Pentecost

                                                                                                May 31, 2009

                                                                                                Omaha, NE

                                                                                                Rev. Steven W. Plank

“A Language That’s Understandable”

Text:    Acts 2:11b – “… in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

Scripture Lessons:       Romans 8:22-27

                                    Acts 2:1-18

Proposition:  At Pentecost, the Spirit was given to the whole Church, no longer just to individuals.  And in that giving, people were able to share the Gospel of Jesus with others in “A Language That’s Understandable.”  The Spirit calls, invites, and empowers us to use all that is at our disposal to share the Gospel similarly.

Prayer for Illumination:  Truth-telling, wind-blowing, life-giving spirit – we present ourselves now for our instruction and guidance; breathe your truth among us, breathe your truth of deep Friday loss, breathe your truth of awesome Sunday joy.  Breathe your story of death and life that our story may be submitted to your will for life.  We pray in the name of Jesus, risen to new life.  Amen.

A couple of times before in our years together here I’ve shared about different forays I’ve taken into the almost-literally No-Man’s Land of fabric stores.  For most of those of us of the male “persuasion,” these gathering places for estrogen-enhanced human beings is a strange and eerie world.  They have customs all their own, and they use their own language.  It sounds like English, to be sure… but it’s not an English that is understandable, at least by me.

A few weeks ago Caroline and I went to Kansas City for an overnight, and went downtown to the Country Club Plaza to find a fabric store.  Caroline needed some special kinds of fabrics for the wedding dress she’s sewing for our soon-to-be daughter-in-law, Lauren.  I’d seen the basics of the dress at our house, and it looked like it’d be just fine.  We went into this fabric store, and were greeted by a man who knew way too much about fabrics than was within my comfort zone.  When Caroline explained what we were looking for, he introduced us to one of his employees, Carol, who was the “wedding fabric expert.”  “One can be an expert in wedding fabrics,” I wanted to ask… but refrained.  That’s when the foreign-language-that-sounded-like-English conversation began.  I was able to decipher that one time they were talking about different kinds of stitches, which was news to me.  For example, until then, I had thought that to “baste” was what one did to a turkey as it cooked.  Silly me!  Then Carol started showing Caroline different kinds of lace, and silk, and I would try to remain engaged by saying, “Oh, now that looks pretty.”  I’d get that look that said, “He doesn’t even know that these are very different fabrics, and that these could never go together on the same dress!”  An hour and a half later, we had what was needed and got into the car.  I commented that it had taken us an hour and a half to get three pieces of fabric, and Caroline was surprised that it had been more than what had seemed to be to her only about 20 minutes.  As I said, I had been in a foreign world where the language, although I was pretty sure it was English, was not understandable to me.

People who work in technical fields have the challenge of communicating information from their field in understandable ways to the general public.  That’s true in medicine, in education, in industry, even in theology.  One of my seminary classmates in the dormitory at Louisville had a card stuck on his door.  It is a theologian’s version of Matthew 16:13-16.  The Matthew text reads like this:

“Jesus asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of man is?’  And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’  He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’  Simon Peter replied, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’  And Jesus said, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona . . .’”

The theologian’s version of this on my friend’s door read:

            “Jesus asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of man is?’  And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’  He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’  Simon Peter replied, ‘You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the kerygmatic expression of all that humankind has hoped for in the totality of existence.’  And Jesus said, ‘Huh?’”

Really communicating what one means to say, and doing that in ways that are understandable, is critical, isn’t it?

At the last congregation I served in Illinois, we had some guests for worship one Sunday morning who were from Central America.  I greeted them after our service.  The adult woman smiled but said nothing, and the adolescent boy who was with her thanked me in very understandable English.  They came back to worship with us the next Sunday… and then the Sunday after that.  I began to converse with Ruth in my very limited Spanish, her son, Pablo, helping with the translation.  Within a few weeks, two other members of her family joined her:  her daughter, Maria, and her brother, David.  Shortly afterwards, I arranged for a time when I could stop by their home and visit with them.  I went there with my broken-down, dilapidated English-Spanish dictionary, and was met by Pablo who had his Spanish-English handheld computer translator with him.  I was outclassed already!  We had a wonderful visit, despite the language barriers.  They served me tea and some dessert.  And, after we were all done, Ruth got up, cleared the dishes, and disappeared into the kitchen.  I thought I’d go help her, and, wanting to continue to use my Spanish, looked at the rest of the family and proudly asked, “¿Donde está la cochina?”  They looked at me in surprise for a moment, and I thought they were just surprised that a male would offer to help in the kitchen.  But then they started to laugh… and laugh… and laugh!  They finally explained to me that what I should have asked was, “¿Donde está la cocina?”  Instead of asking where their kitchen was, I had asked them where their pig was!  Oops!

As I got to know them better, I got better in Spanish, and Ruth and David began to venture into trying English.  I remember asking Ruth one day why she first came to our church to worship, since she then could not understand one word of English.  In Spanish she told me that her family in Mexico had been Presbyterian (more generations than my family had been Presbyterian, as it turned out!), and therefore, even though she could not understand the words that we were using in church, the worship service itself was exactly the same for her.  The liturgy we were using was understandable, even though the words were not.  And the comfort she found in understanding our worship service itself communicated faith and hope to her; she experienced anew the grace and love of Jesus Christ as she was worshiping in a foreign land.

In the cycle of the Church year, today is Pentecost.  It is the celebration of the birth of the Church when the Holy Spirit came in power and splendor to the gathering of believers in Jerusalem.  The 2^nd chapter of Acts describes how the disciples, who still were timidly trying to understand the impact of all of the events of Christ’s Passion, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension, suddenly shifted from their inward contemplation to outward mission and witness.  When the Spirit came, the disciples suddenly found that they were able to communicate the love of Jesus Christ for all of God’s children, and to do that in ways that were understandable to the people who were gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of Shavuot, which commemorated the giving of the Commandments by God to Moses.  Now, much has been made of this outburst of what theologians call glossalalia, or speaking in other tongues.  Our charismatic and Pentecostal sisters and brothers find this an especially meaningful spiritual gift, most often used in private prayer.  But I believe what is most significant in this whole ecstatic outburst of the Spirit’s power is that the disciples were gifted to speak in other languages in order that the Gospel of Jesus might be proclaimed far and wide!  The Spirit’s gift to the Church that day was not predominantly a prayer language.  It was the ability – and the challenge – to communicate Christ’s love and grace to others in “A Language That’s Understandable.”

Trying to understand someone who speaks another language is challenging.  Trying to understand someone from a different culture who uses the same language is a challenge.  In a 1951 book of quotations, George Bernard Shaw was credited with saying:  “England and America are two countries separated by the same language.”  Communicating in understandable ways is the challenge that any two people in a relationship face all the time.  In the Church, it is imperative that we communicate our passion for the things we believe by using “A Language That’s Understandable” to the people around us.  When people listen to the things we talk about – not here in Church where we’re supposed to talk about Jesus and love and God and grace and all that “church stuff,” but out in the world where we all live our lives – and when people watch the ways in which we act, the ways in which we treat others, the ways in which we demonstrate the things that are priorities in our lives, can people hear and see from us something about the love and grace of Jesus?  If not, then we better learn how to communicate our faith and values and life and love in “A Language That’s Understandable.”

At that fabric store in Kansas City, Caroline and Carol didn’t use language that I could understand… but, that’s okay.  I didn’t need to understand what they were talking about… and, truth be told, I really didn’t care to understand.  Whatever happens and whatever is used, the dress will be beautiful, and, more importantly, by sometime late in the day on October 24 this year, Lauren will be married to my son, Michael!  But when it comes to our faith, it is important that we share the love of Christ with others in “A Language That’s Understandable.”  The Spirit is God’s gift to us to learn how to share Christ’s love and grace in ways that can touch people’s hearts, minds, and lives.

So, Happy Birthday, Church of God!  It’s time for Show and Tell… showing people what we believe by our lives, and telling them by our words about the redeeming love of Jesus Christ for us and for the whole world.

AMEN!