Sunday, 28 May 2023 - Pentecost: Acts 2:1-21, 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13 and John 7:37-39
Yn enw’r Tag, y Mab a’r Ysbryd Glân
Dw i’n dysgu Cymraeg ar Duolingo. Dimm da iwan ond dw i’n caru’r gymraeg.
I am learning Welsh on duolingo; not very well but I love welsh.
As a platform, DuoLingo claims to be the world’s number one way to learn a language.
It’s effective, efficient and bite-sized, personalised and gamified to make you love learning; but today we go further than that.
Pentecost takes us deeper in language, speaking and loving; naming our heart’s desire.
It’s about how God speaks and how God longs for us to speak; expressing the desire of God’s heart.
We move from a few people gathered together in one room, to a multitude gathered from the nations in one city.
There are no more locked doors or fearful hearts as the Spirit stirs, awakens, consoles and emboldens.
Neither the intimacy of domestic space nor the clamour of the public square can contain or control this movement of calling, joining, longing in love.
As Willie Jennings puts it: Disciples speak in the mother tongues of others, not by their own design but by the Spirit’s desire. The new wine has been poured out on those unaware of just how deeply they thirsted.
Jesus had already named the thirst, that deep thirst for loving-mercy and acceptance. He invites us into an encounter - person to person. He invites us to trust - and to receive.
In the face of division and dispute, he looks ahead to the giving of the Spirit. In the face of suffering and death, he looks to the horizon beyond resurrection.
Jesus looks into our hearts and longs for the abundance of the Spirit to revive us with springs of living water.
We long for it, deep within; the same Spirit rising up in us as that which brooded over the waters in creation; the same Spirit that overshadowed Mary as God’s Word became enfleshed; the Spirit that came as a breath of peace on the lips of the risen Lord.
Those who had waited in prayer are drawn into God’s action.
An action that breaks open and enlarges human hearts; that breaks open and enlarges this community.
Jennings calls this sheer act of God a revolution of the intimate.
For the absolute power of God is known and felt in the rush of wind; and warmth like a flickering flame. This act of God moves the human heart; the fullness of the Spirit is felt in our most intimate familiar and yet unknowable selves.
This movement of love is known in perhaps the most ordinary aspect of our life; the thing we take most for granted. That is language itself. The words and gestures that bind us together and drive us apart.
The language that commands and cries out; the familiar expressions of affection; the daily means of relationship; the language of friendship and community; the stuff of praise, prayer and protest becomes the bearer of the fullness of God in the Spirit.
As Jennings puts it: To speak a language is to to speak a people.
At one time or another, most if not all of us will have learnt a language other than our mother tongue. We know how slow that can be; and how joyful. Duolingo might be a million miles away from the grammar tables of school, but it demands the same repetition.
We learn language out of necessity: to be understood, to work, belong, make a home. We learn out of curiosity: to understand and make connections; out of courtesy and to expand horizons. Unembarrassed, we try; we risk vulnerability; see see the other. In bore da and diolch.
And sometimes, that humbling, patient and demanding process gives way to the sheer love of it: the sounds, the food, the poetry; the culture, traditions and places; the landscapes of places and of our minds. It becomes about people.
Jennings reminds us that: God speaks people, fluently. And God, with all the urgency that is with the Holy Spirit, wants the disciples of his only begotten Son to speak people fluently too.
In this there is an undoing of the ways in which mastery of language has become the mastery of people; here we join with God’s work of translating and loving.
‘What does this mean?’ say the crowds, astonished, perplexed and amazed at speech that speaks to their hearts.
This is the amplification of God’s speech to Israel by the patriarchs and prophets - the commandments to love. To love justly and with mercy.
This is the love that in Jesus Christ goes to the depths of alienation and despair; to the richness of our most tender longings and hopes; to the hidden places of minds; healing wounds, making whole, accepting us in love.
This is the Spirit moving to open hearts to neighbours and strangers; shaping homes, relationships and lives by the fluent movement of love; the Spirit that gives courage, creativity and compassion.
It is this Spirit that enables us to say Jesus is Lord; that enables us to see that in him God reconciled the world to Godself; that in baptism we are drawn into the fullness of life and the possibilities of being drawn together in love.
Paul and Peter echo Joel and the prophets in this extraordinary vision of joining together - across language, ethnicity, age and gender. The Spirit is being poured out on all flesh - dreams, visions and prophecies find form not only in human language, but human lives.
To be drawn into one body, made up of many members is to see both a rich variety - of gifts, activities and acts of service.
What does this mean?
It means that the gift of faith is stirred up in us - each using our gifts for the common good.
It means that the church is given over to the Spirit - revived with a breath of love.
It means that in a rich variety of ways - we witness to the love of God revealed in Jesus.
It means that the face of the earth is renewed - with care for creation and hope for all peoples.
This does demand wisdom and knowledge, the ability to heal, reconcile and keep safe; it redirects power from human distortion, abuse and selfishness to divine purposes of the flourishing of all.
Such power is poured out in the language we speak with our words and our bodies: prayer and thanksgiving, mutual support and blessing. The mother-tongue of love speaks in the body language of broken bread and poured out wine. One body, one flesh, one desire, one God; a variety of embodiments, activities, gifts; for the sake of the common good.
A poem by Malcolm Guite
Today we feel the wind beneath our wings
Today the hidden fountain flows and plays
Today the church draws breath at last and sings
As every flame becomes a Tongue of praise.
This is the feast of fire, air, and water
Poured out and breathed and kindled into earth.
The earth herself awakens to her maker
And is translated out of death to birth.
The right words come today in their right order
And every word spells freedom and release
Today the gospel crosses every border
All tongues are loosened by the Prince of Peace
Today the lost are found in His translation.
Whose mother-tongue is Love, in every nation.
Yn enw’r Tag, y Mab a’r Ysbryd Glân
