The Sermon
By Catherine, a Reader at St. Mary's

Once upon a time, all the people of the world spoke one language. They settled in the land of Shinar and started to build a great city, with a tower that reached the heavens. They worried that if they didn’t make a name for themselves, they would be scattered across the whole earth. God saw this and thought “If they can build this, there will be no limit to what humans will achieve. So I will confuse their language”. And so it was. The people were scattered far and wide, their greatest fear realised. The city and tower remained unfinished. It became known as Babel, which means “to confuse”.

The Hebrew people told this story to try to explain why communication can be hard: “We speak different languages and don’t understand each other. When we can’t communicate effectively the other person or nation becomes different, inferior, threatening. We get scared, we dehumanise the other, we fight. Was there once a golden age when everyone could be understood? Perhaps human pride and ambition led to this breakdown in human communication and co-operation!”

Some commentators suggest that the story of Pentecost provides a counterbalance to the story of Babel.

Jesus’ disciples had experienced something incredible. Their friend and teacher had been brutally executed as a criminal. But God had raised him from the dead. He’d appeared among them again. He wanted them to share this good news. And they wanted to share it. But it’s difficult to do this if you don’t speak the same language. And the people of Jerusalem came from many nations and spoke many languages. But then came the miracle at Pentecost. God’s Spirit came down in the form of a great wind and tongues of fire and rested upon Jesus’ disciples. Immediately they spoke out, praising God and his great acts of power. A crowd gathered, amazed that each could understand these Galileans in their own language.

The early Hebrew storytellers imagined a golden age where everyone spoke one language. The danger of linking the stories of Babel and Pentecost is to imagine that God does indeed want us to speak one language. But history has shown that this belief can have devastating consequences.

Language is vital to communication. But it also shapes a community’s identity and tells its story. When the early Puritan settlers arrived in America, they made great efforts to convert the native Americans to Christianity. In the Spirit of the Pentecost story, some of them translated the King James Bible into the native languages.

But overall, the settlers and their descendants did not respect the native people. They took over the land, forcing the native people to move on to reservations. Over time, the native ways of life, their customs and languages dwindled and died out. English became the one language, even among the native peoples. They were uprooted. They were diminished. Generations were traumatised. They had lost nearly all sense of who they were.

A recent radio programme interviewed a woman from the Mashpee Wampanaog tribe of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. She is part of a project aiming to reclaim the tribe’s heritage, and her role is to teach its language in schools. Recovering the Wampanoag language is a vital part of restoring the tribe’s sense of identity and self-worth. Ironically the main resource that has helped the language to live again has been the very translation of the Bible made by the 17th Century missionaries. Written down phonetically, as the language was actually spoken, it has enabled 21st century learners to pronounce the words just as their ancestors did.

The Holy Spirit enabled the pilgrim fathers to translate the Gospel message into the native languages of America. They may never have imagined that in doing so, they would provide later Native American generations with the means of recovering their language, their sense of identity and their voice.

If you learn someone’s language, you can make yourself understood. But if you learn someone’s language, it says something much more powerful. It says to the other person “You matter. You have value just as you are.” It says “I am interested in learning about you, your story and your culture. And I am interested in what your voice might have to say to me”.

The Holy Spirit enabled the disciples to communicate in the languages of others. Communicating the Gospel message was never about insisting on one language. Unless, of course, that language was love.