PENTECOST SUNDAY

There are several reasons why it never crosses my mind to go anywhere other than Spain on holiday every year. 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 love speaking Spanish. I could, of course, go to Central or South America. Spanish, after all, is spoken there too. But they are a long way off, and, in any case, I have a problem in principle with the idea of holidaying in a third world country.

So what is it I enjoy so much about the language? Well, it’s hard to describe, but in the midst of all the things I love 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 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; knowing why they use the subjunctive here 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 as a student 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 run the risk of being 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 given 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 one antidote to this is to learn a language.

Learning a language teaches us that there’s more than one way of seeing the world. And this is the beginning of wisdom. I think of my friend Enrique’s mother-in-law, Jovita. She’s ninety three 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 sign 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, of course, 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 bigger and previously unknown truths.

No one language, you see, can describe the fullness and complexity of the reality all around us. No single way of thinking can contain in itself all there is to know about anything. Book and libro are simply sounds which a parrot could imitate. What they are describing, however, is something no parrot could ever understand. We think that because we have a word to describe it that we know what a tree is. But people who spend their lives studying trees are still learning about them. 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 think we have grasped are never complete. To explore the fullness of truth we have to begin to question and doubt the very words we think describe reality. But they are only our version of it. And above all, we must be willing to leave behind our prejudices and opinions which we have turned into absolute truth.

And if this is true of the world around us, how much more true must it be about God. No word or human idea can pin God down or fully describe who God is. Forgive me if I quote again the 14th Century German mystic Meister Eckhart, but when he famously said that whatever we say God is God isn’t, he was telling us something of immense importance. And it’s 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 longs to do in us is lead us beyond our narrow and incomplete ways of thinking into the mystery of who we are. The Spirit broadens and stretches our minds to their limit and then, through the gift of faith, takes us beyond even those limits into places we never imagined existed. And it’s my own deep conviction about this which lies behind the things I say to you each week.

I know, of course, that some of you struggle with them. Challenging is the kindest word I have heard to describe what I say. But understand this: I don’t say what I do to be difficult or upset you. I say it because some of the flame which burned in the heart of Peter on the day of Pentecost burns in my heart too. There are so many things I want to share with you about God, about the Scriptures, about spirituality, about the Church, about that wonderfully journey from religion to faith. But if that is what you want, if you want to make that journey too, then be in no doubt. We are going to have to learn to speak a whole new language.

BIDDING PRAYERS

If we are to learn to speak the language of the Spirit, then we need 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 truth leads, leaving behind, where necessary, even our most cherished ways of thinking. And so we ask God to stir in us this Pentecost a real willingness to learn and broaden our understanding...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 earth heard the gospel proclaimed in their own language. Now we are called by God to proclaim that same message to the men and women of the 21st century in a language they too can understand. And yet so often we speak a language filled with pious, holy, religious words which make no sense to anyone. And so we ask God to show us how to speak to the world of our time in a language which makes sense to people and helps them come to know God....Lord hear us

The world today is a very small village in which peoples from 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 in many of us a xenophobia 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 for good that all this coming together of the world’s peoples holds for the future of humanity.........Lord hear us

The existence of different languages and ways of thinking can make communication 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 so many, 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 so we ask God today to lead us beyond these.........Lord hear us

On Wednesday we have our meeting where people who have stopped coming to church over the years are invited to join us for a cup of tea and a chat. Then, on Thursday, we have a meeting of the Parish Pastoral Council which every person in the parish is invited to attend. And so we pray that God will move deeply among us during the coming days and that we will experience in ourselves something of the joy, hope and enthusiasm which filled the Church on the day of Pentecost................Lord hear us