way. And both German and
French are ancestor-languages of English. Most European languages –
not all, but most – are related to each other, and fairly mutually
comprehensible. In some areas of France, for instance, they speak a
version of German, and in Luxembourg they all speak both French and
German, and their native dialect seems a bit of a mixture!
If I go to a country
where I don't speak the language, I can usually pick up the words for
groceries or wine or beer even if I don't know how you say them, just
by looking at the notices in the shops.
But I know some of you
– most of you, perhaps – speak languages that work very
differently to European languages. They diverged from whatever the
original spoken language was very early, so they build up
differently. I'm sure if you grow up speaking them, they seem normal
and natural, but I would find them very difficult to learn, other
than occasional words. Some European languages, too are like that.
Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian, for instance, are very different
from the languages that descended from Latin, and nobody knows where
Basque came from!
In our first reading,
we heard the story the ancient Hebrews told to explain why there were
so many different languages in the world. The people had tried to
build up a tower that would reach up into heaven, and God said “Can't
have that!” because that's not how you get to heaven, so he
scattered the people and caused them all to speak different languages
so they couldn't co-operate and understand each other.
Well, I wonder why we
had that story today? It is, of course, Pentecost, and don't you
think that the story we heard read, as we hear every year, is a sort
of anti-tower of Babel? Now, everybody can understand what the
people are saying! No matter what their native language – as the
bystanders said: “Parthians, Medes, Elamites,
and residents of
Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,
Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the parts of
Libya belonging to Cyrene,
and visitors from Rome,
both Jews and proselytes,
Cretans and Arabs –
in our own languages we
hear them speaking about God's deeds of power."
So in a way, what
happened at Pentecost closed the circle, and unmade the differences
that God was thought to have caused at Babel.
Some were puzzled –
were these people
drunk, or what?
So Peter, glorious,
wonderful Peter, who never used to be able to open his mouth without
putting his foot in it –
they used to say he
only opened his mouth to change feet –
Peter jumps up and lets
out this terrific bellow which shuts everybody up, sharpish.
"No, no, no, no,
no, no, no," he goes, "we're not on the sauce –
come off it, it's only
nine a.m., what do you take us for?"
And he goes on to
explain that this is what Joel was talking about,
this is what they'd all
been expecting.
And, as you know, he
preached so powerfully, and God's presence was so overwhelming, that
three thousand people got converted that day alone!
Thus the story.
We know it so well,
don’t we?
Every year, this
passage from the book of Acts is read.
We could probably quote
a great deal of it off by heart, and the bits we can’t quote –
all those
nationalities, I can never remember them without looking –
we know what they say,
even if we don’t know the words!
One way of seeing it is
that it’s the Church’s birthday.
The day we celebrate
the anniversary of the explosive growth from a tiny handful of
believers –
barely over a hundred –
to several thousand,
and on down the millennia to the worldwide organisations and
denominations that is the Church today.
But there again, that’s
just history, rather like we celebrate our own birthdays. But we
should celebrate it. And my grandson is at the age that thinks a
birthday has to include cake, so I have brought some cakes – I
think, though, that we had better wait until afterwards to eat them
so that we don't make crumbs on the carpet in here!
Pentecost is more than
that. I think that much of it is one of those things that doesn’t
go into words very well –
what is officially
called a “mystery” –
the Church’s word for
something that words can never fully explain.
After all –
a mighty wind, and what
looked like tongues of fire?
We know the damage that
both wind and fire can do;
we've seen it all too
often.
1987 was a long time
ago now, but I still remember clearly the devastation caused both by
a fire at King's Cross Underground Station and a huge gale that
destroyed vast swathes of woodland. Even today you can still see
traces of the damage it caused, if you know where to look.
But the wind and flame
from God were not sent to destroy, but to cleanse, to heal, and to
empower.
Wind and flame can be
good things, as well as destructive. After all, think how when it's
really cold, we want to warm ourselves at a flame, don't we? And
back in the day, flames were the only way people had to make light
when it was dark – we like our little tealights even now, don't we?
And sometimes we light tealights or other small candles as a form of
prayer.
And wind.... we can do
lots of things with wind. Here are some windmills. They don't do
anything if you just hold them, but if you blow on them, they come to
life and turn round and round..... Blowing on them is all very well,
but of course they really come to life if you put them in your garden
and let the wind blow them as it will! And remember, when you see
them going round, that the Holy Spirit came as wind.
The Holy Spirit is
sometimes called the Breath of God; the Hebrew word for “Spirit”,
Ruach, can also be translated “Breath”. It seems only fitting
that the Breath of God is a rushing mighty wind!
Let's blow some bubbles
– go on, you know you want to! Share them round so everybody can!
I love to blow bubbles; you have to be fairly serene and steady to be
able to do it, and you can't blow them if you're panicking all over
the place. Very calming.
But look, too, at the
bubbles. They are all different sizes, no two are quite alike. But
they are all similar. And they depend on our blowing them! They
don't form on their own. They remind me a bit of God's making us.
God breathed life into us. And they remind me of how God transforms us - ordinary washing-up liquid transformed into beautiful bubbles!
It's fun to celebrate
Pentecost with bubbles and windmills and cake! And, do you know, if
you are Jewish you celebrate with cheesecake! Or even if you aren't
Jewish – I'm going to have cheesecake for my supper pudding
tonight! Robert will be out, but I might save him some if I'm nice!
Apparently the reason is that the Jewish festival, Shavuot,
celebrates the giving of the Torah, the Jewish version of the
Scriptures, and, as you know, one of their rules is that you don't
eat meat and dairy products at the same meal, and so they have a
tradition of eating dairy produce on Shavuot, and, well, cheesecake
is really rather delicious! I only learnt that tradition last year,
from a Jewish friend on Facebook, but I promptly adopted it!
Anyway, the point is,
while it's fun to celebrate, and we should – we need to remember
that Pentecost isn't just history. It happened, yes, on a given date
in about AD33, but like so much of our Christian life it is a here
and now thing as well as a then and there. As I said earlier, it
doesn't really go into words very well – stuff about God very often
doesn't.
But what does go into
words is that God still sends his Holy Spirit to us today. God the
Holy Spirit is still breathing life into us. Still giving us light,
still leading us, as Jesus promised, into all truth. And we are
still commanded to be filled with the Spirit! We can still have the
various gifts St Paul saw in use (the tongues, the prophecies, the
healings and so on) and the fruit he saw develop in people’s
characters:
"love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and
self-control".
And as we saw earlier,
the Spirit undoes the divisions between people, enabling us to
understand one another, to listen to one another, to hear one
another.
And God the Spirit
brings life. Abundant life. And so we celebrate, this Pentecost as
every Pentecost. Amen! And, perhaps, Hallelujah!
