Any number of signs herald the arrival of sultry, warmer weather. Over at our place, one such signal is the re-opening of the garage-roof reading room and tanning salon.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the neighborhood, the nippy jets of lawn sprinklers goose-bump young skin and loose chilly squeals of full-bodied excitement. “Summer is here,” you whisper to no one in particular. And you surely know you’re in the dog days of summer when you’re bearing the brunt of sticky heat, and fire hydrants become cooling stations for young and old alike.
It’s an iconic image, really: A hot, hot, hot-in-the-city summer day, in a community where most folks live without air conditioning; kids flooding the streets as fire-hydrant valves open wide to belch torrents of cooling reprieve upon the blistering pavement and hot, sweaty masses standing in their concrete splash zones. And together the community sighs in shared relief: Ahhhh, summer!
That feeling of most-welcome relief is how last Sunday’s Scripture lesson meant to touch your soul and feed your spirit: With the wet, watery, very-real sense of having the living water of the Holy Spirit gushing into your life – a blessing for yourself, blessed relief for others, when the going gets tough, when the heat is on, when it’s both the heat AND the humidity. That’s why water is such a potent biblical image of the Holy Spirit!
And oddly enough, so also is the Holy Spirit known by fire!
With fresh ears and open hearts, hear again the story of Pentecost and its dancing flames in the coming of the Holy Spirit. These are ancient words, yes, but they ARE ever true –
On the day of Pentecost all the believers were meeting together in one place.
Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting. Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.
At that time there were devout Jews from every nation living in Jerusalem. When they heard the loud noise, everyone came running, and they were bewildered to hear their own languages being spoken by the believers. They were completely amazed. “How can this be?” they exclaimed. “These people are all from Galilee, and yet we hear them speaking in our own native languages!” (Acts 2:1-8 NLT)
Americans who journey overseas, novice and veteran travelers alike, oftentimes exhibit a behavior that’s altogether amusing and aggravating.
It is our red-white-and-blue tendency of speaking English louder and slower to someone who doesn’t speak English, so as to help that person immediately and miraculously understand a language she or he doesn’t even speak in the first place. My fluency is German and Dutch is limited, so I too have seized hold of “louder and slower” when my shallow foreign vocabularies ran dry. And so it goes:
Which, WAY, to, the MU-S-EUM?
Where IS, the, TRAIN, station?
DO, YOU, speak, ENG-LISH?
A disturbing variant of that linguistic phenomenon feels in play within our own borders these days. Perhaps one of the reasons Americans are so increasingly polarized lies our inability and unwillingness to communicate in the same language.
For years I bought into the notion that, at our national core, we all held certain truths to be self-evident. As a society we drew solid, black lines between good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, fact and fiction, reality and conspiracy, guilt and innocence. Though in reality we spend most of our days carefully treading across the many shades of gray between the opposing poles of ethics and morality.
Thus, every Christmas, we listen graciously to beloved, old Uncle George more than just flirt with the idea of the Earth being flat. And we long ago stopped trying to convince dear Aunt Hazel (bless her heart) that Americans really did land on the moon and that Jewish space lasers really aren’t a thing.
However troubling, all that was manageable, navigable, controllable, even predictable. Though sometimes close, no one ever went over the edge. With a wry wink of an eye, we’d let it all go in one ear and out the other, choosing to be lean of expression and long on patience. Argumentative tongues remained holstered, which allowed space for responses both compassionate and understanding. Most definitely is the grace of remaining silent an amazing and precious gift!
But now, when I step out the door each morning, I find myself increasingly perplexed and dumbfounded about how to communicate honestly and effectively with those who do not speak my language.
As when traveling foreign lands, increasingly more of us in daily life resort to turning up the volume, speaking louder as if that will help deliver our message. We shout at those around us, to no avail thinking louder will foster understanding and eventually get this or that through the other’s thick skull. Worse still, the inability to communicate fuels a quite-real sense of powerlessness and hopelessness – so also anger, frustration, annoyance, and defeat. Little wonder, then, that our communal mental health is so puny and anemic.
To flee those agonizing places of oral discomfort, we gradually limit our interactions to those who speak “our language.” And pretty soon everybody is talking past one another – LOUDLY!!! And often with malicious intent! Learning how to communicate easily morphs into learning how to manipulate, particularly if one’s heart is fueled improperly. In other words, hearts and minds driven by worldly, overinflated egos rather than heaven’s passionate desires.
Hence we feel the burning heat of fiery tongues, carelessly believing such scorching, red-hot speech arises from the Spirit of Fire, simply because – for better or worse (mostly worse) – it’s in a language we understand.
In stark contrast, the Spirit’s tongue flickers with the gentle nuances of God’s grace, and that often still-small-voice of undeserved favor is easily misheard, mistaken, and misunderstood. It’s an enflamed voice, yes. But its sparks rest gently upon the believer, oddly enough never burning or scarring, never inflicting pain or trauma, instead purifying the human tongue and burning off the chaff that chokes the heart; instead producing the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Several other telltale signs assure the Spirit’s verbal influence, and the first dwells in the humility of being quiet and simply listening.
If you want to speak to another’s understanding, you first have to understand the language of his or her story. And that requires listening carefully and attentively to the other. You’ll never know him, her, or them if first you do not listen. So listen first, trusting the Spirit to open your ears, and speak later, always letting the Spirit spark your words.
Then comes “example.” The most important story we tell is our own. Others hear that story, then interpret our words by the way they see us living our lives. Call it integrity, consistency, unwavering adherence to strong moral principles and ethical values. St. Francis of Assisi provides a fruitful example: “Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, even use words.”
Right about now, confusion is running rampant. People at all stages of life, from all walks of life, are questioning their beliefs, reinterpreting their views, and adjusting their ideas, just because one person’s words do not match that person’s example. Actions are utterly inconsistent with words. And if you wish to speak to another’s understanding, the last thing you want to do is introduce confusion, dissonance, uncertainty, and doubt with behavior inconsistent with your speech.
One final practice enlivens our listening and enables our integrity.
The reason we listen, the reason we live with integrity, the reason we communicate best by the Spirit, is because with those acts we are practicing and communicating love – a language that everyone understands.
Love is what we express when we listen sincerely to understand someone else before we seek to be understood. Love is what we share with the gift of consolation before seeking to be consoled.
Love is what motivates us to manage our lives in such ways that reflect our faith and beliefs, and love is the key that opens the door of welcome to the Spirit’s indwelling of our souls and spirits.
Love is what inspires us to share our words with others, in the hopes of reciprocating love making ways for reception of those words. Thus in his New Testament epistle, James writes of hearing and doing, listening and learning, loving and caring –
Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters:
You all must be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. Human anger does not produce the right living that God desires. So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls.
But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like.
But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it. If you claim to be religious but don’t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and your religion is worthless. Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you. (James 1:19-27 NLT)
Nearly halfway through 2024, my ears already ring from all the political and cultural yelling – the noise spewing from the mouths of others whom I struggle to understand, their language not resonating with me nor mine with them.
But loving kindness surely bridges the gap. No matter your party affiliation, no matter your tribe, no matter your certainty, leaning into kindness – leaning into love – fills the communication gap with sheer grace both extended and received. Let such mercy and decency apply the healing balm when the confusion of language mucks up the works. Without question, a fiery tongue and a tongue of fire most definitely are not one in the same. From the Wisdom of Solomon,
“Sin is not ended by multiplying words, but the prudent hold their tongues.” (Proverbs 10:19 NIV)
Why? So as not to burn or blister the other, but rather to warm and comfort, understand and empathize, reconcile and forgive. That’s the Holy Spirit.
That’s the Holy Spirit! Free-flowing refreshment, streams of living water – even in the heat of moment. Which makes water and fire a perfect combination. The Spirit of Water cools the overheated heart of fire, cordially turning down the heat, before the human spirit builds up a full head of steam.
That’s the Holy Spirit! To riff on a song we like to sing, a pillar of fire shining forth in the night. Till shadows have vanished, all fearfulness and darkness banished, as forward we travel from light into Light.
Ahhh, summer is here. Ahhh, so also the Spirit. Thus may we learn to speak and understand each other’s languages, as the Spirit and the Spirit alone gives you and me the ability.
The Word of the Lord! Thanks be to God!!
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Sunday, June 9, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa. It is the second of his sermon series on the biblical symbols of the Holy Spirit. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Michael Clifton, Chris Eaton, Robert E. Fischer, and Chelsey Harmon inform the message.