2020.05.31 | Fanning the Flames
Fanning the Flames
Pastor Arlene
The story of Pentecost is just a little too “woo-woo” for most Progressive Protestants to take seriously—at least at first blush. Think about it: a voice from heaven, tongues of fire, and foreigners saying and hearing things that may never have been said or heard before, and everyone comprehending—well, everyone, that is, except for educated, modern people like us. Right?
Most of us are left wondering what is the answer to Luke’s question: "What does this mean?"
Luke explains that some bystanders assumed that the apostles were drunk, but Peter offered a different explanation. In verses 13 and following, he says that the events in Jerusalem were the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy—the day when young people gained a vision for their futures and the elders of the nations dreamed dreams again. It was the day that Joel had imagined, when women and men—free people and slaves alike—received the gift of prophecy, and the whole world was offered the gift of God’s salvation.
Many progressive Protestants, in my experience, are perplexed by Luke’s account of Pentecost, because it conjures up stories about the supernatural or theologies of salvation that they may not share. So, they pack a picnic and go to the beach on Pentecost, rather than plumb the mysteries of this occasion.
I am sympathetic to those who are perplexed, because Pentecost is a complex and multivalent story, and even biblical scholars debate its historical and theological significance.
Yet, I have come to not only appreciate but to love this story. I love it because it reminds me (and all of us) of what God has done and continues to do in our world, when people of diverse cultures come together, open ourselves to the work of the Spirit, embrace God’s vision of a just and peace-filled world, and do our respective parts to fulfill that vision.
II
Sharing the scripture this morning in multiple languages is one of several ways that we celebrate and demonstrate that Pentecost was not only an historic event that occurred over 2000 years ago, but—more importantly—it is an ongoing process which we are invited to participate in today. This is so, because, as the international version of the reading demonstrates that expressing and developing our language competencies are ways that we can celebrate Pentecost every day.
In Acts, Luke explains that everyone at the first Pentecost understood God’s mighty deeds of power in “their own languages.” This gift of language comprehension was not, it seems, the result of foreigners and natives speaking a common language. But instead, it was the result of everyone gathered there knowing more than one language—perhaps, many languages.
Ponder Luke’s point for a moment—everyone gathered in Jerusalem understood the others’ language, not because everyone was speaking the King’s English or first-century Italian or Hebrew, but because each of the listeners was fluent in a language other than the language they spoke at home.
Imagine if Christians around the world today—particularly Christians in the US—took it upon ourselves to learn more than one language.
The summer before Stephanie and I moved to California we took my mother to the Czech Republic and the GDR, to walk where our ancestors had walked, tromp around old cemeteries, and visit one of my great-grandfathers’ hometowns in Deutschland.
It was a memorable trip. We had a great time. We took a lot of pictures, clocked a lot of miles, and tried the local beverage and dessert in every village in both countries. One of the most memorable experiences for me was reconnecting with my cousin Elke, who is about the same age as me. She was a fabulous hostess and a Godsend to all of us, because she could translate for all four generations, who gathered together for our visit, including her children, siblings, parents, and grandparents and aunts and uncles.
My mother and I spoke some German. (We both studied German and visited the GDR when we were in college.) But that was a long time ago, and we were not bilingual. None of the older Germans spoke any English, while only the older generation in the Czech Republic spoke any German, and only the professional tour guides spoke English in the Czech Republic.
We were blessed that my cousin Elke studied to be a travel agent, because she had been required to learn more than two languages. In addition to English she spoke some Spanish and French. Because she grew up in the more remote cabbage and dairy farming region of Schleswig-Holstein, and had spent a lot of time around her grandparents and their siblings, she also knew both “high” and “low” German. (Low German is the language spoken by the oldest generation in the northwest part of German, along the Baltic Sea.)
Poor Elke, at any given time, she was going back and forth in our conversations in three different languages, and then trying to explain the meanings of what was being discussed to the various generations in the room. At one point, she just stopped translating because she got the giggles.
In the midst of the giggling one of my mother’s cousins, Willie, changed the subject of the conversation from whatever it was that we were discussing, and announced that he had three questions for us. He asked, “How can you call yourselves an educated nation when most of your people only speak one language, and you all still have the death penalty?”
Mother and I both paused for a moment and thought about his question, and I said, “We see your point.”
III
Imagine if our language competency was more reflective of modern European cultures than our current U.S. context. This is not impossible to do. Eden Church already has a head start on language competency.
A few years ago I polled the congregation to find out what languages our members spoke. At that time, I learned that at least 20 languages were known and spoken within our congregation, including the following: Cantonese, Dutch, French, Fukienese (the Chinese dialect spoken in Taiwan), German, Hawaiian, Indonesian, Italian, Javanese, Japanese, Latin, Mandarin, Danish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Swahili, Tagalog, and Tongan.
Since that time we have added members and friends who also speak Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
Spanish is the most commonly known language. Today, at least one-third of the congregation has studied Spanish, and a dozen are bilingual, and we have at least three members who speak more than three languages (Pastor Marvin, Stephanie Spencer, and Thomse Tyner.
The number of people in our congregation who are bilingual or multilingual is a true blessing in our increasingly diverse community and nation, not only because this trait speaks of our linguistic fluency, but—as equally important—because this trait speaks of our commitment to becoming more culturally competent. Cultural competence involves understanding context and meaning.
As speakers of other languages know very well, some words, ideas, and experiences simply do not translate well into another language. To comprehend the meaning of a term or a particular event in another language or culture requires language fluency and cultural competence in more than one language and more than one culture.
The fliers that were distributed far and wide promoting free COVID-19 testing at one of the local clinics the past couple of weeks used the wrong term for “walk-in” visits, and instead used language that implied you could only be seen for the test if you walked to the clinic. (What if your house is 10 miles away and you have COVID symptoms? Who's going to walk 10 miles to get a free test?)
IV
So language fluency and cultural competence are very important. There are many ways to build cultural competence. Some examples include cross-cultural study, travel, and the building of friendships, within our own country and around the world.
For some of us, forging cross-cultural relationships literally begins at home, with whom we marry or whom we literally or metaphorically adopt as our family of choice. For others, cross-cultural relationships take shape in other ways, e.g., through neighborhood block parties, participation in events at our child’s school, participation in a study-abroad program, or in our work environment.
Many of these activities can be done by learning another’s culture even if we only speak English together, just by being curious, putting forth an effort to explore things that we do not understand, and risking the possibility of making a mistake.
A further way that we may become culturally fluent is by praying with and receiving the hospitality of persons from other cultures. This is sometimes hard work for those of us who come from more privileged backgrounds.
Some years ago, the Danville Congregational Church sent a delegation from their congregation to Guatemala to forge a sister-parish relationship with San Antonio Chiul, a Catholic Church in Quiché.[1]
One of the requirements of the sponsoring sister-parish organization was that the relationship between their church and any congregation that would partner with them would need to focus on conversation, cross-cultural dialogue, and spiritual practices developed through long-term relationships, rather than through short-term mission trips in which the relationships ended the minute that the airplane wheels are up on the gringos’ flight back to the US.
My colleague, Allan Kelchner, who was then the pastor of the Danville church, shared with me that the most difficult part of the sister-parish experience for his congregation was grappling with the profound structural poverty they encountered, from a spiritual perspective, and striving to discern and identify ways of working on long-term, systemic change rather than only writing checks and flying away, thinking that they had done their part to address the socio-economic privations they encountered in Guatemala.
For those who may not be aware, the Danville Congregational Church was founded by former members of Eden’s Diaspora, who moved to Danville in the 1950s. In a recent television newscast, it was reported that Danville is now the most affluent community in the Bay Area.
Whether we’re in Danville or Cherryland, experiencing the great chasms between rich and poor in our cultures is painful. It is relatively easy to apply “Band-Aids,” or move away and avoid encounters that might remind us of the glaring social inequities that persist in our country and around the globe.
V
Surely this work that the Danville church committed to was not easy work. It would have been so easy to run away or to bring old fashioned missionary practices or first-world approaches to capitalism--but they didn’t. Instead, they chose to see the challenge, sit with the pain, listen to others, and learn from their example. As a result, they’ve been really great partners with us and our neighbors in Cherryland.
But that is the guidance Jesus provided for his contemporaries or for us. His life, his ministry, and his spirit provoke us to pay attention to the inequities that we encounter in the world, to resist things as they are, to listen to the voices of those who have been silenced, and to follow their lead rather than assuming that we know what’s best or how to “fix” what we perceived to be “wrong” with “them.”
Eden’s Compañeras/os Ministry Plan, which we adopted nine years ago, was grounded in the congregation’s 25-year history of community organizing in Cherryland. The pursuit of this plan led us into new ventures in food-based ministries, public school improvement, affordable health care; immigration policy reform, and the accompaniment of newcomers in our midst. With each new ministry and each passing year--we have fanned the ancient embers of Pentecost into a full blaze. God has been glorified, and that’s something to celebrate. Amen.