Love in Any Language

Based on Acts 2:1-21

Earlier this week, my youngest son came home from college to live with us during the summer. Everyone is back home. When we gather for family dinner on Sunday evening, Jadon will no longer be joining us via zoom. We will all be gathered around the table. It’s nice to have everyone back. The family feels complete.

It’s that sense of having everyone together again that runs through this passage we hear today from Acts chapter 2, the story of Pentecost. This whole experience is about everyone being together. It starts with verse one, where we read, “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.” According to Acts 1:15 there were about 120 of them, including Mary and Jesus’ brothers. They were all together in a house in Jerusalem. It must have been a rather large house, or they were all on top of each other. But they were all together. This important detail is a key to understanding what the Pentecost story is all about, the action of God through the Spirit to bring everyone together.

Luke struggles to give words to what the Pentecost experience was like. He says there was a sound like rushing wind. There were divided tongues that were like fire. He’s not saying it was wind and fire. That was just the best way he knew to help us get a sense of what was going on. And look how the whole space of the house is impacted by this experience. Luke says the sound like rushing wind filled the whole house, every floor, every room, every nook and cranny. There was nowhere in the house you could be that you did not hear that sound. And then Luke says that these divided tongues that looked like flames of fire settled on each person in the house, like 120 human candles. Every person had a flame resting on their heads. And then Luke says that each person, all 120, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, was filled with the Spirit and began speaking all the languages of the nations, from Syria to Egypt to Rome to Arabia. This experience was fully inclusive. No one was left out. No one was a mere spectator.

The inclusion doesn’t stop there. Jews that lived in every nation in the world were in Jerusalem. Now, obviously when Luke is talking about all the nations of the world, he is not speaking of literally the entire world. It really is confined to the world around the Mediterranean Sea. He’s not thinking of present day Australia, or China, and probably not northern Europe. The main point was that in those days Jews were scattered all across the Mediterranean, and had been for generations, long enough to claim those nations as their home, learning the language and the customs. Still, Jerusalem was the center of their identity as Jewish people. And every year, fifty days after Passover, Jews from all over would come to Jerusalem to celebrate Shavuot, or Pentecost. It was a celebration of the coming wheat harvest. It also marked when God gave Moses the Law. It was a time to feast and celebrate. So, God acted in a powerful way to bring everyone together on an occasion when Jews from all the nations of the world were physically there, in Jerusalem.

What drew their attention to that house where the Spirit came down on the followers of Jesus? Well, it may have been the sound of rushing wind. Or maybe it was the sight of flames of fire on their heads. That would have gotten your attention! But in the hustle and bustle of a crowded city, with all that noise and all the spectacle of the celebration of Shavuot, perhaps what really grabbed the attention of the people was what they heard come from the mouths of the disciples. The crowd heard the disciples speak in the language of their native tongues, the language of their homeland. Not Hebrew, or Latin or Greek, but the language of Phrygia, Elam, and Crete. They didn’t have to try to translate what was being said into their native tongue. They could instantly understand. But there’s something more than just having an easier time to understand what the disciples were saying.

There is something about including people who speak a foreign language by speaking their language. A while back, I was listening to Bishop Palmer preach, and he mentioned that he had taken on a practice of learning how to say “hello” and “thank you” in as many languages as he could. He did that partly because, as a bishop, he gets to travel all around the world on general church business. So, he interacts with lots of people for whom English is not their native language. He wanted to be able to say “hello” and “thank you” in their language to express inclusion, to make non-native English speaking people feel included, even honored.

For those of us who have traveled to foreign countries, isn’t it comforting to run into someone who speaks fluent English? My experience is somewhat limited, having only been to Mexico as a country where English is not the native language. I know a little Spanish, but walking the streets of Monterrey, hearing everyone speaking Spanish and all the signs and restaurant menus in Spanish, it can cause a person to feel a bit out of place, a little confused, really reminded that you are not from here. But to then have someone who is Mexican be able to talk to you in fluent English, that is a relief. There is a feeling of security and comfort, really, in engaging with someone in a foreign land who speaks your native language. I wonder if that feeling of belonging, of comfort and security perhaps, was stirred in all those people who heard the disciples speaking in their own native language. By speaking this way, the disciples were able immediately to make a connection with all those people. There was an immediate sense of being included in whatever it was that was going on.

Now, we aren’t done with this inclusion theme. When Peter begins his sermon, he quotes from Joel 2:28-32 in which the prophet speaks of the time when the Spirit will be poured out on all flesh. And by all flesh is meant all who are Jews. It is a prophecy directed not at the whole world but at Israel. Prior to this event, the Spirit would fall on some people, like David, or one of the judges, or a prophet like Joel. But in this prophecy proclaimed to Israel Joel says that the Spirit will fall on the sons and daughters of Israel. He says to Israel your sons and daughters will prophesy. On the young and the old, and even on slaves, will the Spirit be poured out. All Israelites will receive the Spirit, says Joel. All Jews will be empowered to prophesy, to speak on God’s behalf. It is a prophecy that announces the inclusion of all. All will speak of the works of God. All will speak of the ways God demonstrates God’s love in the world. They will all speak of God’s love.

I am reminded of a song sung by Sandi Patti called “Love in Any Language.” The chorus goes like this:

Love in any language

Straight from the heart

Pulls us all together, never apart

And once we learn to speak it

All the world will hear

Love in any language

Fluently spoken here

This song takes us to a deeper level in understanding what is happening at Pentecost. It is true that the Spirit enabled the disciples to speak in all these languages so that people could hear and understand in their own native language what the disciples were saying about God’s deeds of power. But there is a way that the Spirit of God can communicate with us no matter what language people are speaking. It’s that love in any language that Sandi Patti sings about that touches on how this Pentecost experience continues to happen in our own day.

When I was in college, I belonged to the United Methodist Student Fellowship, which was a United Methodist campus ministry. Every Spring break we would go somewhere in Mexico to work with Methodists there. I still recall one trip to Miguel Aleman, a border town in Mexico across from South Texas, not far from Reynosa and Brownsville. Mesquite grows wild there, which made the mesquite charcoal grilled chicken delicious that some of the youth of the church prepared for us. I watched as some of the women made the best tamales I have ever eaten. But to this day I still have in my mind a worship service we participated in. The singing was full of energy. Most of the tunes were unfamiliar and they were all sung in Spanish. But it didn’t matter. We sensed the presence of the Spirit even though we didn’t understand most of what was being said or sung. We prayed the Lord’s Prayer together in our own languages. We all knew that each of us loved Jesus. The language barrier did not prevent the movement of the Spirit and a powerful expression of worship. Language differences did not prevent from all of us being included in that time of worship. All of us belonged.

Can the Spirit enable us to speak words that bring people together, words that express the works of God in ways that bring people together, in ways that people can relate to? Yes. Notice what the disciples were not talking about when the Spirit opened their mouths. They did not talk about doctrines or theology. They talked about the power of God. They talked about how they had seen for themselves the mighty power of God in their lives. As we read in vs. 11, “in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” They talked about the power of God’s love. They talked about experience of God in the world.

That’s our cue. Always possible but it is not likely the Spirit will enable you or me to speak another language we are not already fluent in to talk about how we have experienced God’s power in our lives. But with the language we know, we can speak of God’s deeds of power. We can tell of our experiences when God was present in our lives, of how God has impacted our lives and our families and communities. We can tell of the experience of being swept away by God’s love, of that time we gathered with others, singing together, and felt the movement of the Spirit, or that time we entered into a small chapel and sat for awhile in silence and felt the presence of God in a real way, or a time when we were feeling alone, feeling low, and heard that voice in our head, the voice of God saying, “I am with you, I love you, I will never forsake you, you are mine.” These are some of the deeds of power that we can talk about with others, of how God saw us through times of struggle and grief and loss, of how we have experienced the presence of God in the silence, in the beauty of nature, with a gathering of dear friends, and in the eyes of a newborn infant.

This passage from Acts ends with verse 21, “then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” How has the Lord saved you? How has God responded when you called out to God in your time of need? Those are the experiences of God’s power that you can share with others, so that they might come to realize that in their times of struggle and in time of joy and peace, that God is with them as well, pouring love into their lives. This is love in any language that brings all of us together.