OK, so here’s what I have to say about
speaking in tongues:
I don’t get it.
I don’t get it. And
when I say, “I don’t get it,” I mean two things: first, I mean that I
haven’t
yet(?) received that particular gift from the Holy Spirit.
And because I haven’t received that gift,
when I say that I don’t get it, I also mean that I don’t really
understand what
it’s about. Oh, I can give you a
theological interpretation of what happened in today’s Pentecost
story—and I
will—but even as I do, I feel I gotta come clean and just tell you that
I have
no idea what speaking in tongues is like, I’m really not sure what the
point is
in modern-day churches that do it, and I’ve never even seen it
happen—except in
videos on the Web.
So, I did some research, and here’s what
I found. First, the correct term for
speaking in
tongues is “glossolalia”, from glossa, the Greek for “tongue” and
laleo,
meaning “I speak”. It seems that
glossolalia
is something like a trance, in which, believers claim, the mind
temporarily
disengages and the human spirit and the spirit of God are in direct
communion
with one another, with the spoken syllables being a sign of this
“baptism of
the spirit”. It is, they say, the best
way that humans and God talk to one another.
In the Christian Scriptures, the Spirit
gifts people with at
least a couple of different kinds of speaking in tongues..
There’s the kind that happened at Pentecost,
where people are enabled to speak foreign languages they do not know. There, God is bridging the differences
between humans to bring us together.
Then there’s a kind where people simply
speak in syllables
that sound like nonsense to listeners, but which can be interpreted by
others
who have been gifted with the power of interpretation, and this is more
or less
what those who perform glossolalia today do. There,
God is bridging the differences between God and
humans to bring
us together.
Paul himself claims to speak in tongues
(typically for him,
he claims it’s a gift he has in more abundance than anybody else),
but he says there are two limits to the usefulness of such speech. Glossolalia, he says, is only useful insofar
as it 1. is marked by love and 2. edifies or builds up the church. Otherwise, it’s useless.
So. There. That’s what I’ve learned about
glossolalia. Now that I’ve shared those
fruits of my labor, I want to move on and talk to you about what
today’s really
about: birthdays. Today we celebrate the
feast of Pentecost. Some days before we
come upon the disciples in today’s story, they have had their last
interaction
with the resurrected Christ, and before being taken up into heaven, so
the
story goes, he promised them that they would soon receive the power of
the Holy
Spirit, a power that would enable them to be his witnesses unto the
ends of the
earth. Then, in the story we heard
today, Jesus makes good on his promise. He
sends the Spirit in wind and fire, enables the disciples
to speak in
the tongues (yes, the Greek actually uses the word “tongues” here) of
people
gathered from the ends of the earth to celebrate the Jewish holiday of
Pentecost. And shortly after what we
heard today, 3000 of those who had gathered for the spectacle find
themselves
deciding to be baptized. So, to make a
long story short: the disciples gather in prayer, the spirit of Jesus
shows up,
the disciples witness to the good news of Jesus Christ, a whole bunch
of new
disciples get baptized and BAM! There
you have it: the church. Jesus’ brand new
body, full of Jesus powerful old spirit, is born into the world. So we’re here today, almost 2000 years later,
with that same Holy Spirit among us and that same body around us, to
celebrate
the birthday of the church
of Jesus Christ.
But there is another notable birthday
that we should be celebrating
this year, another noble moment in the life and work of the Holy
Spirit, and it
is this: On the ninth of April, 1906, a
man sat praying with his pastor, in a small house in Los Angeles. Suddenly, he felt overcome by a powerful
force, and he began
to utter
sounds and syllables in a language neither of them knew.
The pastor, William J. Seymour, a
Baptist-cum-Catholic son of former slaves who had been preaching about
this kind
of thing for some time, knew what it was: the man was experiencing what
they
called Holy Spirit baptism and was—you know it—speaking in tongues.
They rushed over to a friends’ home,
gathered together a
small group, and began to pray. Seymour preached
on the
Pentecost story from Acts. Before long,
more people were speaking in tongues, and others were gathering at the
house,
and the Spirit fell on more and more people. They
prayed and shouted and danced under the Spirit’s
influence for
three days and nights, until the very foundation of the house literally
gave
way. The prayer meetings grew and
grew. Soon they meetings were moved to
more spacious quarters in an abandoned church on Azusa Street, in a poor, black
neighborhood of LA, and named the Apostolic Faith Mission.
And so, just as at the first Pentecost the
church was born, in April 1906, 100 years ago, was Pentecostalism born
in these United
States.
The Azusa Street revival went on for
three unbelievable years,
and thousands from across the city and the nation streamed through its
doors to
be baptized by the Holy Spirit, to speak in tongues, to be slain in the
Spirit,
to touch God in a way they never had. In
the process, they brought the Spirit and the heart back to a desiccated
American Christianity, and began what is arguably the world’s
fastest-growing
Christian movement today. The revival
broke nearly every rule and convention of the Victorian and Jim Crow
societies
of the day: the poor and the relatively affluent, black and white and
Mexican
all embraced and worshiped together; the religious leadership of women
was
celebrated and encouraged; the people loved God with voice and body and
didn’t
care if they got dirty; and an illiterate black Catholic was their
leader. A newspaper reporter of the day
wrote that
the mission was a “disgraceful intermingling of the races…they cry and
make
howling noises all day and into the night. They run, jump, shake all
over,
shout to the top of their voice, spin around in circles, fall out on
the
sawdust blanketed floor jerking, kicking and rolling all over it. Some
of them
pass out and do not move for hours as though they were dead. These
people
appear to be mad, mentally deranged or under a spell.” End quote.
I can only assume from his tone that that
reporter must have
been a Congregationalist, for he, like I, clearly does not get it.
But here’s the good news, the really good
news. I and the reporter may not get it
about
ecstatic worship and speaking in tongues, but I and the reporter don’t
have to
(though for the record I will continue to try). I
consider it a great and wonderful grace that the workings
of our God
are not limited to only those things that I, or the reporter, or you
understand. On that first Pentecost day,
the disciples spoke to the gathered foreigners each in
their own language. Which means that
most of the people there didn’t understand
most of the
disciples, didn’t get most of what the Spirit was doing.
But each one understood at least one of the
disciples, and each one heard the same God—the same God—speaking to her
or him
in language that she or he could
understand, with gifts that were just right for each one’s unique
circumstances. And that was enough, and
from it the church
was born. [pause]
Now, paradise never lasts forever, and
shortly after the
Azusa Street Revival, the Pentecostal movement endured a schism
straight down
racial lines. Women’s leadership did not
continue to be held in the respect it originally was.
And the movement eventually ended up allying
itself almost exclusively to the conservative evangelical movement—in
large
part because it had been rejected by elitist, white intellectual
liberals. But the power of this Spirit
would not be
stopped even by racism, sexism, or classism. Eventually,
in the 1990s, the racial divide was largely
healed. Women’s ministries were never
totally erased,
and now increase bit by bit. And even
the most frozen of the chosen mainline denominations have experienced
Spiritual
rebirth and a new energy that began with Pentecostalism.
100 years ago this year, the windy, fiery
Spirit of God
showed up on Azusa Street, and the people loved one another across
class lines,
across gender lines, across color lines, across national lines. The people heard the good news of Jesus
Christ being preached, and they talked to God. The
Holy Spirit breathed new life into
Christ’s body, the church, just as it had back at the first Pentecost,
and just
as it had that first time, that body rose up and danced with new life. I may not get speaking in tongues, but I get
that. So, happy birthday, church. Happy 100th birthday to
Pentecostals
everywhere! And praise to the Holy
Spirit, our Guide and Guardian, forever. Amen.
