How is that each of us hears them in our own native language?
—Acts 2:8
Theologian Willie Jennings recounts how the Holy Spirit created a new community through common language:
The miracle of Pentecost is less in the hearing and much more in the speaking. Disciples speak in the mother tongues of others, not by their own design but by the Spirit’s desire. The new wine has been poured out on those unaware of just how deeply they thirsted…. This is the beginning of the miracle of Pentecost, the revolution of the intimate. This is the beginning of a community broken open by the sheer act of God, and we are yet to comprehend the extent to which God acts and is acting to break us open….
This is God touching, taking hold of tongue and voice, mind, heart, and body. This is a joining, unprecedented, unanticipated, unwanted, yet complete joining. Those gathered in prayer asked for power. They may have asked for the Holy Spirit to come, but they did not ask for this. This is real grace, untamed grace. It is the grace that replaces our fantasies of power over people with God’s fantasy for desire for people.
Through the Spirit, an intimacy with God and with one another is born:
God has come to them, on them, with them. This moment echoes Mary’s intimate moment. The Holy Spirit again overshadows. However, this similar holy action creates something different, something startling. The Spirit creates joining. The followers of Jesus are now being connected in a way that joins them to people in the most intimate space—of voice, memory, sound, body, land, and place. It is language that runs through all these matters. It is the sinew of existence of a people. My people, our language: to speak a language is to speak a people. Speaking announces familiarity, connection, and relationality.…
This is not generic speech, formal pronouncements, but the language of intimate spaces where peoples inside talk to one another. The hearers query a past that does not exist for these followers of Jesus. “How do they know my language and know my people? When did they gain that knowledge?” But their miraculous tongues are not about the past but about the future, a future shaped by divine desire. This is why we must see more than a miracle of hearing. Such limited seeing … exposes our modern failure to grasp the revolutionary intimacy that will give birth to a belonging that we will call church. This is a revolution of the Spirit always poised to unleash itself at the slightest moment of faithful waiting and yielding.
Reference:
Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Westminster John Knox Press, 2017), 27–29.
Image credit and inspiration: Arman Khadangan, untitled (detail), 2019, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. The Holy Spirit kindles our inner fires: enlivening, inspiring, and sustaining all throughout time.
Story from Our Community:
I liken the Holy Spirit to a wild prairie fire that consumes the old dead grasses and transforms them into fertilizer that nurtures new growth. So it is in our lives. When we are energized by the Spirit of Pentecost, we can spread that fire and energize others to do the same, or we can let the flame die. Thanks to the CAC for the reminder that we can be renewed every morning and hopefully keep that energy alive and contagious.
—Florian L.
