Speaking our Language - Pentecost 2006
Alida Ward
Acts 2:1-17
June 4 2006

Here’s a little story I haven’t told you before: a story that takes place 25 years ago exactly on a warm spring evening in the lovely city of Malmo, Sweden. I was 25 years younger than I am now, and visiting my Swedish penpal, Helena. Helena and I had been fast friends, via the postal system, since 8 th grade, when she’d sent a letter to the States addressed simply: to a girl in the United states who wants to be a penpal. A kindhearted soul in the Postal Service had rerouted the letter to my middle school and I’d raised my hand when the teacher asked “does someone want this?” And there I was, five years later, visiting Helena in MalmoSweden. And Helena, on this warm spring evening, took me out to a Swedish disco. (Yes, it was the disco era. Those of us who grew up in it don’t like to talk about it much.) The disco was packed and pulsating to the music of, of course, Abba, the Swedish singing sensations. We stood on the edges chatting and hoping for something wonderful to happen. And then suddenly all the stars aligned in one marvelous moment – the D.J. put on “Strangers in the Night,” and out of the shadows stepped a Swedish boy my age or thereabouts, and he asked this American girl to dance. Ahhh. Magic.



His English wasn’t so good, but who cared – he smiled, I nodded, we danced. Then, just as the music swelled and Sinatra sang it turned out so right, for strangers in the night – my Swedish mystery man leaned in and whispered words which brought a blush to my cheek and a flutter to my heart: You, he said, I think you are very hot. I had to stop dancing for a moment to catch my breath, and pinch myself. Was the perfume I’d borrowed? The heels I was wearing for the first time? Who cared? The night was truly full of magic. Swedish man was watching me with a look of puzzlement. I say, you are very hot, he repeated. Thank you, I said. You are sweating very, very much, he said. I am thinking you sit down now. Drink water.



And, dropping me like a hot – potato – away went Swedish man, probably to find a towel. I don’t think I need to tell you of the depth of my mortification at that moment. I thought hot had meant hot, but really it had meant hot.



Bad things can happen when there’s a language barrier. Everything from mortification on the dance floor to ending up with an unexpected pile of pig intestines on your plate, as happened to my brother in a French restaurant, to diplomatic disasters. I read once that JFK’s speech at the Berlin Wall, declaring “I am a Berliner”, actually sounded to Berliners like “I am a jelly donut.” Fortunately, they still got the point.



Which brings us to this scripture passage. A couple thousand years ago, Peter and the other disciples of Jesus were in something of a quandary. The last thing Jesus had said to them before he disappeared from their sight was "Go, and tell all people about me." Which they were willing to do, but there was something of a logistics problem: they only spoke Hebrew, Hebrew with a Galilean accent, which to the learned people of Jerusalem sounded pretty much like hillbilly, and to the people outside their country was completely incomprehensible. How on earth were they supposed to go and tell all people about Jesus, all people?



And that’s when the story of Pentecost takes place. There they were, gathered in a room together, scratching their heads and wondering what to do next, when suddenly the disciples were knocked off their feet by a rush of wind, a blast of the Holy Spirit blowing through the windows and through the room, and then, the story says, they began to speak, and what they spoke was no longer hillbilly Galileean, but things like Cappadocian and Pamphylian. The scripture passage from Acts lists the 14 different languages they began to speak in; I decided to have mercy on Mike and not make him read them all– there was some Phyrigian and Parthian, too, and Cretan to boot. The disciples were suddenly waxing poetic in 14 different languages.



So they hurried outside, and started to talk, to anyone who would listen. They began to tell a story, a story of love. They began to talk to anyone who could understand them about this man Jesus, about healing and miracle, about hope and promise, about life that never ends. They told the good news to anyone and everyone because God’s Spirit spoke through them, and God’s Spirit that day spoke every language needed. Every language needed.And people listened, and believed …And that day, the story goes on to say, that day three thousand people joined the twelve disciples as followers of Christ, and the church was born.



You learn a lot about God from this story. You learn that God wants to be heard and wants to be known and will do whatever it takes for that to happen. You learn that this God of ours isn’t p