Bible reading: Acts 2:1-14.

Message.

Some years ago, Moira and I were on holiday in Hungary and visited the historic city of Székesfehérvár: it’s about an hour’s journey by train from Budapest. When we got to the station to catch the train back, I was pleased to see from the timetable that a fast train was due in about ten minutes. I went to the ticket counter and said (or tried to say), “Budapest – Intercity – ketto (which means ‘two’)”. The ticket lady said something in Hungarian which I didn’t understand, and didn’t offer us any tickets. I tried again and had the same result; for some reason the tickets weren’t forthcoming. Eventually I did manage to buy two ordinary second-class tickets, but I was puzzled.

We went onto the platform – which was deserted – and I looked down the line to see if any train was coming. After a few minutes it became clear that it wasn’t going to, so I took another look at the timetable. There were some words in small print underneath the Intercity train’s departure time, so I got out our Hungarian pocket dictionary and tried to decipher what they meant. And eventually I succeeded: “Runs only on Sundays during the summer”. We were there on a weekday in late March, so the problem was solved. We had to wait another half-hour for the local train to arrive: basically I’d been defeated by language.

Language is amazing. Although other animals do communicate in ways we don’t always understand, whether that be songbirds, chimpanzees or dolphins, it’s only we humans who have the ability to communicate complex and abstract ideas, in both speech and writing. It’s language that has enabled us to build civilisations, to develop science and medicine, to stir our emotions through literature and to transmit philosophical ideas. Language means that we don’t have to learn everything from our own experience, as we can learn from other people who we may never even have met. It’s been said that language is what makes us human; apparently it’s encoded in our DNA.

Language of course has great power. A skilful orator can arouse great passions which may lead to people taking arms against others who they perceive as their enemies; conversely it can stimulate people to attempt feats of daring and discovery. A comedian uses language to make us laugh while an author may plumb the depths of despair. And language has the power to bind people together – many of us will have been on holiday in a foreign country and pricked up our ears when we’ve heard people speaking our own language. And what about the Welsh-speaking folk of Patagonia? I’m sure that it’s their language, as much as customs and shared ancestry, which binds them together.

But, as I found out on that Hungarian railway station, language can divide us; although the ticket lady was as human as I am, we were unable to communicate. More seriously, language can be used as a tool of oppression. Many of you will know about the “Treachery of the Blue Books”, so called after the arguably misunderstood 1847 report into Welsh education carried out by three Commissioners who spoke only English and felt that Welsh children had to become fluent in that language if they were to make progress. It was never actually illegal to speak Welsh in schools, although people applying for Government posts had to be able to speak English and – amazingly – Welsh could not be used in Law Courts until 1942. However many schools had a policy of shaming children who spoke Welsh by hanging a placard or tablet called the “Welsh Not” around their necks. The unfortunate child wearing the Not at the end of a lesson would probably be caned.

And so we come (“At last!”, I hear you saying) to Pentecost. I suspect that most preachers concentrate on the wind and fire phenomena of the day and rather neglect the languages that the disciples suddenly found themselves using to praise God. Perhaps because there’s some controversy over what was actually happening: were those disciples given this gift of “foreign languages” (and was that only temporary?) or was the miracle really one of hearing? And were the “tongues” of Pentecost the same or different to the “tongues” which the Corinthian Christians used in worship (and which Paul had to regulate)?

These aren’t questions which I’m going to answer this morning; rather I’m going to concentrate on the words spoken by the crowd: “These people are Galileans! We are from Parthia, Media and Elam; from Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia; from Pontus and Asia, from Phrygia and Pamphylia, from Egypt and the regions of Libya near Cyrene. Some of us are from Rome, both Jews and Gentiles converted to Judaism, and some are from Crete and Arabia: yet all of us hear them speaking in our own languages about the great things that God has done!”

Some time ago I was standing at the bus stop outside Penylan library when a gentleman approached with a child in tow, obviously from its sweatshirt on the way to Ysgol y Berllan Deg. We fell into conversation and I, rather rudely noticing that the gentleman probably hadn’t been in Britain, remarked on the child going to a Welsh medium school and asked what languages the family spoke. “Ah”, he said, “We strongly believe that, as we live in Wales, our children should learn Welsh, while for everyday life in the city we naturally use English. However I am Turkish and my wife is Syrian, so those are the languages we use at home”. I have to say I marvelled at the way this family was almost effortlessly learning four languages, and contrasted it with the way that British people often use just one, and arrogantly expect everyone to understand them if they speak very slowly and very loudly.

But many people around the world speak two or three languages as a matter of course; when we lived in Guinea-Bissau we found that many people spoke Portuguese, the official language used in education and the media, as well as Crioulo, the lingua franca of everyday conversation; and the language of their own tribal group, be it Papel, Manjaco, Balanta, Mandinka or whatever – each with its own stories, legends and traditions. Indeed church services were often conducted in three or four languages (which did make them rather long!). Much the same was true in Jesus’ day: although Latin was the official language of the Roman Empire, most daily affairs were conducted in Greek. Similarly, while Hebrew was the religious language of the Jewish people, folk in Israel usually chatted to each other in Aramaic. In Jerusalem, a centre of trade and culture, other languages would also have been heard.

Given all that, let’s think of exactly what happened at Pentecost. We must remember that all, or nearly all, the people who witnessed the events of that day were either Jews or converts to Judaism: they are unlikely to have been British or German or Chinese. We can say this with confidence because we know that they were pilgrims who’d come to the big city for the Jewish (not Christian!) harvest festival of Shavuot or Pentecost. This means that there was a language which they would all have shared: Hebrew. However, as I’ve said, Hebrew, like Latin used to be in the Roman Catholic church, was a language for religion, rather than day-to-day use. It was also a language that you learned from teachers and rabbis, it wasn’t your native tongue and you might not have understood it well. I guess that, for many people, using Hebrew for worship made God feel rather distant and “foreign”.

I imagine that passers-by were first attracted to the group of excited Christians out of curiosity: what on earth was going on? But as they listened, something amazing happened: everyone was able to pick out their own native language being used to praise God! Not only were the worshippers clearly outside the mainstream of the Jewish religious establishment, not only were languages other than Hebrew being used in worship – but the words they heard were in the hearers’ birth languages, the speech of their families, their communities and their hearts. The Pentecost praise, being led by despised Galileans (of all people!), touched them in a way that no other worship could ever do. God wasn’t speaking in a “second” or “third” language, but their own.

What does all this mean? Well, to begin with, it’s a powerful symbol, a prophetic moment if you like: Jesus had said that the Gospel would be preached to all nations, and that Christians would witness to him “to the uttermost parts of the earth”. So far, on this very first day of its existence, the Church only exists among Jews at Jerusalem; but the seeds of its global expansion have already been seen. The book of Acts charts the first years of that expansion, sometimes with further mini-Pentecosts; indeed sometimes we see God prodding the believers to keep on moving outward.

Of course it took centuries for our faith to spread right around the world; today there are more Christians in Asia, Africa and Latin America than in the global north. Christians in countries such as Britain and the USA may have to make some uncomfortable changes to the way we live and worship; we will also have to realise that we no longer hold the reins of power. I think that’s all for the good as we recognise that, in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile for we are all one. As someone has written, “We are often divided according to language, race, and ethnicity. Pentecost challenges all of us to examine our own attitudes in the regard, to reject and repent of any prejudice that lurks within us, and to open our hearts to all people, even and especially those who do not share our language and culture”. In any case, that will be good practice for heaven!

Second, it means that we must watch our language as we seek to communicate the Christian message. I don’t think we always realise how often we speak about our faith in ways which people outside the Church find off-putting or incomprehensible. For instance, what does it mean to people when a church puts a poster saying “Jesus Saves” on its noticeboard? Will they say, “That’s good, I save too, though I’d like to get a better interest rate on my savings”? Will they say, “Saves who? And from what?” Or will they say, “Hmm, I thought Jesus was a forward for Arsenal, not their goalkeeper”? The thought of salvation, especially of being saved from divine judgement and – heaven forfend! – the threat of Hell will probably never enter their heads. Equally, we often use technical words such as Eucharist or Inspiration or simply Holy; these may be quite useful to us but they may be meaningless, or convey the wrong meaning, to people outside the Church. We need to find different ways of expressing them.

And then there’s the words which some churches use in worship. What might these words from the Morning Prayer service mean to an average person on the no. 58 bus: “Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us, in sundry places, to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness; and that we should not dissemble nor cloak them before the face of Almighty God our heavenly Father”. They may think we’re saying that we need to rush to the bathroom but are worried what people may think if we dash out to go! Seriously, and while I know there are Christians who love “Cranmer’s matchless prose” in the 1662 Prayer Book, this sounds very much like the use of Hebrew in Jesus’ day: strictly for worship and definitely not the language we use every day.

One more point before I close, about the Bible itself. For many years British people only had the Bible in Latin; here in Wales it was people like William Morgan and Richard Parry who dared to translate it into the language of ordinary folk. There are over 7000 languages in today’s world; of course many of these are only spoken by small groups of people and many of those people also speak a mainstream language such as English or Mandarin. However the work of Bible translation continues, so I’d like to finish with some words by Kelly Chesnut, a member of the Wycliffe Bible Translators organisation who spent many years living in the Philippines where about 150 different languages are spoken including the “official” languages of Filipino and English. She describes the rapturous celebrations in 2016 when the first New Testaments in Finallig, a language spoken by just 40,000 people, were delivered to a village in the north of the country.

“Although we couldn’t understand their language, we didn’t need anyone to translate what the villagers were feeling — sheer joy radiated from everyone’s face. School was cancelled and businesses closed down so everyone could participate in the day-long celebration. Early in the morning, we made our way to the top of the hill where a festive parade was beginning the day’s activities. Men, women and children wore their traditional attire, bands played, children danced and people cheered as the boxes of newly printed Scriptures were carried to the stage of the outdoor amphitheatre..

“The next several hours were filled with testimonies, stories, dancing and feasting — all in celebration of God’s Word available in the language of the Finallig people. Most of the celebration was in the mother tongue; we were just sideline participants. Tears blurred my vision as I watched the people open their New Testaments and eagerly read the Word of God, understanding anew the depth of God’s love, grace and mercy toward them and the utter joy in knowing him: not just knowing about God, but knowing God through the truth of his Word in the language that spoke clearly to their hearts”. In the two thousand years since Pentecost, very little has really changed!