Pentecost – 2021
John 15.26-27; 16.4b-15 (Acts 2:1-21)
Marian Free
In the name of God in whom we live and breathe and have our being. Amen.
On Wednesday I listened to an interview with the Rev’d Bill Crews (whom you might know in connection to the Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross). Bill has just released a memoir entitled: ‘Twelve ways to a better life”. As you might expect the interview covered a vast array of topics, but what captured me was the transformational experience that he described at the very beginning of the interview. Bill was in Calais where he was seeing first-hand the crowded camp full of refugees who had been hoping to reach England. One day he saw an advertisement for an NA meeting (which I took to be what we would know as an AA meeting). On a freezing cold night, he made his way to a square of carpet that was covered in plastic and other rubbish. Needless to say, he was the only English speaker there and the only Christian. Everyone else was of the Muslim faith and had come from a variety of countries – there was no common language. As is the case for AA meetings, each person told their story in their own language which was then translated into French. Bill understood nothing of what was said, but as person after person told their stories he realised that all he needed to know was written in the suffering on their faces.
When his turn came, Bill spoke in English and the translator turned it into French. For him it was if a dam had been unstopped, the account of his whole life came flooding out. When he had finished, tears streaming down his face, everyone in the group came and held him in their embrace. No words were needed – he was in pain as they were in pain, and they understood.
That was Wednesday. On Friday, I saw a short video of a young Spanish woman hugging a Senegalese refugee who had made it from Morocco to Ceuta. “She hadn’t caught the man’s name but had seen he was battling exhaustion and had given him water. “He was crying, I held out my hand and he hugged me,” she said. “He clung to me. That embrace was his lifeline.” The video is very moving, the woman held the man as he released emotions of fatigue, relief and fear.
What struck me in both stories was that language is so much more than words, that sometimes we don’t even need words and that so often our non-verbal communication is more important than what we actually say. Suffering and loss, love and compassion are universal languages. Bill did not need to know what the refugees were saying about their experiences, because their anguish was clearly written on their faces. They didn’t need to understand what he was saying because his tears told a story that they could identify with. The young Red Cross worker in Ceuta did not need language to understand that the refugee was thirsty, exhausted and overwhelmed and the Senegalese man did not need to understand Spanish to feel the empathy and concern of the young woman.
Both stories spoke to me of the experience of the first Christian Pentecost when the Holy Spirit enabled the disciples to speak in other languages such that they were understood by “devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.” It occurs to me that whatever language was spoken by the first disciples, their wonder and excitement about the coming of the Holy Spirit would have been obvious to all.
In saying this, I am not trying to minimise, to explain away or to rationalise the miracle of Pentecost but rather to see it from another point of view – one that need not be bound by time or place and one that doesn’t lead us all to expect that when we are filled with the Holy Spirit people of other nations will literally be able to understand the words that we say.
The rushing wind and tongues of fire are important because they liberated a frightened group of people to leave their hiding place and to share the gospel with the world, but so too are the non-verbals of conviction, passion and joy. When we reflect on spreading the gospel in our time, it is important to realise that our non-verbal language is as important if not more so than what we actually say. People know when we are forcing a smile or giving and insincere compliment. They are sensitive to body language that belies the words that are coming out of our mouths. They will be suspicious if they think we don’t truly believe what we say. On a personal level people can be hurt and confused by an apparent lack of sincerity. On an institutional level, the church as a whole is hurt when its members non-verbally express disapproval, judgmentalism, racism, or any other “ism” that implies that another human being is somehow of less value than ourselves. Hypocrisy on the part of any of us, reflects on all of us.
On the other hand, if we, empowered by the Holy Spirit, consistently demonstrate love and compassion for our fellow human beings the world might find Christ in us. If we were energised and enthused by what we believe, if our faces showed the joy and peace that we find in Christ, if we allowed the Holy Spirit to work in and through us what power might be released? If our passion for the gospel and our love for all humankind was written on our faces and demonstrated in our lives, the world would want to know what it was that set us apart and they would want it too. The church, instead of dwindling, might be filled to overflowing and the world, instead of being torn apart by suspicion and hatred, might be as one.
We might never experience the rushing wind or the tongues of fire, but each of us by virtue of our baptism have been given the Holy Spirit. I wonder what would happen if we really had the courage to release it?
Swallowsrest 