The Sacred *Promiscuity of Pentecost

(disclaimer: essay not as titillating as title implies)

There were several events of monumental importance that happened in 1492. One of those events seems, at first glance, to lack significance, but in reality altered the course of history.  For it was in that year that Antonio de Nebrija entered the chambers of Queen Isabel of Spain and handed her what he called the key to their dreams for a Spanish Empire.  It was a weapon. A weapon which had no equal and it was not made of steel or gunpowder…. it was made of paper.  It was the first book of grammar.  When handed it to her, Queen Isabel famously said that she knew the Spanish language quite well and had no need for such a book.  To which Antonio replied, “But Your Highness,  language is the greatest tool of empire”.

And one has only to look at the 21 Spanish language countries that exist now.. over 500 years later …to know that he was right.  And one has only to look to the language laws of Germany in the 1930s and 40s and of South Africa in the mid 40s to the mid 90s… not to mention the English-only legislation in 28 states in our own country to know that there are few more potent markers of identity than language. 

Language, as you know, is powerful.

Someone asked me recently how my public-facing work first started, and I told them, “accidentally”. I was in seminary, and just decided one day to start a blog where I could write about the theological concepts I was learning in graduate school, but do it in my own vernacular; in the idioms and language and with the tone that was most natural for me. (Which I have gotten endless shit for - from day one folks have clutched their pearls at the… *gasp* … swear words. Which is fine, actually. I like to gently remind them that the Christian publishing world in their oyster. There they will find no lack of super-duper positive swear word free Christian writing.)

I really believe that God came and got me through the Lutheran liturgical and theological tradition.  As someone who got sober in basements of churches, I had already experienced the fact that I am simultaneously sinner and saint, and that God’s grace is a gift freely given to me.  I had already experienced the fact that I can’t crawl my way to God but that God always comes to me.  So when I was exposed to all these concepts in the sanctuaries of Lutheran churches, it felt like God led me to the thing that would make sense to me. 

What becomes a problem is when I insist that there is one language in which the Gospel can be preached and it just so happens to be with the language, or the art, or the culture, or the humor that I understand. I’ve then confused the ethos and the logos….the wrapping with the gift.

Because while there may be one Gospel…one story about God-with-us, God becoming human and healing the sick and feeding the hungry and being killed for it all and then defeating death itself….while there is this one story,  there are countless ways of understanding it.  There are countless images and words and music and culture which serve to tell that story. 

This is one reason the Pentecost story in Luke chapter 2 is so amazing.

Now there were devout Jews from every people 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?”

People from every nation gathered and heard Galilean followers of Jesus tell of God’s great deeds of power.  But they heard this in their own languages.  In their native tongues.  Here’s the thing…if they were living in Jerusalem they all would have, to some extent, spoken Greek, the language of the Empire. (An empire which spread it’s language and power and culture over 3 continents.) They surely shared a common language.  Yet the Spirit scoffed at using the language of imperialism and dominance.  The 120 original members of the church very well could have communicated to those from every country living in Jerusalem in Greek, but instead, as an act of sacred promiscuity, the Holy Spirit chose to reveal the truth about God’s great deeds of power in Medeish and Parthianese and Ebonics and Spanglish and slang and in the Queen’s English and in Arabic and Farsi and on and on.  Because language is powerful and God just kind of comes and gets us through whatever means and whatever language necessary.

Look, I find it endlessly irritating that God’s redeeming work in the world isn’t politely limited to the language and theology that I happen to agree with.  But for far too long the church has acted as if we have sole ownership of God’s Truth.  As though it’s only truth when stated in the language we understand which, by the way,  you must conform to.  But that’s not what we hear about today.  The Kingdom of God is not an empire which has language laws.  We humans may exercise power through Imperialistic conformity laws.  But God doesn’t.  “In our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power”.

Not for nothing, but it expands from there. God is actually powerful enough to do God’s redemptive gospel work beyond just the Christian symbol system. Yet the church has often deemed it heresy to imply God might just be astonishing and creative enough to do just this.

         So for today let’s be part of a Pentecost which celebrates how God communicates through languages we don’t understand and by theology and means with which we don’t agree.  Because that means that God comes also to us.   By any means necessary.

Amen.

*meaning, indiscriminate.

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For the last 15 years, I’ve listen to this recording from Jonny Baker on Pentecost. Enjoy!