I spend a lot of time thinking about language. I grew up speaking both English and Portuguese at home, and in high school and college, spent a lot of time developing fluency in Spanish, a language I really wanted to learn so that I could connect to my birth culture and heritage, keeping whatever semblance of a tie to my birth mother that I could.
Language fascinates me. The way words can be woven into sentences that carry at once: great meaning, the ability to wound deeply, and the ability to heal is an intriguing and multilayered phenomenon. Language can be wordless. Brazilians love to dance, to move; the ancient traditions that shaped these people are alive in beating drums and thumping hearts.
I think legacies endure through language - be it spoken or written word, a stunning composition, or wonderfully embodied dance. Legacies keep us tethered to our humanity. We learn from the shameful ones we’d rather keep hidden, and we draw strength from the inspiring ones we hope will shine forever.
We as humans want to be a part of something. In the book Braiding Sweetgrass, Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer weaves a beautiful story out of her life journey using science, mysticism, and the embodied knowledge from her Indigenous roots which she always carries with her. It is touching and beautiful, and heartbreaking - particularly her lament over the endangerment of the language of her people.
There are only a select few elders in her community who speak the language of their Potawatomi ancestors. The whole community must come together to learn the language and keep it alive; to save it, very literally, from dying.[1]
I’m struck by the beauty with which Kimmerer wrangles words - reckoning with the violence of erasure and tending to the indigenous roots of many words in the English language with both tender hope and palpable sadness. When the United States was first colonized, the First Nations inhabitants of this country, Native people who had been tending the earth for years, communing with the divine in their own deeply embodied way were seen as a threat to the way of the white settlers who came looking for wealth and resources.
Their practices, dances, and languages were nearly obliterated in the process of the creation of America. Thankfully, through oral lore, many tribal languages and traditions have been preserved throughout the ages, and yet, are still threatened to this day. Indigenous people constantly feel like they don’t belong - on their own land, in their own ancestral home.
This is something that the group of gathered believers, the early church in Acts, understands very well. The community that has formed on this day for worship is from all over Jerusalem.
People groups who carry the languages of their ancestry in their hearts, but speak the common language of Roman occupation, have gathered together for what they believe will be just another worship service. Little do they know that the spirit of God has other, bigger, more overwhelming and wonderful plans for their worship than they could ever imagine.
Plans to restore them to their own ancestry, plans to re-member them to their own stories, and the story of God’s work in their own lives, and in the world around them, through the ministry of Christ.
Please join me in prayer.
Holy God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.
Today is Pentecost Sunday. My favorite day on the church calendar. It is a day to celebrate the giving of the Holy Spirit to the early church; the first followers of Christ who gathered together for worship, and were transformed by the spirit of God. The word “Pentecost” is derived from the Hebrew word for “fiftieth.”
In Jewish tradition, Penectost is celebrated during the Jewish festival of weeks, shavuot, and this festival occurs fifty days after Passover. It is a harvest celebration, a festival of new beginnings. People bring the first fruits of their gardens to the temple for blessing, asking God to bless the remainder of their harvest. Pentecost in Jewish tradition also celebrates the giving of the books of the law, the Torah. It is a day that is celebrated as a mark of the presence of God among the people, the bounties of God for the people, the instruction of God to the people.
In the early church, Pentecost, as a celebration of the beginning of a movement; set off a domino effect of preaching and teaching - witnessing to the presence of God in and with the people, and the work of God among them. It is generally known as the birthday of the Christian church.
On this banner day in the life of the early church, Acts tells us, that many devout Jews from all over Jerusalem had come to this gathering, to celebrate the harvest festival of Pentecost together. People who had endured a lifetime of Roman occupation and oppression; who had long since learned to survive by neglecting the rich customs and traditions of their ancestry, and assimilate into the culture of the Romans - making it their new language, their new way of life, their new “normal.”
Their legacy of mistreatment is hidden away in their hearts, but the memory of it is always there.
As everyone takes a seat in the now-crowded house, they begin to prepare their hearts for worship. They have done this countless times before, and are already thinking about what to have for lunch after the service.
And suddenly, there’s a gust of wind - a strong gust, a violent rush of wind that swooshes through the house. Even as crowded as it is, it whips through, alerting everyone that something is happening; inviting them all to pay close attention.
The wind ceases as quickly as it began, and as the ripples slow - the leaves on the fig trees outside settle back into stillness, the dust swept into the house by the wind through the open doors and windows begins to settle to the floor, and hearts thumping with a mix of fear and awe slow to a normal rhythm.
Before anyone can say anything, a fire from heaven appears, and divides itself into individual flames, that rest on top of each person gathered there. What must that have been like?
The wind and flames, like the Torah, indicate a presence so magnificent, so wonderfully expansive that it must be the presence of God. It is such a holy moment, that the disciples, filled with the Holy Spirit like the rest of those gathered there, begin to speak. They begin to tell the story of Jesus - his birth, his baptism, his death and his resurrection.
And all who are gathered there hear the gospel of Christ… in their native language. Even though everyone present has learned, at least to some extent, to speak the language of the Roman empire, each one hears the news of the love of Christ, not in the common language, but in their own heart language.
The language of their ancestry, hidden away, comes bursting forth from their memories, from its hiding place deep in their souls, and the word of God for the people of God is made tangible, present, accessible, and wonderfully embodied across a sea of dynamic differences in gender, race, theology, and faith practices.
The spirit of God, like a hug, enables an exhausted people - those reeling from the absence of the physical Christ in their midst, and those whose heritage has been treated as a commodity, to hear the gospel in their own language - their own ancestral language, a language that lives in their bones and their bodies; it is a reminder of their humanity, and their belovedness. And God wants them to know that this human legacy matters, all of our legacies, matter, in the kingdom of God.
The presence of God reminds all gathered there that their individual stories are allowed to, invited to, shine forth in a big way in the kingdom of God.
The presence of God among us reminds all of us gathered here that our individual stories are allowed to, invited to, shine forth in a big way in the kingdom of God. The presence of God among us reminds us of our belovedness.
Christians all over the world are as diverse as anything - and all are welcome in the kingdom of God. Through the spirit of God, all are invited to hear the gospel anew, in our own heart language - in a way that makes it a part of who we are; to hear the gospel anew, in a way that doesn’t erase the differences we all bring to the community of Christ followers, but celebrates them as gifts to the work of God in the world.
The spirit of God leads us to listen for the movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives, inviting us, as Henri Nouwen says, to not only remember, think about, and reflect upon the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, but to let the spirit dwell in us so that we can become living Christs - living examples of Jesus in action, in the here and now.
The spirit of God leads us to embrace each day as a Pentecost - an invitation to live in the spirit of God, to nestle our lives in the presence of God, to tune our hearts to the still small voice of God speaking to us each day.
The spirit of God leads us to plumb the depths of God’s love, to explore the mysteries of God’s spirit, to remember that the same spirit that rested on the people gathered that day, rests upon each one of us gathered here, leading us, calling us, to offer the love of Christ to world around us, one Pentecost at a time.
What does it look like to be led by the spirit of God in every day life? We had a good discussion on this in Talkback last week. We talked about the ways in which we can feel God speaking to us, through gentle nudges or an inkling - some might call it a gut feeling. Being attentive to those nudges, those inklings and gut feelings is a mark of a life guided by the spirit of God.
Whether the nudge is to invite someone to lunch, who you know might be having a hard time, an inkling that you feel like you should call someone on the phone to check in, a gut feeling that someone on your mind might appreciate knowing they are on your mind, when you heed those nudges, you are letting the spirit of God guide you.
When we sit in the Centrum before worship, listening to Joy play with our eyes closed, allowing the music usher us through song into a holy moment between just us and God, recognizing that art and music ignite reminders of the spirit of God moving within us, we are reminding ourselves that any time we can find a quiet moment to remember that God is with us, we are living lives guided by the spirit of God.
When we choose to love, love beyond difference, love without condition, love without parameters; when we choose to know God’s love as a love beyond difference, a love without condition, a love without parameters, we are living lives guided by the spirit of God.
The spirit of God leads us to lives of abundance in Christ. Pentecost is often known as the birthday of the church. But, the church is just the beginning of the work of God in the world, through Christ, and until he returns, through us.
The spirit of God is in you, with you, around you, and ready to guide you. All that is required is an open heart, and a willingness to listen.
Please join me in prayer:
Holy God, whose spirit moves in and with and among us, we are grateful for the ways in which you lead us, for the ways in which you remind us of your presence with us - whether through a gust of wind, a tongue of fire, a gentle whisper.
Help us to tune our hearts to you love, to your instruction through your spirit, to your still, small voice, inviting us to life abundant. Amen.
Andrew said: “make a Pentecost pose.” I didn’t know what that meant so I made prayer hands on top of my head that was supposed to look like a tongue of fire and instead looked like a shark fin. So this laughing pic is my “Pentecost pose.”