Bible reading: Acts 2:1-11.

Message.

Cardiff has been, and still is, a city of many languages: Welsh and English, of course, but also Norman French and Old Norse, neither of which, I suspect are in use today! Welsh was the predominant language from the 1300s until the city’s rapid growth during the 19th century. By the end of that century, however, only about a quarter of its citizens spoke Welsh, with Lisvane, Llanedeyrn and Creigiau as the only remaining majority Welsh-speaking communities. Today about 11% of Cardiff’s residents are fluent Welsh speakers and another 16% possess at least some level of Welsh language ability.

But, as we all know, that’s by no means the whole picture. Cardiff’s status as a port means that it contains many long-standing migrant communities such as those from Yemen and Somalia. Today at least 94 different languages are spoken in the city, the most common after English and Welsh being Arabic, Polish and Bengali. Of course many other European languages can be heard, and languages from China, Africa and the Indian subcontinent also feature heavily. For many folk English is their second or even third language, as I discovered one day when I talked to a man standing at the bus stop outside Penylan Library: we conversed in English but he was Turkish and his wife Syrian. Those were the languages they used at home: but they were sending their children to a Welsh-medium school. How fascinating!

International languages such as English, Mandarin or Portuguese can bring people together; they make it possible to have business meetings with delegates from many different countries. Conversely, languages can also be proud badges of identity: a recent writer on the “Nation.Cymru” website says that Welsh is “not a minority language” but “an indigenous language of Britain … a voice that echoes not just in history books, but in the very earth beneath our feet”. He goes on: “To speak Welsh today is an act of care. It’s an act of resistance, yes – but it’s also an act of hope”. I’m sure those thoughts are echoed in many other places where an invasive foreign language is threatening to overwhelm and destroy the culture of a closely-knit people.

Language is, of course, fundamental to the Pentecost story. Yes, I know we tend to concentrate on the flames (which were not really fire) and the wind (which was not really a gale); we also often wonder about the “foreign tongues” that were given to the disciples, and what relationship, if any, they have to the tongues-speaking mentioned in Paul’s letters. Today, though, I want to bypass most of those thoughts and look at Pentecost as both a miracle of communication and – perhaps more surprisingly – a divine blessing upon human diversity.

Let’s think of communication first. It’s been estimated that there were 15 commonly-used languages in Jerusalem; it’s also thought that most people who lived there had a working knowledge of at least one other language (probably Greek or Latin) besides their own native tongue. However the events of what we call Pentecost took place at the great Jewish festival of Shavuot or Weeks which celebrated both the wheat harvest and God giving the Law to Moses. This was one of the three great annual pilgrimage festivals, which means that Jerusalem would have been packed with visitors as well as its normal residents: as Acts tells us (with pardonable exaggeration), “God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven”. I presume that their shared faith would mean that most, if not all, of these people would have understood Hebrew; however that would not have been the first language of those who had converted to Judaism – which is what “God-fearing” often implies.

In other words rather more than 15 languages would have been heard in the city that week; and this is born out by that list of nationalities which people stumble over when they read this passage in church – nationalities drawn from around the Mediterranean and the Middle East. And, when God’s Spirit descends on the disciples, these people are amazed to hear them praising God, not in commonplace Hebrew or Aramaic (that would hardly have been a miracle), but in their own mother tongues – languages which Galileans had probably never heard of and definitely could never have learned. As one writer puts it, “The disciples ministered in multiple languages to people of many nations of different colours. Yet together they felt God’s presence and power, and the Spirit gave them ability without distinction to glorify God”. Although I’m pretty sure that Peter then preached to the crowd in Hebrew or Aramaic ( his hearers were all Jews so would have understood him), it was what had happened before that touched the hearts of so many: God had spoken in their own precious language. Whatever was being said, was for them. God respected them, understood them, loved them – whoever they were.

Let’s continue to think about diversity. I’ll start by going back to the story of the Tower of Babel. This, I suspect, is a myth or a parable, possibly based on a real historical event, which aimed to explain the existence of human languages. You know the tale: how people started to build a tower which would reach to heaven, how God saw this as a project of human hubris and vanity, and how – as the people could only work together because they all understood each other – he decided to “confuse their languages” and so stop them in their tracks. It’s a familiar story, so why am I telling it to you? It’s because Pentecost has often been seen as a reversal of Babel: Babel was when people became divided, while Pentecost was when God brought them back together.

Now that is something I’ve said myself – but I was wrong. For God didn’t give all those people in Jerusalem one common language and turn them into identical religious clones. Quite the opposite, in fact: by enabling them to hear the disciples’ words in their mother tongues, the Holy Spirit affirmed the cultural identity of everyone there. At that moment diversity, not uniformity, was written into the Church’s DNA. I have to say that it took years for most of the church leaders to realise this – their gut feeling was that Christians, whatever their background, had to adopt Jewish rules and lifestyles. Both Peter and Paul had a broader vision and challenged this view; but it was only when James, a highly respected traditionalist, supported them, that things changed and non-Jewish believers were – rather grudgingly – given the freedom to work out what following Jesus meant in their culture and context. That meant that the Gentile-majority church in a place like Corinth would have felt very different to the Jewish one in Jerusalem.

That is a difficult task which we’re still working on today; and those highly dedicated and courageous missionaries of the past often made the same mistake, thinking that converts from, say, Asia or Africa had to become little Englishmen or Americans as part of their Christian journey. Of course all Christians should hold the same basic beliefs; but the churches in such places should not be carbon-copies of the ones here. Indeed, the churches of Britain need to be humble enough to learn new insights into the Bible and fresh styles of worship from the colourful and vibrant faith of Christians from the global South; that might be challenging and uncomfortable but also enriching!

Many people are fearful of folk who are different to them. At least one political party in Britain plays on that fear by constantly talking about migration, while it seems to me that the “Make America Great Again” movement has an ugly racist element at its heart (and forgets that the real people of the land are Native or First Nation Americans, not the descendants of European incomers). Most countries are now made up of people of many cultures and backgrounds, yet many people tend to socialise mostly with others like themselves. I can understand that: we speak most freely in our mother-tongues (and like to use them for worship), we instinctively understand our actions and don’t have to explain them, we want to celebrate our shared traditions and history. That’s all good – but we mustn’t cut ourselves from wider society.

Our world, as a hymn says, lives divided and apart; and language is one of the most potent markers of that division. Yes, it can be the glue which binds a community together, especially if they feel that they’re in danger of being swallowed up by a bigger one, but it can also be a wall which says to the rest of the world, “Don’t touch us, keep out”. Pentecost shows us that God values people of every language, every culture, every race, every gender, as themselves: they don’t all have to become identical but can flourish as they are: the important thing is that they are seeking to follow Jesus. Pentecost also gives us a picture of the Church as a community where people from varied backgrounds are equal and can serve, teach, learn from and respect each other: if the Church functioned properly (and, sadly, it often doesn’t), what a model it would offer for society as a whole.

At Pentecost, something new came into human history: a society whose unity does not depend on any common ethnic identity, cultural heritage, or earthly authority. It is the community which the late Pope Benedict described as “God’s family in the world”, one which anyone may join. It is a united community which nevertheless celebrates the identities and differences of those who belong to it. It also should be an outward-looking community: as the celebrated Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutierrez wrote, “Only when we embrace our differences and turn our attention to the world beyond our Christian conflicts, will we be able to see that our Weaver-God is still spinning a luminous web filled with the majesty of his creative diversity”.

Today we celebrate Pentecost, which may have first appeared to be a chaotic cacophony of many voices – no wonder the people who heard it first thought that the disciples were drunk! But it was far more than that: in fact it was a symphony, a celebration of both diversity and unity, a statement that God both cherishes our many differences and wants us to live happily together. In the end Pentecost does not look backwards to Babel but forwards to glory, when the redeemed people from every tribe and language and people and nation will sing a new song of praise to Jesus. Will they sing that song in one language, or will they sing it in many thousands? We’re not told; but we can be sure of one thing: all those voices will blend together in one glorious, beautiful and sacred harmony.