Babble

Hebrew Scripture Reading

Genesis 1:1–9 ESV

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so.

Gospel Reading

Acts 2:1–21 ESV

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.” But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: “ ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

Acts 2:

Babble

My friend Julie scared the daylights out of me yesterday morning. We were at the gym in the middle of a partner workout. Julie was, as she often is, my partner for the workout. We were taking turns on the rower to accumulate a certain number of meters. In between sets of rowing, we were doing olympic weightlifting, then back to rowing, always sharing the work evenly between the two of us. It was every bit as exhausting as it sounds. About halfway through the very last set of rowing, I was focused on keeping up my pace and getting it done. I was in the zone. I was just trying to get through what I knew was the worst part of the workout and then I would be done. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Julie, with her thick Glasgow accent at the top of her lungs, shouted in my ear, “Come on, Charissa! You’re almost done!” I had no idea she was even behind me, let alone inches from my ear. I nearly fell off the rower.

Many of the holidays we observe in the Christian tradition are ones that we made up to celebrate things that happened in Scripture. So you’ll never see the words “Christmas” or “Easter” in Scripture. But, interestingly, we do see the word for today’s celebration in scripture. We see it a great deal, actually.

Pentecost.

1000 Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching Winds of the Spirit!

Winds of the Spirit!

It would seem that those who experienced the first Pentecost were acutely aware of the winds of the Spirit (Acts 2:2). Scholars remind us that Pentecost is the most ancient religious festival we celebrate. In the early Jewish calendar, Pentecost, or the Feast of Weeks, was dedicated to gratitude, acknowledging God’s gift in Noah, the covenant, and the regularity of physical seasons that produced seedtime and harvest. Later, Pentecost was associated with the giving of the law to Moses at Mount Sinai. While most Jewish festivals were provincial, centering on a given cause and community, Pentecost paid a great deal of attention to others. The stranger, those of other faiths, or those who happened to be in the community or in one’s home at the time of the festival, were included.

In Jewish tradition, Pentecost - also known as the Feast of Weeks - was a festival of thanksgiving, specifically for the law given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Instead of renaming the holiday, the Christian tradition kept the name Pentecost, but it took on a new meaning. Interesting, then that we are given the Spirit on that same day. On the very day of remembrance of the law, the Guiding Spirit is given to us.

This also explains why there were so many people from so many places hanging out in Jerusalem at the time this happened. God’s timing is not coincidence. Not only is there deep theological implication to the Spirit coming on a day of celebrating the law, but it’s very convenient for the spread of the Gospel that there just happen to be people from all over the place in Jerusalem that day.

The biggest problem with there being people from all over is the language barrier. But for the God who created every single language in the world, this was no real problem. In a reversal of the confusion of language at Babel (), everyone was suddenly able to hear God’s word in their own language, even though it was still the same old Galilean disciples of Jesus speaking it.

If you’ve been to the Lincoln Memorial, or the Grand Canyon, or the Lourve, or the ruins of Ephasus, or the Church of the Holy Sepulcre, or any other place like that, you know what it’s like to be surrounded by other languages. Sure, it’s a little intimidating to not know what the people around you are saying, but I also think it’s incredibly beautiful. What a demonstration of God’s creativity and the diversity of humanity.

Any big tourist site is a great example of what this might have felt like. If you’ve been to the Lincoln Memorial, or the Grand Canyon, or the Lourve, or the ruins of Ephasus, or the Church of the Holy Sepulcre, or any other place like that, you know what it’s like to be surrounded by other languages. Sure, it’s a little intimidating to not know what the people around you are saying, but I also think it’s incredibly beautiful. What a demonstration of God’s creativity and the diversity of humanity.

Every language is shaped by the people who speak it and it also shapes the people who speak it. German is very precise and you say every letter you see. It sounds tidy. Turkish is a quirky blend of European sounds with Asian(ish) grammar and who knows what alphabet they got all their characters from. Hebrew is pared back, but draws heavily on word play and knowing the speaker/writer well. English is a delightfully playful mud puddle of everything from everywhere. And so God honored the different people from different places and cultures and languages and they heard God’s word in their own language with all its quirks and nuances and beauty.

Language is a funny thing. It brings people together and tears them apart. It confuses and explains. It’s constantly changing, morphing, becoming something new and different.

Every year as Pentecost approaches, I find myself frustrated trying to find hymns about the Holy Spirit that aren’t boring. I own a lot of hymnals, for the record. It’s not just the hymnal we have here – in fact this one is better than most. Most hymnals just have a pretty sad selection of music for Pentecost. Even the music they do have is pretty blah. I couldn’t seem to find one piece of music that communicated the full power of this violent rushing wind. . . this fire from heaven. . . this something so powerful that the people of God were accused of being drunk, they were acting so strangely!!!! 

Think about the word “literally”. The dictionary definition of the word “literally” is “In a literal sense or manner.” It’s something that is actually happening just the way the speaker or writer said it is. But there is a second definition that has come into common use.

I once stood on the porch with my dad watching a tornado about a quarter mile away from our house. I know what a violent rushing wind sounds, looks, and feels like, and most of our Holy Spirit music and liturgy is more like a 20 year old box fan set to low than a violent rushing wind. It’s like a bic lighter, not tongues of flame from heaven!

Why don’t we trust anymore that God is going to move powerfully? How is it that this violent rushing wind has been tamed so much in our liturgy and in our theology? Why is the Holy Spirit confined to just a few less than fantastic pages in the hymnal?

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Eleventh Edition) Literally

lit•er•al•ly \ˈli-tə-rə-lē, ˈli-trə-lē, ˈli-tər-lē\ adverb

1533

1: in a literal sense or manner: ACTUALLY 〈took the remark literally〉 〈was literally insane〉

2: in effect: VIRTUALLY 〈will literally turn the world upside down to combat cruelty or injustice—Norman Cousins〉

usage Since some people take sense 2 to be the opposite of sense 1, it has been frequently criticized as a misuse. Instead, the use is pure hyperbole intended to gain emphasis, but it often appears in contexts where no additional emphasis is necessary.

Is it because when we walk around outside these walls, we don’t see much changing? Perhaps it’s because we’re waiting for the world to change and come to us, we’re defining renewal in the church by our numbers of new converts who wander in from outside, but if that’s the case, we have Pentecost all backwards. 

In other words, some people used it as hyperbole - a purposeful exaggeration to make a point, and that has started to change the definition of the word. I could say, “This is literally the best congregation in the entire world!” And we would all know that I’m not saying I have some sort of empirical evidence that you all have achieved some sort of standard above and beyond all the other churches in the world. It’s just my over the top way of saying you’re pretty wonderful. The word has changed.

Language is also different in difference places. If you speak Spanish, you know that you’ll need to speak it differently in Barcelona than in Lima. Even here in Pittsburgh, we speak English, but if you ask someone from Wisconsin to “red up dat room over der n’at” they will have not a clue what you are trying to tell them. I do not have much of a Pittsburgh accent, having spent a large chunk of my childhood in the midwest, but I’ve been here long enough and grew up with Pittsburgh parents. I can understand Pittsburghese just fine. Usually.

We do see in our passage today that the Holy Spirit reached outside of the church. The disciples speaking in many different languages would have been pointless if it were not so that they could preach to people of all different languages and backgrounds. But the Holy Spirit came first into the house where the disciples were gathered. What we see in Pentecost is not the Holy Spirit reforming the outside and bringing it in to renew the church, but the Holy Spirit reforming the church first to then bring renewal to those outside its walls. 

We say Happy Birthday to the church today because this is remembrance of the day that the Holy Spirit came down. The day that the Violent RUSHING WIND and TONGUES OF FIRE came down and ignited the movement that 1900 years later gave birth to Liberty Presbyterian Church! Sure, our Western Pennsylvanian church established mere minutes ago compared to the age of Christianity as a whole looks quite a bit different than the very first church established half the world away around 2000 years ago. It should! 

There were some language gaps when we first moved back. My mother, who had dropped a few things like “gumband” into conversation regularly my whole childhood, learned that when you’re not in Pittsburgh, you have to drop the Pittsburghese to be understood. So the whole time we lived in Kansas, she has essentially dropped the Pittsburgh accent - specifically the Beaver County strain of it. The second we moved back, however, she fell right back into it as if she’d never left. One evening, she told me to “put some jumbo on the dogs’ dinner.” And I asked her to repeat herself. So she said it again. Which didn’t help. I still had no idea what she was saying. I asked her again. “Jumbo. Go in the fridge, get out the jumbo. Put some on top of the dog food.” Then she saw I was still confused and it dawned on her what she had said and why I was so confused. “Bologna!” she shouted. You see, for what was probably months, any time I heard someone say something about a “jumbo sandwich” I just assumed they meant a very large sandwich. Because anywhere else in the English speaking world, that’s what it would mean. But the context was so important here and I didn’t even realize it.

We can trace our heritage straight back to that moment in that house with the disciples. That moment when a windstorm that would make a Kansan quake in her boots kicked up in the middle of a house. That day when people were touch by heavenly fire and were not burned, but whose hearts were set on FIRE. Pentecost is when we say, “This is who we are.”

In frustration, I said, “What the heck is jumbo?!”

We don’t have a national language in the US, but most of us speak English. But some speak Pittsburgh English and some speak Kansas English and there are subtle differences. Some speak church English and others have never been to church or haven’t been around it enough to understand it. We say things like “fellowship” instead of “hanging out”. We talk about “tithing” or giving “offerings” rather than “donations”.

I went through the bulletin this morning before worship and here are the terms I found that are used only in church or are used differently in church than other places:

Pentecost

Often we pray for our nation, as we absolutely should, but we also worry and lament and ask God what has happened to our country. Where did God go “out there”? Why have people stopped coming to church? What is wrong with our nation? When did our nation turn away from God? 

Prelude

Invocation

Confession

Sin

Assurance of Pardon

Gloria Patri - this isn’t even English

Illumination

Gospel

Communion

Tithes and offereings

doxology

charge

benediction

postlude

These are all things that would likely be confusing to someone new walking in the door. I love terms like “doxology” because it communicates something in a particular way. But only to people in the “know”. I say “doxology” here and everyone immediately starts humming to themselves “Praise God from whom all blessings flow. . .” It triggers that song of thanksgiving. But a) how many of you knew that doxology meant “song of thanksgiving” and that it wasn’t actually just the title of the song we use there? and b) if you say “doxology” outside of church, most people just look at you sideways.

We sound like my mom asking me to get jumbo out of the fridge. I knew the word “jumbo” but it didn’t make sense the way she was using it. And she didn’t even realize there was a language barrier between us because for Pete’s sake, she’d raised me!

In order for us to point out God to the people around us and to build relationships in the community, we have to be careful that we are speaking the same language. When we invite people to a “worship service” do they know what that involves? If we ask someone if they’d like to come to “mid-week Bible study”, what are they picturing in their head? Do they picture a seen out of the movie “Saved”? Do they immediately think of the Bible study massacre in Charleston? When they hear “Christian” do they picture Ned Flanders? And let’s just talk about when they do get here and we tell them something is in the “narthex”. . . I grew up a preacher’s kid (I almost said “PK” but not everyone knows that acronym!) and I was at least 9 before I knew what a Narthex was.

We need to be careful, plain, and explicit with the language we use. That’s hard to do. And we also need to be willing to explain things when someone doesn’t understand them. Because unless a person can hear God’s word in their own language, they are just going to think we’re a bunch of babbling idiots. So many people have tuned out Chrstianese because it doesn’t make any danged sense.

We even should take caution with the metaphors we use and the words surrounding our rites. In the early days of the church, people talked about communion in language the Romans didn’t understand and they were assumed to be cannibals because they were celebrating eating Jesus’ body and drinking his blood.

We need to be careful, plain, and explicit with the language we use. That’s hard to do. And we also need to be willing to explain things when someone doesn’t understand them. Because unless a person can hear God’s word in their own language, they are just going to think we’re a bunch of babbling idiots. So many people have tuned out Christianese because it doesn’t make any danged sense. So why do we keep using it if it’s not helpful for expanding the Kingdom?

If we are to allow ourselves to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that we can help carry the gospel to all people, we have to be open to speaking new languages and to allowing the language we use here to change over time. We need to be willing to change the words we’re using and how we’re saying them so that others can hear and understand what we are saying.

While language can divide, at its best, language brings us together. In spite of the fact that Google Translate is pretty amazing and can get you around just about anywhere in the world, I like to learn at least a few phrases in the language of any place I’m traveling to. Because when you learn even a little bit of someone else’s language, you learn a little bit about them. And there is something beautiful and unifying about that effort of stepping out of your own language and speaking in ways the other person is familiar and comfortable with. Even if you screw it up - I assure you my Turkish is AWFUL - people are touched that you are trying to speak their language. You care not just about what they can offer you, but you care about who they are as a person because language is such an intimate part of who we are.

And that is exactly what the Holy Spirit was sent to do - create unity and broaden the life of the church. The Spirit is sent to break down barriers and bring us together from different places.

Come, Holy Spirit. Fill us. Fill us so that we might see those around us and know how to speak in ways that will help to spread the Gospel. Let us be champions of unity and understanding. Amen.

Genesis 11:1–9 ESV

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

These are the wrong questions. At the very least, they ought to be pretty low on our priority list. Our first questions should be introspective – looking inward at ourselves – not looking out at the world. If the world’s not getting it, our first question should be “where do I need to let the Holy Spirit into my life?” “Where do we need to ask the Holy Spirit to guide our congregation?” “In what areas are we failing to submit to the wild, wonderful, terrifying, life-giving, fire-filled ways of the Holy Spirit!?”

The Spirit came first to those believers gathered together on Pentecost. The Spirit came to them as they waited expectantly – not optimistically, thinking “The Holy Spirit could come at any time now”, but expectantly, saying confidently, “The Holy Spirit is going to show up at any moment now.” 

I asked Gloria the other day if she wanted to go to a youth lock in at her friend’s church and she didn’t know what a lock in was. It just hasn’t been part of the language at any of the churches we’ve been at since she was born and she thought I was talking about an all night prayer vigil because that IS part of the language she hears. Even within the church, we have different “languages” in different congregations.

The Holy Spirit affects the church first: fills up the believers gathered for worship and ignites something in them that causes them to rush out of the doors and start telling the Good News with such passion and such energy and such enthusiasm that some people think they’ve hit the bottle a little bit early today. When is the last time someone accused you of being drunk on Sunday morning because you were so happy coming out of church? 

Our church is very different than the gathering of the disciples 2000 years ago. I don’t know what exactly the movement of the Holy Spirit will look or sound like in our midst from week to week. But I know that the Holy Spirit will show up if we make space. Maybe we’ll experience a violent rushing wind or tongues of fire, but we’ll more likely experience something else we don’t expect. But what I do know is that without our invitation for the Holy Spirit to move in us so that we begin to worship and share the gospel from the inside out, nothing of any importance will ever happen in this place. Let’s open our hearts and our minds to the presence of the Lord this morning.