Relationship and Love in the Holy Spirit
Pentecost | Acts 2:1-21, John 7:37-39
One of the favorite things churches do on Pentecost is read the Acts passage in multiple languages. Sometimes even at the same time! The confusion and cacophony can create the most entertaining and emotionally destabilizing church experience! And for so many of us, it is a novel experience to hear scripture read in another language, which, for the majority, invites us to experience what non-native speakers experience all of the time.
As entertaining and enlightening as this practice is, it can also pull us away from digging into the event itself. This is a story of the masses all hearing a message in their language. It is about everyone hearing naturally.
N.T. Wright describes the prevalence of Greek in first century Jerusalem to English in the modern world. It was dominant and the language others picked up as a second or third language to do simple tasks wherever they go. So a Holy Spirit event, a great showing to the people, could easily get its point across in Greek. Most everybody there would have gotten the point.
This isn’t about the languages, but it is about language.
For a limited time, you may find the audio here.
