I gotta admit.
I honestly didn’t how it was going to turn out. But today, in worship, a bunch of Presbyterians spoke in tongues.
These Presbyterians didn't speak in the sort
of tongues people associate with churches with a more Pentecostal flavor. I have seen Presbyterians speak in such
tongues. I have spoken in a tongue like
that myself. So, when I say that, I
don’t intend any disrespect.
No, the tongues folks spoke today reflected what
miraculously happened on the first Pentecost, on the day that the Spirit of God
came upon the followers of Jesus. On
that day, God did something quite unusual.
Instead of doing a miracle where God delivered a universal message in a
universal language. God delivered a
universal message in all sorts of different languages. And so on Pentecost Sunday, we did our own reenactment of that miracle as we retold the
Pentecost story in Acts Chapter 2.
The English version of the story appeared on the screen, and then folks spoke a verse in all sorts of languages from Italian to Portuguese to Serbo-Croatian and even Urdu, ten or so different languages in all. And it was pretty cool.
But it was more than just a gimmick. What we did there, what God did in this story,
tells you something crucial not simply about how you have a relationship with
God, but a relationship with anyone. In
fact, when you get what God was doing at Pentecost, it will help in every relationship
of your life. In fact, when people don’t
share the message in the Pentecost way, often the message doesn’t get
delivered. What is the Pentecost way? In
these words, God tells you. Let’s
listen and hear what God has to say.
In this passage, God tells you something crucial about
how not simply a relationship with God happens, but how any relationship
happens. It only happens when you speak
in the language of love, and that language can be more different than you think.
What do I mean?
I’m talking about an insight that made the counselor Gary Chapman
millions of dollars. But as Chapman
would tell you, he didn’t have the insight first. God did.
And what is that insight?
Everybody needs love.
But for everyone to receive the love, that love has to be in a language
they understand. Now how did Gary Chapman
make millions off that idea? Chapman realized that in marriages or any intimate
relationship, people speak different languages.
For example, some people show the one they love how much they care by acts
of service they do. They are always doing things for the one they
love. And why do they do that? That’s how they feel
the love. That’s their love language. But here’s the problem, their love language
is not the only one. So, what if their
love language isn’t the language of their spouse? What if their spouse feels the love through physical
touch or gift-giving or quality time or words of affirmation. Do you know what happens? That spouse thinks, my beloved is always
doing nice things for me yes, but why doesn’t she ever say she loves me or why
doesn’t he ever hold me in his arms. In
other words, Chapman pointed out, if you’re not speaking in the love language
of your spouse, then that spouse isn’t going to feel your love. It’s like someone speaking Swahili to
someone who only knows English. No
matter how hard you try, your message just ain’t going to get there.
Chapman took that idea and turned it into a book
called the Five Love Languages. That
book has sold over ten million copies in English alone, and that doesn’t even
count the 50 other languages that the book has been translated into. It’s
become the bestselling marriage book of all time.
And this insight Chapman applied to marriage lies
behind what God does in the miracle of these languages at Pentecost. God knows.
Everyone doesn’t speak the same love language. After all, God could just have enabled
everyone to understand one language on Pentecost. But God doesn’t. Instead, God enables everyone to hear this universal
message in their own particular language, the language they heard growing up in
their family, at their mother’s knee. Do you see why that matters?
You can learn another language, sure. But it won’t feel the same as the language of
your birth. That language has a special place in your heart. It’s
why Russian Baptists meeting in our church's chapel each Sunday. Sure, most, if not all of them know
English. They could go to another
Baptist church. But hearing the message in Russians, well, it just feels like
home.
And God knew that same feeling would happen when all
those travelers from other places heard God speaking to them in their own
tongue. Sure, God’s message of love is
universal, but the language in which the love comes can’t always be the same. Sometimes, that language has to be very
different
That’s what Don Richardson discovered over 50 years ago
in the jungles of New Guinea. Don and
his wife Carol and their 7-month old baby, went there to live with the Sawi, a tribe
of cannibalistic headhunters. Why did they
go there? Don and Carol were linguists.
They had come to learn the Sawi language, and to do so with one goal, for
the Sawi to have the Bible in their own language.
And Don got the language down, even though it was amazingly
complex. Sawi verbs have 17 tenses. English verbs have three. But Richardson
had a bigger problem. The Sawi idealized
treachery and betrayal. So, in the Jesus
story, the Sawi thought Judas was the hero, for pulling a fast one on this
dupe, Jesus. For them, Jesus was a
joke.
But then something happened. The Richardsons shared how they were
considering leaving. Now the Sawi might not have gotten the Jesus message, but
they liked Don and Carol. They liked the
medicines they got them, the help they provided. So, to keep them, the Sawi villages decided
to make peace. For years, they had been
at war. And when Don saw how they forged
this peace, it became clear. A family in
one village gave one of their children, a peace child, to a family in the enemy
village. Through this peace child, the peace
came. As
Richardson wrote, "if a man would actually give his own son to his
enemies, that man could be trusted!"
And Richardson realized. That’s
how the Sawi will get the message. Jesus
had come from God to be the peace child to end the war between God and
people. Richardson called this way of sharing the
gospel, a redemptive analogy.
And with this redemptive analogy, the Sawi got it. This good news of God’s love came alive for
them. And the Sawis because Christians
by the hundreds, then the thousands. The
love God gave in Jesus, that message is universal. But for everyone to hear it, it has to be particular
and personal. It has to come in a love
language they understand.
But on that day, God didn’t only go particular. God went
universal too. God used something everyone
could see, fire, flames above the apostle’s heads. That’s why the color for
Pentecost is red. It stands for the
fire. And yes, fire can be scary, like with
that volcano in Hawaii. But mainly, fire
means warmth, passion, love. And when God spoke in the love language of
each person gathered there, those folks saw what that fire meant. It proclaimed a God who loved them, right
where they were.
In the church I served in New York, God led us to our own
particular way for people to see the love.
In that congregation, we had folks from so many different countries. We wanted to find a way to celebrate that. We started with doing a multi-cultural food
fair, like we do here. Everybody loved
that. But then we wondered. How could we do more to visibly show everyone
that in God’s family, every culture could feel welcome and affirmed. So we decided to hang flags. We invited people to buy a flag of their
homeland to hang in our sanctuary. Funny
enough, we got the idea from a Pentecostal church that had done the same
thing. And it worked. Just seeing that flag, folks from Trinidad
or El Salvador or Cuba or Ghana; the list could go on, felt that God loved them,
right where they were.
And when the church I serve now started flying two Scottish flags on either
side of our sign for our Kirkin’ of the Tartans, our celebration of the Scottish
heritage of Presbyterianism, our leaders began to wonder. Could we fly other flags there as particular
signs of God’s love to folks in our community?
And we decided. Let’s try it out. So, beginning in June, we are.
And what flag will kick off this new way of reaching our
community? Since June has become the month
that honors the Gay Civil Rights movement, we decided to start with the Rainbow
Flag. We did that for one important
reason. We knew that many in this
community had gotten a message that God’s love was not for them, including often
from other Christians. And this flag
would show our GLBTQ neighbors and all our neighbors, that in this church, we welcomed
everyone. After all, this church has
baptized the infants of same sex couples.
This church has celebrated same sex marriages. We have ordained gay and lesbian leaders. But if
we didn’t speak that message of God’s welcome in this particular way, in a language
that our neighbors could hear or rather see, than God’s message of love and welcome
would get lost.
Let me also tell you what our church did not intend by flying
this flag in June. We didn’t intend to
make a political statement on one issue.
And we didn’t intend to exclude folks in our church, who have more
conservative perspectives on what the Bible says about same sex relationships. And we didn’t intend to say we are a Gay
church any more then we when we flew the Scottish flags, we intended to say we
were a Scottish church. We simply wanted to say to our LGBTQ neighbors that if they came to worship, they would not feel judgment or exclusion
here. They would feel the love of this
God, who in Jesus gave everything for them.
And we wanted to speak that
universal good news in a language that they could hear and see, and so we
decided to fly the flag. Now in July, we’ll
fly a different flag (the American one for Independence Day), and we are asking folks for suggestions and ideas on what flags to
fly in that space at different times.
But with every flag we fly we want to share the same thing, God’s amazing
love for every human being on this planet.
When I was growing up, in my Sunday School, we used to
sing a song that celebrated that love.
It came from a verse from that Biblical love song, The Song of Solomon. There, the woman tells of how her beloved welcomed
her to his table by flying a banner that proclaimed his passionate love for her. And in
that love song, followers of Jesus found a redemptive analogy, one that pointed
to God’s passionate love for you and for me. That’s
the message this story proclaims, that all the flags we fly will hopefully proclaim,
that God’s love is for everyone, that his banner over everyone is love.
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