The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
May 27, 2007
Vol. 10 no. 21

Everything But...
           The language of the Bible often can be so restrained and traditional that it is difficult to figure out the right nuance. After all, no tape recorders were capturing the precise tone of voice. I like to look at some of the more modern English versions of a passage to see what new insight might have been gained. The story of Pentecost is a good test case, and where the narrative reports that “the multitude was bewildered [by the apostles speaking to them each in their own language],” Eugene Peterson’s The Message says that they were “thunderstruck.”
           For lots of people my age or under, that word immediately lights up with the song by the Australian heavy metal rock band AC-DC, entitled “Thunderstruck.” Wonderful guitar playing, but the words are not edifying for our company and I doubt the song has been played in a church recently. The music viscerally carries home the idea of being thunderstruck - the music is quite loud! - so bewildered that you have lost familiar orientation. You are still able to think and observe, but what you took for granted does not seem to apply, at least for the moment.
           And for the moment, the multitude of multi-ethnic visitors to Jerusalem heard a word that disoriented them away from the divisions of humanity and landed them in paradise. This is the way it should be when everybody listens to everybody else. No wonder people still want to speak in tongues in Pentecostal churches, for when you speak in the tongues of angels, all the conflicts that derive from the inability of human beings to communicate their ideas, struggles and hopes, dissipate from you. No longer a Babel, but a still small voice - or perhaps, some loud thunder.