Truth That Can Be Heard

Acts 2:1-21

This year, as we approach Pentecost and the retelling of a familiar story in the history of the Christian Church, I find myself looking past the violent rushing wind and the tongues of fire. In The account of Pentecost in Acts, where the apostles speak in tongues, there is always some poor person who has to read the passage out loud and struggle through pronouncing many difficult words in worship:

“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.” (Acts 2:9-11 NRSVUE)

That’s at least fifteen distinct languages or dialects! For me this year, the miracle of Pentecost is not just that the apostles spoke in tongues, it is that so many different people from across the known world with vastly different world views and spoken languages heard the story of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and understood.

I don’t know if there is a gift we could benefit from the Holy Spirit that is more necessary or crucial for us right now. Every day it seems there is a fresh example of how far apart from understanding each other we are in our country, our churches, even our families. That chasm of misunderstanding is made wider by social media and the infotainment we watch on TV and call “news.”

There are so many words in the conversation we are all having that have completely different meanings depending on where you are from and what you believe. Where one might consider the use of preferred pronouns as simply polite, someone else might see it as an attack. Words like “religious freedom” and “anti-semitism” in our politics don’t mean the same thing to everyone anymore.

And I think, given what has happened this week in Colorado, we could spend valuable time dealing with how far apart we all seem to be on a word we are hearing a lot these days: anti-semitism.

In Boulder, CO a peaceful assembly of people advocating for hostages still in Hamas’ custody since the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israelis were violently and heinously attacked by an individual who threw incendiary devices like molotov cocktails at the peaceful assembly, catching some of them on fire and causing significant injuries and harm. My heart goes out to those who suffered that trauma and my heart sank when I began to learn from news coverage that the attacker was crying out, “Free Palestine” as he attacked these individuals.

And now even I find myself trying to sort out what I believe “antisemitism” means. Is it a word that applies to people who have criticized, like me, the actions of the state of Israel in Gaza these past years? Who has the power to “enforce” the definition of “antisemitism?” Anti-semitism has been the basis of deporting hundreds of people or unceremoniously taking their visas from them in this country.

And as I looked further, I also learned just how fraught the conversation had become at Boulder’s city council—words like “Zionazi” a portmanteau of Zionist and Nazi have been thrown at Jewish people. We have grown so vast in our misunderstanding of each other we have been seeing each other as enemies rather than neighbors. “Anti-semitism” has become a weaponized term, and we all seem eager for a fight.

I am not going to litigate the meaning of antisemitism here because, in the spirit of Pentecost, I believe that somethings can be understood at a deeper more universal level, like the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the over 15 different languages that received it, without confusion. The Holy Spirit can do this! She can help us understand one another and be understood. She can lead us to truths that transcend the differences of language and culture.

She can keep us grounded in the moral truths that matter: hatred and violence leads to destruction; there is nothing redemptive about genocide; we are (all of us!) neighbors, no matter how differently we see the world or how differently the languages are that we speak. Two things can be true: there is a moral absolute to what is happening in Gaza, and there is also so much most of us do not know nor fully understand about the generational story that has brought everything to this point there.

Pray for the people of Boulder, pray for our Jewish siblings who are living in fear of a hatred that feels too similar to the hatreds and violence of the past, and pray, always, for the people of Palestine who are desperate for the basic human needs we take for granted and are in constant fear for their lives from the military actions and behavior of the state of Israel.