Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, May 28, 2023
by Dr. Kimberly Leetch, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: Learning the language of another can foster understanding and unity.
When early humans decided to build a tower to reach heaven (because they thought they could become like God), God scrambled their language so that they couldn’t work together. The intent behind multiple languages was precisely to keep people from uniting. If it was an experiment, it failed miserably. The separation did not prevent people from trying to be gods—it encouraged them to become gods over others who were different from them.
Now, at the time of the spreading of the news of Jesus, it was time for our differences to diminish. One way to do that was to offer the message of peace, justice, hope, and love in a language all could understand. When God sent the Holy Spirit, one of the first things God did was to unite the languages so that all heard the message in their native tongue. It was a reversal of the rending God had done at Babel. It was an invitation to set aside differences and focus instead on what unites us.
We still separate ourselves using language, culture, ethnicity, ideology. But the work of the Holy Spirit is ongoing. Every time we set aside what makes us different to learn how we are alike, God’s Holy Spirit rejoices in God’s work well done.
Churches (as do most institutions and groups) have a tendency to desire sameness. What this usually means is that when they say they want to grow by welcoming new members, what they really want are more people just like them or people who are “diverse” but are willing to change to fit into the practices and traditions they’re used to.
We are united when we take the risk to change ourselves—to open ourselves to the ideas of others. The principle of linguistic relativity suggests that people can only think in a way that their language has words to describe. It also suggests that if we learn a different language, we can learn to think like the people whose native language that is. (For a truly fascinating sci-fi take on this theory, watch the 2016 movie Arrival.)
Instead of expecting others to learn how to speak like us, maybe we can learn to speak like others. This doesn’t even have to mean learning an entirely new language—we can do the same when we learn to understand the language of teenagers or of other English-speaking subcultures. When black teens started using the “N” word in their music and conversation, older generations of blacks were deeply offended. What they finally learned was that by claiming the word, younger generations reclaimed their power. Owning the language is powerful. Learning the language of others can give us insight and bring unity.
