Our Own Native Language
Beth Braxton
May 31, 2009
Acts 2: 1–21
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INTRO TO SCRIPTURE:
The disciples you will remember were told by Jesus to wait and pray. But as good Jews, living within twenty miles of Jerusalem, they were bound to attend the Jewish festival of Pentecost. Pentecost means “The fiftieth”, another name was the Feast of Weeks. It was so called because it fell on the 50th day, a week of weeks after the Passover. There were two major events it commemorated––one was the first barley harvest, so it was like a harvest festival. The other was the giving of the law to Moses on Mount Sinai. The disciples, along with people from all over that part of the world, gathered to celebrate this event.
READ SCRIPTURE: Acts 2: 1–21
The situation was a summer conference during an evening lecture as minister author, Robert Fulghum tells it.
“It was raining buckets outside, and about fifty of us were doing serious business inside, talking about the war in Vietnam–agonizing over our impotence in the face of the horrors of that war.
Suddenly, a very wet, muddy young man burst into the rear of the hall.
“Help me, help me,” he cried. He was driving too fast, had missed a turn and spun off the road in the dark, and was himself thrown out onto the road because he was not wearing his seat belt. His pickup truck was hanging on the edge of a ravine. With his wife and child still in it, so scared they couldn’t move. “Help me, help me.”
As one body we rose and poured out of the hall, running into the rainy night behind the terrified young man. As one we grabbed onto the small truck and pulled it back from the edge, and as one we lifted the truck back onto the road and spun it around onto the shoulder for safety.
The mother and child were in shock, but otherwise uninjured. Tenderly, they were carried back to the conference grounds to someone’s room–dried off, wrapped in blankets, comforted. A doctor among us examined them. Warm tea we brewed. Mechanics in the group made sure the truck was in safe working order.
The young man admitted how foolish he had been, how sorry he was to have risked his life and the life of his family, and how deeply he felt our compassion. Within a couple of hours, the young man and his family were on the road again. He will never forget. Nor will those who helped.” (Robert Fulghum, From Beginning to End (New York: Villard Books, 1995), pp. 239-240.)
In this Pentecost story, we know we are listening, as William Willimon puts it, “to the account of something strange, beyond the bounds of imagination, miraculous, inscrutable, an origin which, as far as Luke is concerned, was the only way one could ‘explain’ the existence of the church.”
What happened at Pentecost we really do not know, except that the disciples had an experience of the power of the Spirit flooding their beings in such a way they had never experienced before. Luke tells the story as if the disciples suddenly acquired the gift of speaking in foreign languages, but they each understood in their own language! There were tongues like fire. (Remember John the Baptist said that Christ would “baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.”) These fiery tongues rested on each person and they were miraculously given the gift of speech in different languages so each understood the others. So we hear there the story of the coming of the Holy Spirit into the community, and the first fruit of that Spirit is proclamation––the proclamation of God’s “deeds of power” (NRSV, v. 11).
From the very beginning the community (the church) has proclaimed the great things God has done in Christ. As we proclaim Christ, we most authentically speak when we speak in Christ’s language, which is COMPASSION. Long before any of us become proficient with a language not our own such as Spanish, French, German, Swahili, we have access to the language all people understand, a language any of us can speak if we rely on the power of the Holy Spirit within: that is the language of COMPASSION AND LOVE––the language of Christ. It is a universal language of the Holy Spirit that binds us together as the church.
I keep a quote on my desk that says “Doctrine divides, service unites.” (I’m not sure, but I think it is attributive to Martin Luther.) “Doctrine divides; service unites.” How true! Think about it for a moment. Our doctrines of the Church––doctrines about God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the sacraments, sin, eschatology, and so forth––divide Christians into many separate camps. It was certainly true in the 16th century when we, the church split into many different denominations. This is also true for us in the Presbyterian Church; there are the Cumberland Presbyterians, the Evangelical Presbyterian, the Presbyterian Church of America–all who have split over different doctrines of the church. Some people in our mainline denomination––The Presbyterian Church (USA) fear today a possible split because there are different doctrines about the interpretation of scripture, primarily over the issue of whether self-affirming homosexuals can be ordained to church leadership. The seminary libraries are full of the nuances of these doctrines and the controversies that surround them.
However, the mission of compassion we do in Christ’s name brings us together, brings all Christians of all persuasions together. Houses for the poor can be built in five days in Pittsburgh., whole people’s can be saved from starvation in Darfur; many can be saved from death by medicines given for treatable diseases in Kibwezi. THE POWER OF THE CHURCH IS IN SPEAKING THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF CHRIST’S COMPASSION. This language is transforming. It identifies us as the church! It IS our own native language!
There is a story we have heard before, but I think it is one of the best metaphors for the church. It is the story of an Olympics race getting ready to start. The announcer called the participants to the starting line, said the familiar “On your mark, get set,” and fired the gun. They all got off to a good start, but it wasn’t more than 20 yards out and one of the runners fell. The others saw him go down, and they all almost simultaneously stopped, turned around, went back, and picked up the fallen runner. They then all locked arms and went to the finish line together! It was a Special Olympics race. And it is a superb metaphor for the church!
The Church is the people of a loving God made known to us by, of all things, a Savior who cared and loved us enough to die for us. The Church is the people of that Savior, Jesus Christ. The Church is the people who speak the same language of compassion as Christ did. The Church is the people who care and go back to help a wounded companion in this race of life.
Maybe the runner stumbled because the runner is hard-hearted. Maybe he has decided he doesn’t want to run the race; that life is too hard, too much trouble, too painful, too complex, too full of ambiguities and he has closed his heart to any possibilities. He stumbled because he wanted to. So the Church goes back to pick him up and open up the vision to challenge him and point to the truth.
Maybe the person stumbled because the runner is faint-hearted. He wants to run but he is discouraged. He sees that he is not strong enough to face the temptation of his addictions, so he stumbles. The Church understands, goes back and picks him up and encourages him, is present to him, stays with him, affirms the small steps to wholeness.
Maybe the person who falls is not hard-hearted or faint-hearted but broken hearted, someone who wants to run but can’t. Truly he is wounded, deeply hurt; he is in pain over a broken marriage, a job lost, a death in the family, an illness. So the Church needs to pick him up and carry him for awhile. Like the good Samaritan who carries the hurt one for awhile, sees that his wounds are bound, that he gets what he needs to get well.
The Church is the people filled with the Holy Spirit, Christ’s Spirit, who speak Christ’s universal language of compassion and love, and who, in that compassion, lock arms with those who are wounded and have fallen.
No matter for what reason we have stumbled, or any brother or sister has stumbled, we as a community of the faith know we are empowered by the Spirit to lock arms and bring each other to the finish line! This is our call.
The language that we all hear and all are empowered to speak by the Holy Spirit is Christ’s language of COMPASSION. It is the fire of the church. That is why our hearts are enflamed when we see the blood running down a Pakistani child, or sees the listless faces of starving Sudanese children, or the grief stricken face of a mother looking for her child in the ruble of a suicide bomb explosion in Iraq. The language of compassion helps us to hear their voices in our own language. We understand their pain; our lives are connected by the power of the Spirit.
The language that we all hear and are empowered to speak by the Holy Spirit is Christ’s language of COMPASSION. This is why our hearts are warmed by the light of those teenagers from our church trekking down to D.C. early in the morning to feed the homeless, by the ones who spend Friday evenings putting together a puzzle with an emotionally hurting, by the ones who are writing cards of encouragement to those in pain, by the ones who take time to call and listen to the frustration and pain of another, by the ones taking clothing to ECHO, by those who tutor the children in Snacks & Backpacks, by those who are repairing bikes for use in developing countries, by those who give generously of their time and money to proclaim Christ’s COMPASSION in word and deed. This is our own native language; this is the fire of the church!
The great philosopher theologian Teilhard deChardin has a wonderful quote: “Some day after mastering the wind, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of Love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world human’s will have discovered fire!!!”
We have been given a glorious gift today–the Spirit of love and compassion. It is mysterious, strange, miraculous, inscrutable, but the only way to explain the existence of the Church. Let us open our lives and receive it joyously and live it triumphantly! Let us speak this language every day and all will understand and come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ as Lord!! Amen.
