Pentecost Sunday – 2022
John 14:8-17
Marian Free
Spirit of wind and fire, inflame our hearts with love for you. Amen.
Tom Tilly is a reporter for the television programme The Project. Recently, Tom released his memoir Speaking in Tongues – an account of growing up in (and leaving) a Pentecostal church . For many of us, Pentecostal churches bring up images of Hillsong (one of the biggest and most successful) or the mega-churches that started to spring up during the late 1970’s at the peak of the charismatic movement. There is however as great a variety among Pentecostal churches as there is among mainstream churches. The one to which Tom’s family belonged goes under the name Revival Centres. It is a relatively small church established in Melbourne in the 1950’s which, at its peak in the 1990’s boasted a modest 5,000 members.
Apart from the hand-waving and fervent singing, a feature of Pentecostal churches is speaking in tongues which occurs when members of the congregation – sometimes whipped into an emotional frenzy – begin to make unintelligible sounds which are believed to be inspired by the Holy Spirit.
In the case of the Revival Centres speaking in tongues was not simply an exuberant expression of being caught up in the act of worship. It was a pre-requisite for membership and indication that one was saved. Not being able to speak in tongues was considered such a serious deficit that it would lead to expulsion from the church and, subsequently, to external damnation. For converts this did not present a major challenge because conversion usually coincided with a spiritual experience that included speaking in tongues. For those who had been born into church it was however a different matter. These children, members of the church by virtue of the faith of their parents, already believed and so were unlikely to have the equivalent of a conversion experience. How were they to receive the gift of tongues? And if they did not exhibit the gift, how was the church to know that their faith was sincere, that they had the gift of the Holy Spirit and that they were truly saved by God?
If they were to be saved then, these children needed help. This help came in the form of teaching them techniques that would, it was hoped, facilitate their speaking in tongues. These included getting down on their knees and repeating an expression such as “Hallelujah”, while at the same time asking God to give them the gift of tongues . The constant repetition would, it was hoped, loosen their tongues and disrupt their thoughts sufficiently to allow other, uncontrolled sounds to emerge.
It is impossible to imagine the pressure that these children felt and their sense of inadequacy when they could not make it happen.
The Revival Centres are not the only church to believe that speaking in tongues is a prerequisite for salvation or that it is possible to employ techniques that will induce the same. I have known members of mainstream Anglican churches to feel themselves under considerable pressure to speak in tongues and whose faith has been questioned when they could not. Their sense of inadequacy and alienation was profound.
There are a number of problems with this narrow approach to salvation not least of which is a very poor and limited understanding of the Holy Spirit, and of the way in which the Holy Spirit empowers believers to speak. Glossolalia (or unintelligible inspired speech) is only one of the ways that the Spirit is said to speak in and through us. Scripture mentions several other ways of “speaking in tongues”. At Pentecost for example, the Holy Spirit burst in on a group of frightened and dispirited disciples and enabled them to speak in a variety of languages such that pilgrims from all over the Empire were able to understand what was being said. Romans 8 mentions yet another way of “speaking in tongues”. Paul tells us that: “When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” Further in that same chapter Paul writes: “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”
Jesus also refers to “speaking in tongues” when he warns the disciples of the persecution that will result from following him. He assures them that they will not have to worry about what to say because it will not be they who speak, but the Holy Spirit who speaks through them (Mk 13:11 etc).
The Holy Spirit works in a myriad of different ways according to our situations, our needs and our personalities and “speaking in tongues” is only one of the many ways in which we might experience the Holy Spirit in our lives.
We do ourselves and the Holy Spirit a great disservice if we reduce the actions of the Spirit to one means of expression or another. It is the greatest form of arrogance or of self-absorption if we believe that the Spirit can be manipulated or induced at will. By her very nature, the Spirit is unable to be contained or controlled but must as Jesus says: “blow where it chooses” (John 3).
We who have received the Holy Spirit by virtue of our baptism, should not be surprised if the Holy Spirit inspires us to speak in tongues – in worship, in prayer, in moments of necessity – but neither should we feel unspiritual or deficient if the Holy Spirit choses to work in and with us in different ways – ways which, as often as not, will be mundane and ordinary rather than spiritual and extraordinary.
We cannot control the Spirit, but we can allow the Spirit to control us by being open to the Spirit’s gifts, attentive to the movement of the Spirit within us and willing to be led wherever it is that the Spirit might lead us.
May we allow the Holy Spirit to inspire us, empower us and guide us and may the Holy Spirit be visible in our lives – in all that we do and say. Amen.
Come Holy Spirit, Come.
Swallowsrest 