Day of Pentecost May 24, 2026 with The Rev. Javier Almendárez-Bautista

https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/APentDay_RCL.html

Transcript

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May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be holy and pleasing in your sight, O Lord or Rock and Redeemer. Amen. Good morning. If you have ever tried to speak a new language, you know a thing or two about the difference between learning the rules and applying them properly. You can be very good at taking a test in the classroom, but it's another matter altogether to step into the hustle and bustle of practical application. My second language learning experience was full immersion, trial by fire. The bulk of it took place at Dexter McCarty Middle School in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, a place where I arrived at the age of 10 from San Salvador. Dexter McCarty is a place I remember fondly mostly, for I was one step removed from the average middle school experience. Dazed and confused by the cultural tsunami that was learning a new language and culture, I almost forgot to be embarrassed at my awkward preteen antics. A language is more than a collection of words. It's a lifestyle. It is gestures, cultural references, regional dialects. It is music and movement. It is sounding out consonants, vowels, and their absence. You cannot predict where a language will take you. As you learn to navigate it, it will learn to navigate you. It will give you new words for the topography of your inner self, what you like and what you don't, the feelings you didn't know you had, those things you struggle to name out loud. This is just another way of saying that language will shape the way you perceive the world, and in the process, it will shape the way you perceive yourself. You cannot escape the experience of speaking a new language unscathed. Now, every year when we revisit this Pentecost scene in the second chapter of the book of Acts, I'm struck by one particular detail. Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? It reads, and how is it that we hear each of us in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, in our own languages, we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power. Note that each observer heard the message in their own language. The disciples did not speak in a unified voice. Rather than an orderly church service, this was more akin to stumbling into a mob on the streets, a discordant cacophony of words, a wall of noise as each person tried to pick out the message Taylor made for them and for them alone. In this reverse babble scene, everyone understands the message, but I bet it wasn't a pretty sight. It was like trying to have a conversation in a crowded restaurant in a far-flung land, listening intently to the one person in the room who can tell you what's actually on the menu. In this Pentecost scene, God manifests God's self intimately to one and all. He speaks directly to you in your mother tongue. He says, Y'all. He calls it topsa, not topsail, wendell, not wendell. He knows the particular kind of indefinite commitment implied by a well-placed might could. In this Pentecost scene, God enters into an intimate relationship with each and every one of us. And God invites us to go out and do the same, to learn to sound out the vowels and consonants of another's mother tongue, to risk the shame and embarrassment that comes from being a novice language learner rather than a tried and true expert. When you speak a new language, you cannot always predict whether you will succeed or fail in getting your point across. Do or do not, there is no try. The theologian Willie Jennings calls Pentecost this inauguration of the thing we call church, the revolution of the intimate. I love that phrase. Intimacy here, of course, refers to something bigger than romantic feeling. It refers to proximity, the risk of knowing and being known, caring and being cared for. And this kind of proximity makes us vulnerable. The theologian and ethicist Luke Brotherton thinks along the same lines in a primer in Christian ethics, Brotherton states that intimate relationships are the basic building block of human society. Note that he did not say the nuclear family is the basic building block. To Brotherton, intimate relationship includes all kinds of connections, relationships that involve shared time, space, and resources. The phrase intimate relationship encompasses family life, of course, but we can also include being a member of a church or a dues-paying member of a union, or even simply being a card-holding member of your local library. Each of these relationships comes with privileges, but they also come with responsibilities. Each of these relationships mean that we will have to give up a bet of our autonomy and self-determination in order to receive the benefits of belonging. Take, for example, using your library card. You can check out any book that you are expected to return it in order for others to do the same. Privileges come with responsibilities. To belong requires putting in the effort, learning the expectations of belonging, abiding by rules that may at times feel strange and foreign to you. It is, in other words, like learning a new language, abiding by a foreign grammar and syntax, getting your adverbs and verb tenses right and in the right order so that you can properly bridge the divide between yourself and another. In doing so, we create a new common ground. I will learn to speak your language, but you will put in the effort to understand my accent. Not quite mine and not quite yours. The space in between, enabling a new form of community to be born. It is easy to romanticize this Pentecost scene, my friends, to celebrate the glorious joining of these people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation without attention to the cost. But if you look ahead to the next few chapters in the book of Acts, you will realize the time, effort, and resources necessary to sustain this kind of project. Pentecost is not a one-time event. It is a lifestyle. It is not simply the miraculous outpouring of the Spirit. It is the commitment to follow the Spirit's guidance as it remakes us from the inside out. We are responsible for one another. We are called to create a space where all can thrive. Are you willing to engage in this work? Not just to be bridge builders, but to be the bridge itself, to learn new ways of being and becoming the church together. I sure hope so. We cannot do this without you. This work is risky business, my friends. It is less a matter of competency than of humility. It requires putting up with the embarrassment of trying and failing. It requires resisting the urge to speak for others and instead to learn to listen well. This is as much a privilege as it is a responsibility for all the faithful. May we have the courage to engage in this Pentecost work. And may we put our trust in the God who did not leave us abandoned, trusting in the Spirit's power to be our guide as we learn how to speak in tongues unknown. Amen.