June 8 2025 Day of Pentecost
Acts 2.1-21 Psalm 104.26-36 Romans 8.14-17 John 14.8-17
Happy birthday. This is what we celebrate at Pentecost – the birthing, the beginning, of the Church into the world. Pentecost comes from the Greek pentekostos which means fiftieth, fifty days after Passover Jews celebrated the ‘Feast of Weeks’, or ‘Feast of Harvest’. Centuries later, after their exile to Babylon, Jewish Pentecost became one of the great pilgrimage feasts of Judaism when Diaspora Jews returned to Jerusalem for worship. And since about the second century, Christians have celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit fifty days after the death and resurrection of Jesus, on the Jewish feast of Pentecost, and the birth of the church with the descent of the Spirit. Next to Christmas and Easter, Pentecost is the most important celebration in the Christian calendar.
So lets look at what Luke is telling us about that day. About 120 believers were gathered together in Jerusalem. Jesus had instructed them, just before his ascension, to remain in Jerusalem until the promised ‘paraclete’ or ‘advocate’ came to lead them out and empower them for ministry in the world.
So, on this day, after scary howling wind blew through the room they were in and, what looked like flames descended on them, they were all ‘pushed’ out into the streets and started talking and proclaiming the good news. We are told the Holy Spirit allowed them to speak in languages they didn’t know, but we are also told that those who heard them speaking understood them as if they were speaking their own mother tongue. Now that means that not only were these followers speaking foreign languages, but those who heard them speaking understood the language to be their own, even if it wasn’t. So not only was the Holy Spirit acting like the ‘universal translator’ for those who were speaking but also for those who heard the words which were spoken.
Interestingly, not everyone was able to understand what was being spoken. Some were not ‘open’ to the work of the Holy Spirit, and it was these who disparagingly described the followers as ‘drunk’. Occasionally you may hear people describe Pentecost as the reversal of Babel, but it isn’t. Pentecost did not reverse Babel, it perfected and blessed it. The coming of the Holy Spirit did not restore a common language to humanity, she declared all languages holy and equally worthy of God’s stories. The Holy Spirit wove diversity and inclusiveness into the very fabric of the Church. The people of God were called to be the One and the Many.
Now we often hear people saying that ‘language is power’. Language holds more than just grammar, vocabulary and syntax. Languages carry the full weight of people’s cultures, histories, psychologies, and spiritualities. When you learn another language, you need to orient yourself differently to the world, you will see differently, hear differently, process and punctuate reality differently, and there is no such thing as a perfect translation.
And given that, we are invited to consider what it means that the first Christians were given the power to speak in an unmatched diversity of languages. Does this mean that God’s Church needs to honour the boundless variety and creativity of human voices? Are we being called to proclaim the great deeds of God in every tongue available – not because multiculturalism is fashionable or ‘politically correct’, but because God’s deeds themselves demand such diverse telling? Are we being told that no single language on earth (and there are currently more than 7,299 different languages spoken in the world), but not one of them is capable of capturing the deeds of God.
The crowds who heard the followers speaking were baffled by what they heard, but what they were most baffled by was that God would condescend to speak to them in their mother tongue; that God would welcome them so intimately with words and expressions taking them back to their birthplaces, their childhoods, their beloved cities, countries and cultures of origin. They felt ‘welcomed’ in that place, they no longer felt like an ‘outsider’, they were comforted by people speaking their language too.
As Christians, we put a lot of value on language. After all, like our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters, we are ‘People of the Book’. In our creation stories God ‘spoke’ and the world was created. John starts his Gospel with the words ‘in the beginning was the Word’. Every Sunday we profess our faith in the languages of liturgy, creed, prayer, and music. To put it simply – we believe that language has power. Words make worlds. And they unmake them as well.
When we attempt a new or different language, we become a servant to that new language. When we speak across barriers of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, culture, denomination, or politics, we challenge stereotype and risk ridicule. But, like it or not, this is what the Holy Spirit required of these frightened disciples on the birthday of the Church. They were challenged to stop huddling in their version of sameness and safety. They were challenged to throw open the windows and doors, to feel the pressure of God’s hand against their backs, pour themselves into the streets and speak. When the Holy Spirit came, silence was not an option, they were on fire.
The Pentecost story required surrender from both sides. The followers had to brave languages they didn’t know, risk vulnerability in the face of difference, and do so with no guarantee of welcome. They had to trust that no matter how silly, or awkward or inadequate they felt, the words bubbling up inside them needed to be released. The crowds who heard them had to take risks too. They had to suspend disbelief, drop their long held defences, and opt for wonder instead of contempt. They had to broaden their circles, and welcome strangers with odd accents.
When we speak someone else’s language, something happens – whether they be cultural, political, racial or liturgical, we experience the limits of our own perspectives, we learn curiosity, and we discover that God’s ‘great deeds’ are far too nuanced for a single tongue, or single fluency.
So what is the Spirit saying to us, God’s people today, on this Feast of Pentecost? Maybe we are being told that words have become ‘toxic’ in our world, and the languages of our cherished ‘isms’ threaten to divide and destroy us. Maybe we are being invited to become a bold and creative Church willing to engage across barriers when we respond to the global, civilisational and catastrophic troubles around us. Maybe we are being told that unless we learn to speak each other’s languages, we will burn ourselves into cinders.
The loosening of tongues on this day by the Holy Spirit was no small event. In the face of difference, God compelled the people to engage. From Day One, the call was to press in, linger, listen, and listen some more, because, no matter how passionately I may disagree with someone else’s beliefs or opinions, I cannot disagree with their experience. And once I have learned their story in the words that matter most to them, then I can no longer flourish at their expense, I can no longer abandon them.
Can we hear what the Spirit is saying to us, God’s people? God is doing something new, and we are part of it. We can be the One and the Many. We can be on fire for the healing of the world.