If you hang around Pentecostal churches long enough, you’ll hear somebody speaking in tongues. And if you hang around even longer, you’ll learn that the phenomenon—called “glossolalia”—can be divided into two broad categories. The first is speaking in an unknown language, as in unknown to anybody.Pentecostals tend to believe that these are divine languages, completely unknown to the user or anyone else on earth. I’ve heard it just a couple of times, and it seemed to me highly repetitive both times. Wikipedia, may its name be blessed, helpfully provides an example: “Orawashia dela sende.”
The other broad category is sometimes called “xenolalia” or “xenoglossy” (again, thanks Wikipedia!), and it refers to speaking in a language unknown to the speakerbut that is nevertheless a known, world tongue. Like, if you’re speaking in Russian but you’ve never been to Russia or studied Russian or knowna Russian, etc. It’s a known language but you don’t know it. I’ve never heard this second kind, but I have it on good authority that it does still happen. When I was working as a research biologist, another scientist—a good friend and co-worker—swore up and down that he attended a service where this happened. As usual, my response to this sort of thing is “well, if God can create the universe then God ought to be able to make one guy talk in Slovenian. Or Romanian. Or Litvak.”
As you’ve probably figured out, our passage from Acts is about the second kind of glossolalia, and it’s very practical. Peter and a hundred and twenty of his closest friends—that’s the disciples plus those converted in the seven weeks since the crucifixion—Peter and the others were hanging out on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, maybe watching some fireworks or a football game, snarfing up some chips and dip, when whoa, Nelly! Here comes this gosh-awful sound that was so loud they’d have thought it was an on-coming trainif trains had been invented yet. As it was,some of them thought “a tornado?I never even heard a siren. . .”
But of course, it wasn’t a tornado, or even a train,and it filled the entire house where they were sitting—the sound, not the wind. Not a hair on anyone’s head or a chip in anyone’s bowl was disturbed. And if thatwasn’t weird enough, tonguesappeared resting on each of them—not hovering over them, as it’s usually pictured, but resting on them. And though we always think of them as tongues of fire, and it could be, it really doesn’t say that. It says the tongues were as offire, that is, divided,and does this allude to the Babylon passage that was read earlier? Were they really big, slurpy tongues that got the disciples all wet and stuff?
And although some commentators call it a reversal,what actuallyhappened was, like, a workaroundof the Tower of Babel. In that story, as we heard, people were punished for getting too big for their britches—aka, reaching for the heavens—and God smote them so that they all began speaking different tongues.And of course, this divided them forever, at least until the introduction of on-line language programs, and thus the tongues are divided.And Lo! After the tongues had settled on the One-Hundred-and-Twenty, they all started speaking other languages, presumably about a hundred and twenty of them. Or maybe they spoke the languages two-by-two, like the animals on Noah’s ark, or maybe there was a bank of Hindi speakers over here, a bunch of Arabic species over there, whatever . . . Luke doesn’t tell us.
What’simportantis that while the state of things after the Tower of Babel wasn’t reversed, that group of Jesus’ followers—aka, the Church—was given the tools to dealwith the whole thing. And it was all due to that rushing tornado/freight-train called the Holy Spirit. It seemed Jesus had been correct—and had anybody really doubted him?—when he predicted the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the church and its members. Here at Pentecost that was demonstrated in the most dramatic way possible.
Let’s stay with the image of the mighty wind, as it’s called in the King James, for just a little. If you’re a land-bound, newly-minted Christian, who might never have seen the Sea (it was 60 miles away), the most powerful thing you might ever have seenwas a violent storm, perhaps howling out of the desert, or driving fishing boats before it like so many matchsticks. Naked, raw power, power enough to sculpt the earth, leveling temples and dwellings and killing sheep and cattle and fishermen alike. Couple that with the Genesis image of a wind from Godthat blew over the earth, creating land and light and human beings, and you get a picture of the Spirit as energy, as vitality,as force.And to Luke, the author of Acts—and to Matthew and Mark as well—that’s what the Holy Spirit is: power. And after Jesus left the planet, it was given to Christians, symbolized by the freight-train wind and those big, fat tongues.
To Luke, the Spirit represents the power to spread the gospel. Power to heal those who need healing and feed those who need feeding. Power to overcome the powers-that-be, who are always arrayed against the truth of the Divine. And there’s nothing better than Acts at showing the power of the Spirit in the life of the church. Peter and Paul and their cronies are—repeatedly—busted out of prison, where they’ve been locked up for preaching the word. Person after person is—like the Ethiopian Eunuch—converted by Spirit-filled apostles. And those same apostles heal repeatedly in the name of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
It’s interesting to compare Luke’s conception of the Spirit with that of John, which we talked about a couple of weeks ago. Remember? John describes the Spirit with the word “Paraclete,” a word only he uses. And we saw that Paraclete means “one who goes alongside to help,” and boy! That’s certainly what it did at Pentecost! It went alongside the One-Hundred-and-Twenty to empowerthem to fulfill Jesus’ great commission, found over in Matthew, to make disciples of all nations. And you can see the parallel symbolism here, can’t you. Luke uses the same language as in the great commission: devout Jews from every nationare living in Jerusalem, and note that they aren’t pilgrims. They’re livingin Jerusalem and through the power of the Holy Spirit they hear the Gospel of Christ in all their separate tongues.
And thus the division symbolized by Babel’s Tower is not reversedbut overcome,by the Spirit being bestowed upon, coming alongsideof, the baby church. And oh! are the onlookers astonished. Oh! are they bewildered. “Aren’t all these people Galileans? Aren’t they shepherds and shop-owners and fishermen and slaves?They haven’t gone to language school, have they? They haven’t gone to university. . . we’re Parthians, Medes and Elamites, oh my, and a whole boat-loadof other nationalities as well. How can each of us hear in our own native tongue? That’s better even than Rosetta Stone.”
But there’s always someone, isn’t there? There’s always someone in the crowd who refuses to believe their own eyes, who thinks—sometimes through sheer, cynical cussedness—that it’s all an act—get it? Acts?—or that they’re taking really good psychedelic drugs. And while lots of folks exclaimed in wonder, and came away with questions and maybe even life-changing answers, some just sneered and said “they’re drunk on new wine.” And I don’t know about you, but if there’s a wine that enables one to speak in a multitude of languages without even going to school, I want some of that.
Well. As is often the case, doubts and questioning drives good, theological thinking, and this prompted Peter to give his first sermon, which begins “these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning,” proving that Peter didn’t know some of the people I’veknown. But that’s another sermon, and here at Pentecost, I just want to marvel at the gift to the church symbolized by that mighty wind.
And every year it gets me thinking about where I see it working in mylife, and sermon-writing always comes quickly to mind. I think of all the times that I’ve been stuck, that I can’t think what to write next—it’s embarrassing how often that is Saturday night—and then it comes to me as if by magic, I thank the Holy Spirit. Pentecost is a good time for allof us to do that, to think and remember and watchfor it, because as good old John says, the Spirit goes where it will and no-one can say where it’ll end up next. It might even end up with you.Amen.
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