Pentecost

There are several reasons why I go to Spain on holiday every year and never think of going anywhere else. For one thing, I have good friends there whom I look forward to seeing every summer. But the main reason I can’t imagine myself ever going anywhere else is the language. I just love speaking Spanish. I could, of course, go to Central or South America where they also speak it, but they are a long way off, the flights are expensive and, in any case, I have a problem in principle with the idea of holidaying in a third world country. I’m not suggesting others should not do so, but, personally, I am not comfortable with the idea. And so Spain it is, year after year after year.

So what is it I enjoy so much about the language? Well, its hard to describe, but in the midst of all the things I enjoy about being in Spain, the weather, the history, the culture, the food, the wine and so on, the greatest pleasure of all comes from sitting around a table full of Spaniards for hours on end talking; about politics, football, God, religion, the family and a thousand other things. People in Spain spend hours doing this and even have a special word to describe it. And I just love being part of it. It’s the sheer pleasure of being able to understand what people of another culture are saying and be part of their conversation. I love understanding the structures of the sentences; why they use the subjunctive her and not there, why they use this word and not that one. Often in these situations my mind turns to Bishop McGhee who sent me to Spain in 1963 and I quietly thank God for him. Without him I might have spent my whole life here in Scotland and missed out on so much.

And I tell you this today because of the link I see between everything a second language has meant for me and the Feast of Pentecost. I realise, of course, that not everyone has had the opportunity I had to live abroad for a few years and learn another language, but I would go so far as to say that to have never been exposed to any serious contact with a second language – something, sadly, that is more common today given the decline in the teaching of foreign languages in our schools – is to be trapped in one particular very limited way of seeing the world. And who could argue against the proposition that we in Britain suffer more than most from this today given the fact that so many people in the world learn English and make it ‘unnecessary’ for us to learn their languages when we venture abroad. This ‘why don’t the foreigners speak English’ mentality is surely one of the main causes of the arrogance, xenophobia and downright ignorance we so often display towards people from other countries and the antidote to it is to learn their language.

Learning a language, you see, teaches us that there’s more than one way of understanding the world. And this is the beginning of wisdom. I think of my friend Enrique’s mother-in-law, Jovita. She is ninety now and will go to her grave convinced that people who speak any language other than Spanish are mad. She simply cannot get her mind round the idea that this object in my hand could be anything else but ‘un libro.’ The idea that someone else could call it ‘a book’ totally mystifies her. And while this is a fairly harmless example, trivial even, it is, I suggest, a symbol of something much deeper and more far-reaching, which is the inability we all have to one degree or another to think, as people say today ‘outside the box.’We are all trapped in the limitations of our own thinking, our own way of seeing things, and one of the functions of the Spirit of Pentecost in our lives – symbolized in the story by the speaking of many languages – is to enable us to break out of the little boxes we live in and open ourselves up to previously unknown truths.

No one language can describe the fullness and complexity of all that God has created. No single way of thinking can encapsulate it all. The truth that comes from God is always far greater than any individual or any one culture. Inside each of us there is a small amount of truth and an indescribably large amount of ignorance. There is so much still to be learned and even the truths we have grasped are never complete. To even begin to explore the fullness of truth we have to leave behind our limited ways of thinking, leave behind the very words, the very language we think describe reality but which are only our version of it and leave behind, above all, our prejudices and opinions which we have turned into absolute truth. And if this is true of the world around us, it is infinitely more true of God. No word or human idea can pin God down or fully describe who God is. As the 14th century German mystic, Meister Eckhart famously said – and I have quoted him to you before – ‘Whatever we say God is, God isn’t.’ And it is only when we understand this, understand the limits of all our thinking and all our language that the Feast of Pentecost can really make sense. Because what the Spirit of God does in us is lead us beyond these limits into the mystery of truth. The Spirit broadens and stretches our minds to their limit and then takes us beyond those limits through the gift of faith. The same Spirit opens us up to new possibilities and stirs in us hope that goes far beyond any evidence available to our senses or our intelligence. Two thousand years ago a small handful of men and women were charged with the task of taking the Good News of Jesus to the ends of the earth. It seemed absurd, impossible for such a small band, and yet, through the Spirit, it became a reality.

Today, many look to the future with a mixture of fear despair. We live under the shadow of global warming and international terrorism. Churches are emptying and atheism has become the new religion. But it is no more than a moment in a much longer story in which the Spirit of truth whom Jesus spoke about in today’s Gospel is slowly but surely leading us into the complete truth. But for that to happen, we must first let go of all our pre-conceived ideas about what truth is. We must go where the Spirit leads. Or to put it another way. We must learn to speak a new language.


BIDDING PRAYERS


the grace of humility. We need to be willing to recognize the limits of our own understanding and the depths of our own ignorance. We need a deep sense of truth as something far greater than ourselves and we need a willingness to go where it leads, leaving behind even our most cherished ways of thinking when that proves necessary. And so we pray for this humility in the face of truth………...Lord hear us

To let go of our most cherished ways of thinking, not to mention our deep-rooted prejudices, requires courage as well as humility. We need to be ready to pass through a land of confusion and uncertainty if we are to come to new and deeper truths about ourselves and God. The danger is that we cling to what we know even when it is untrue and only men and women of real courage can move beyond this. And so we pray for this grace for ourselves and everyone in this parish……………..Lord hear us

On the Day of Pentecost, people from every nation on heard the gospel proclaimed in their own language. And yet in our own time, we who are called by God to continue the work of Pentecost often speak a language filled with pious, holy, religious words which millions today do not understand. And so we ask God to show us how to speak to the world of our time in a language which makes sense to it. ..……….Lord hear us

Globalization is one of the great signs of the times. The world today is a very small village in which peoples from so many different countries and cultures are having to learn to live with and understand each other. This is causing racial tension in many places and stirring us a xenophobia that we may not even have known was there. And so we ask God to guide the world at this time and help us see the tremendous possibilities all this opens up for humanity…………….Lord hear us

The existence of so many different languages in the world does make communicatioin between peoples more difficult. But here in Britain we have a particular problem. As an island people in a world where, because of our imperial past, English is spoken as a second language by millions of human beings, we have always shown an unusual reluctance to learn other peoples’ languages. As a result, we are more trapped than many others in narrow, jingoistic ways of thinking and we ask God today to lead us beyond them…………Lord hear us

Jesus has promised to be with us until the end of time.The Spirit, he tells us in today’s Gospel, will lead is into the complete truth. And so we pray for a deep trust in the presence of God in history, a trust that will banish from our hearts all fear and pessimism about the world and its future………Lord hear us

Now let is be silent for a few moments.