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. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 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.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’”
(Acts 2:1-21)
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We have a tendency to get fixated on signs and wonders. Christians, I mean – although I suppose it's not restricted to Christians. But Christians do like signs and wonders and miracles, and we like stories about signs and wonders and miracles (so that we can either become fixated on them as if that’s the only thing our faith is about or so that we can dismiss them as silly, superstitious stories that have no place in a modern faith.) However you look at it, the story of the first Christian Day of Pentecost that we just read about in Acts 2 gives us all sorts of signs and wonders to think about and reflect on. There's a sound like the rushing of a wind; there are tongues that seemed to be made of fire touching people. People speak in other languages that the context suggests they had never learned, and then Peter quotes the Prophet Joel with his description of the dramatic signs that will accompany what he refers to as “the last days”: the sun turned to darkness and the moon turned to blood. And then, the denouement if you will; the final act; the culmination of everything we hope for: salvation! “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” It's exciting and it's mysterious and it's dramatic. It's exactly the sort of description that we would want to be given for something as important as the coming of the Holy Spirit to God's people. That, after all, must surely be an exciting and dramatic and mysterious event – mustn't it? So when Pentecost comes around the focus tends to be on these signs and wonders, and for some Christians at least the focus stays on those signs and wonders, to the point at which if the signs and wonders are absent then there must be something wrong! I've noticed that especially with how some Christians of all denominations (and I've seen it in the United Church as well) think of the whole concept of “speaking in tongues.” If you don’t speak in tongues then there’s something wrong with you, the Holy Spirit isn’t with you, God must not love you, etc., etc.
The interesting thing is that for me at least this passage about the first Day of Pentecost throws the whole concept of speaking in tongues out the window. It's pretty clear from this passage that the first outburst of “tongues” is being described as a group of believers who were speaking in actual languages that they hadn’t learned. It would be like me standing here in front of you and suddenly starting to speak in fluent Swedish, even though I don’t know a single word of Swedish! But, really, it’s not even that simple. The more I’ve read this account of Pentecost through the years the less convinced I’ve become that the highlight or most important part of the experience was people speaking in tongues. What now seems to me to be far more important is that people were hearing the words in their own tongues. There were, after all, only 12 disciples at this point (Matthias having been chosen to replace Judas Iscariot at the end of Chapter 1) but more nations than that are mentioned in the text. So it seems that all of those languages couldn’t have been being spoken since there weren’t enough disciples to do that – but that all the languages were being heard. “…in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” I’ve been spending a few days now thinking about the concept of “hearing in tongues.” In its own way hearing in tongues is just as dramatic and just as miraculous as speaking in tongues, I suppose – but it puts a very different spin on what was actually happening.
The list of countries in Acts 2 whose languages the word of God was heard in is very interesting. Why are those countries listed and not others? The Roman Empire was even more diverse than that limited list of 15 nationalities suggests. The Roman Empire of Jesus’ day extended north to what’s now Germany and west to Spain and France and south almost as far as Ethiopia. So why mention only the 15 nations listed? Well, there’s a deeper message being shared here about God than we usually realize. The point of the list seems to be that God is active even where people would have expected God to be absent, and that God is with even those with whom people might have expected God to be against. God is active in the fierce enemies of Rome to the East (the Parthians and the Medes). God is active in the former empires who once invaded Israel (Mesopotamia and Elam). God is at work in the wild kingdoms on the edges of the world (Cappadocia, Pontus). God can even be found in the Arabian wilderness to the south with its unending and mind-numbing expanse of sand, sand and more sand. And so, if God is present to our enemies, in the wilderness, at the borders, and to what seem to be the ends of the earth, then who are we to limit what God can do and who God can speak to?
Maybe that’s the message of Pentecost. God breaks down the barriers that we’ve erected, and the word of God goes forth into the farthest reaches of the earth – even to those we might not even want to speak to, but also to those who are closest to us. Somehow, by the power of the Holy Spirit, barriers are broken down, and enemies are reconciled by a common experience of God in Christ.
As fixated as we can sometimes be on the signs and wonders and miracles, I’ve always thought that in fact God may work most powerfully through the more mundane things of life – that the divine is present perhaps more in the ordinary than ever in the extraordinary. After all, God is with us always – even through the extremely ordinary hours that fill most of our days. Now it's true that people love the signs and wonders and miracles, and they flock to those who seem to give them signs and wonders and miracles. The problem with the signs and wonders and miracles, though, is that they too often have a tendency to put the attention squarely on the person who's front and centre rather than on Christ. But are we not called to humility? Last night Lynn and Hannah and I were at Trinity United Church in Bowmanville for a Pentecost themed worship service at which the Moderator of the United Church – Jordan Cantwell – was in attendance. In her comments she said something that stood out to me. I don't claim that this is verbatim, but I think I'm catching the spirit of what she said: “If we truly become humble then our ears get bigger and our mouths get smaller.” In other words, humility leads us to listen more than we speak. And perhaps there’s no more mundane and ordinary and humble activity than actually listening to someone. Not just hearing them, but listening to them.
Margaret J. Wheatley wrote that “listening is such a simple act. It requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we don't have to do anything else. We don't have to advise, or coach, or sound wise. We just have to be willing to sit there and listen.” Listening breaks down barriers; listening leads to understanding between peoples; listening can turn enemies into friends. Maybe it wasn't speaking in tongues that was the most important part of Pentecost – maybe the most important part of Pentecost was “hearing in tongues.” And perhaps the “hearing in tongues” that took place on the first Christian Day of Pentecost wasn’t so much about a miracle, as it was simply about various and disparate groups of people actually finding themselves listening to each other for the first time. And, actually -when you think about it - maybe the willingness of people to actually and fully listen to and hear and understand each other would be the greatest miracle of all.
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