Tongued
Genesis 11:1-11; Acts 2:1-21

May 19, 2002


Were the World Trade Towers the new version of the Tower of Babel? Has English become the new language the whole world speaks? Maybe so, but there are some problems at times.

Mexico City is a good test case. I was staying with a track team at the Centro Deportiva Olimpicano Mexicano. We had a long race one Sunday and that evening sat in the dining hall pleased, but exhausted, finally able to eat. The hall had a big bay window looking down the walkway to the dorms and sitting at our tables we saw Bob Rosencrantz approaching.

Bob was dead tired (just like Guildenstern!) which was obvious from his very slow, laboured gait, limping a little from a blister on his foot. Someone at the table suddenly spoke up just as Bob was to go through the door. “Oh no, Bob’s got on shorts!”

We were not allowed by the rules of the centre to enter public areas such as the dining hall wearing shorts. People ran around in skimpy shorts all over the place in pursuit of their sport, but not here. Bob, under the duress of extreme fatigue, had forgotten. It was too late to warn him, so we watched as the ticket taker remonstrated with him for a few minutes, but did not let him pass. Bob, alas, was Spanishless and famished.

The guy at the desk furiously wrote something on a slip of paper, and then came towards us, giving me the paper. It read: “Sir, we need your pants.”

As Bob limped off back down to the dorm in search of longer pants, I figured that was the kind of language the foreigners in Jerusalem heard that day. The idea got across, communication was achieved. They need his pants, but oh, there’s got to be better grammar.

The world is a Tower of Babel again if we focus on the babbling part. Over 2000 languages flourish to varying degrees around the world. After religion, the most heated of rivalries derives from language: witness our problems with French and English in Canada; the French and Flemish in Belgium have drawn an even more bureaucratised truce.

The solution to promote and use one world language has been an ancient temptation despite the Biblical warnings. Greek was the language you spoke second and often to your own tongue in order to communicate with strangers who visited and traded in your midst. Various forms of Aramaic served the same purpose, particularly among traders. It is why the southern peninsula of India has been Christian since the 3rd century speaking Aramaic and Syriac in its liturgies. And of course, Latin gained ascendancy and through the Church became the world language of scholarship and religion.

French eventually became the lingua franca (notice the phrase is in Latin) and German has at times become the language of scholarship, especially in the sciences and theology.

Now English is becoming the Tower’s language, not only because of the power of its native speakers in Great Britain, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, but because so many countries have adopted it as a nearly official second language - most notably India, various African nations, the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and other Asian countries. Are we native English speakers too powerful, too convinced of our ability to communicate with the whole world?

Language should not be an obstacle that gets in the way of telling the good news.

In the old West there was a notorious Mexican bank robber named Pepe Rodriguez. Pepe would sneak across the border from Mexico, to rob banks in Texas. Then he would escape back into Mexico before the police could catch up with him.

One day, though, the Texas Rangers illegally crossed the border into Mexico and captured Pepe in a small cafe. The Texas Rangers soon discovered that Pepe didn’t speak a lick of English and to make matters worse none of the Texans spoke Spanish. However, the cook informed the Texans that he spoke both Spanish and English and they he would be happy to serve as an interpreter.

So the police asked: “Where are you hiding all the money you have stolen from us?” And the cook translated into Spanish.

At first, Pepe didn’t say a word, but when the Rangers drew their guns and pointed them at him. Pepe began to tell the cook where the money was hidden. Pepe detailed to the astonished cook how he had hidden thousands and thousands of dollars, perhaps even as much as a million in a certain cave just outside of town.

Wide eyed, the cook turned to the Texas Rangers and said, “Pepe said, ‘Go ahead and shoot me, I’ll never tell you where the money is hidden.’”

The raging question about that first Pentecost is whether the apostles spoke in different languages they did not know, or whether the people heard them each in their own language. The bottom line is that the people understood the apostles; they communicated with each other about God’s mighty acts. They weren’t operating according to the proper rules of grammar. The Holy Spirit was doing the translating and it was not holding back the most important details.

The important details are the only things the Spirit bothers with. If you and I sit here and speak with one another in perfectly nuanced Canadian English grammar, we will understand each other’s words. But you may not understand what I mean, you may not have the ears to hear the power of what I am communicating. A communicable disease is some kind of bacteria that I pass along, translate, to you. When I proclaim the Good News, I am trying to utter more than grammatically correct phrases. I want to send you something I believe is important so that we both may share it.

“What does this mean?” the mind-blown passers-by asked. It means that when the Spirit blows among us, we hear more than words and sentences. We hear the stumbling words of a second or third language communicating the power of love, the grace of forgiveness, the compassion of reconciliation, the hope of redemption.

Pray that the tongued flames of the Spirit may lick your soul and enliven your wooden words and communicate the love with which God first loved you.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan