Whose mother-tongue is love

 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.

Image from inews

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

(C) Julie Gittoes 2023

Teach us to pray

A sermon on the prayer Jesus taught - and the things we learn by and with our heart: Genesis 18:20-32; Colossians 2:6-19; Luke 11:1-13

A question posed by Radio 4's Poetry Please: When was the last time you learnt something by heart?

Perhaps it was pages of French vocab, our times tables or the lines of a school play?

Did we learnt the lyrics of a song, the words of a poem, wedding vows, the rhyme of a hymn…

Remembering is one thing: learning by heart quite another.

Learning by rote is one thing: learning with the heart, quite another.

Vivid Heart painting by Ivan Guaderrama

If we’ve learnt something ‘off book’, the poem, the hymn, the prose, the lyrics become part of us. We carry it with us. We live with it. Catching a new meaning in a familiar phrase.

The expression of another becomes our life-long companion; meaning more to us than they dared imagine: their words bury into our hearts and become our thoughts; their thoughts our prayers.

And what more profound heart language do we have than the words of the prayer that Jesus teaches to his disciples; words spoken not just on the human heart, but heart by the heart of God.

“Our Father” is known by heart in hundreds of languages over thousands of years. Not a second goes by without it being spoken somewhere across the world. It takes shape on our lips day by day. 

It’s heard at Eucharists and weddings, at morning prayer and Evensong, at school assemblies and acts of remembrance, at hospital beds and in crematoria. The prayer of one heart beating along with the prayers of another.

Today we are invited into a moment of prayerful communion.

Jesus had been praying in a certain place.

The beloved Son had spent time in deep loving attention to his Father.

Touching the earth: kneeling, sitting, abiding with us.

Stanley Spencer - Rising from sleep in the morning  (1940)  

Reaching to heaven: a posture of perfect love and trust.

Jesus’ heart was at one with his Father; beating in time with our longings too.

And a disciple says, ‘teach us to pray’.

And the teacher gives the language of the heart.

This prayer memorable in its rhythm and simplicity. It draws us into a rhythm of intimacy, holiness and praise. It names the simplicity of our need for bread, for mercy, for strength.

As we pray it we bless God’s holy name; our wills and identity aligned with love. We pray for the world, for homes, for friends, for communities and for ourselves, that our lives will be shaped by God’s will.

We ask for what we need: for mercy, protection and forgiveness; for daily bread, for strength and sustenance; for grace to bear the needs of others and humility for others to support us.

This is a practical way of praying: noticing what gives life; and what drains our energy; to discern glimpses of goodness; to name hurts or selfishness; for our lives to be shaped by God’s love; allowing heaven to be known on earth.

Jesus embodies this prayer and proclaims the Kingdom as he breaks bread and heals; forgives and challenges; blesses and encourages. 

He also tells a story to help us remember. It’s a story about friendship and bread; temptation and community. We might liken it to a commentary on prayer.

One writer calls it the parable of the ‘pushy pal’ - a late night conversation with Mr Host and Mr Sleepy. We might add in Mr Guest. Together they invite us into a circle of friendship which echoes the heartbeat of the Lord’s Prayer.

Mr Host has been woken from sleep by Mr Guest, who finds a welcome in his friend’s home.

However Mr Host has no food at hand to feed this late night traveller.

He calls out to his friend, Mr Sleepy,  just as Mr Guest called out to him.

At first Mr Sleepy is not terribly keen to respond: it’s late, the kids are asleep, the doors are locked.

Why would he abandon the warmth of his own bed to help a friend provide for a guest?

My Host is persistent. Mr Sleepy does the right thing. Mr Guest will have breakfast, his daily bread.

This is a circle of friendship and blessing; of hospitality and reciprocity. 

To pray ‘Our Father’ opens our hearts that we might receive what we need; and that we might not withhold goodness from others.

Human beings may not be perfect, but we do know what love looks like.

In Genesis Abraham makes his own petition of mercy. A petition which names the cries of our hearts and find in the heart of God an echo. Sodom and Gomorrah’s sin had been a failure to show hospitality; and yet when one cries out for the many, such a lack is met with compassion.

The persistence of a human heart reveals the heart of God.

We too are to ask for what we need: for the needful gifts of grace.

In the power of the Spirit we are invited to share in this pattern of life: discovering our true identity and purpose; aligning our wills with God’s; breath by breath; living lightly and intensely moment by moment.  

It’s challenging and life giving. And even when we stumble and fall, as we surely will, God’s Spirit still cries within us: Our Father…

This prayer changes us. The language of our hearts nudges us out of selfishness. It reveals the power of love divine - in life, death and resurrection, as Paul reminds the Colossians. 

Perhaps it was in praying Our Father that they were built up in Christ; being nourished as one body. Perhaps we have a common heart language which  resists the deceits and falsehoods of the world and draws us into the fullness of new life.

We reach for the words of the Lord’s prayer when there is nothing left to say; when we cling to another in heartrending grief. 

We pray with our hearts as we prepare to receive afresh the wafer thin bread of life that strengths us, the ligaments and sinews of Christ’s body on earth. 

We pray it with hope and trepidation at the beginning of a day; in exhaustion and thanksgiving at its end. It’s familiar rhythms lending us an inner stability.

The Lord’s Prayer teaches us how to pray. It is a living text. Simple enough to be memorised by children; broad enough for us to grow into; ordinary enough to name our basic needs; engrained enough to out last our memory, profound enough to sustain a lifetime of praying. 

Our Father in heaven: we crawl into bed, exhausted.

Hallowed be your name: as the kettle boils

Thy Kingdom Come: in an overcrowded  A&E

Thy will be done: as we go to the gym.

On earth as it is in heaven: as water is handed to the homeless.

Give us this day our daily bread: as the tube trundles into the tunnel.

Forgive us our trespasses: when we go to a difficult meeting.

As we forgive those: as we text the friend we hurt.

Who sin against us: as a policeman responds to the next call.

And lead us not into temptation: when we do the weekly shop.

Deliver us from evil: as we gather for worship.

For thine is the Kingdom: at a school leavers’ service.

The power and glory: at a baptism.

For ever and ever: at the end of a wedding.

Amen: said and sung, for this prayer is for everyone. 

We add our voices today: in the silence of our hearts; in words and music: Our Father…

© Julie Gittoes 2019