How my Crush on Trevor Noah helped me Understand Pentecost!

This Guy is My Hero!

Confession time! I kind of have a man crush on the South African comedian Trevor Noah! Maybe it’s just because he is the funniest man on the planet, but I think there’s more to it than that. I think it’s because he can actually speak eight languages! Isn’t that astounding!?  One of them is the Tsonga language which has three types of clicks in it.

Take a listen!

Isn’t that one of the coolest things you have ever heard?

Recently, I have been trying to learn a couple of languages. My sons have married partners from both Korea and China. So, I’m trying my hand at Korean and Mandarin! Let me tell you, not easy for a Midwestern white boy from South Dakota. What a humbling exercise! But at least I’m trying!!!

One of the saddest parts of the history of the United States and of Western Christianity, is that there was a big part of our history in which we didn’t even try to learn other languages. We spent most of our energy trying to get everyone to learn our language. Sometimes we became so obsessed with this project that we made it a crime for folks around us to speak in their own native tongue! Isn’t that ridiculous! We, who were called to do no harm, did incredible harm in doing this.

Why were we so obsessed with this? Well, I have come to believe that it comes from our misunderstanding of the story of Pentecost in the second chapter of Acts. This Sunday is Pentecost, so I find myself trying to get this story right. So bear with me.

The story of Pentecost in Acts is a story of the diaspora of Jews coming together for the feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem. And as they gather there are people who are speaking all sorts of languages, but, miraculously, they start understanding each other “in their own language.”  Well, somehow, I think we European Christians determined that the only way we can make that happen is by making everyone in the room speak English! A huge mistake!

To properly understand the story of Pentecost in Acts, most scholars believe that we must see it as the second part of a two-part story. The first part of the story can be found in the book of Genesis in the story of the Tower of Babel. There, the people of the earth, all speaking one language, came together to build a giant tower. Initially we might think this is pretty cool, but God doesn’t see it that way. So, God scatters the people across the earth and makes it so that they no longer understand one another’s speech. Thus, the world is filled with many languages, and the people separated and divided.

So why was God so threatened? Well, a key insight here might be that in the ancient Near East people didn’t build towers voluntarily for themselves...instead, they enslaved others to do it for them. And in order to prevent the slaves from revolting, they often forced the slaves to abandon their own language. (If you want to read more on this and this perspective check out this article by Jennie Hurd here.)

God wasn’t just trying to stop the people from building a tower, God was trying to stop one group of people from dominating others!

The story of Pentecost, in Acts, is considered to be the reverse of this story. In this story, written from a Christian perspective, God was doing a new thing through the loving-kindness of Christ. God was now bringing all the people with all the languages together! The world was to be united in and through the loving-kindness of Christ.

But the key line is this...that they all understood each other “in their own language!”

The vision of Pentecost was to be a cacophony of languages. There was no universal spoken language! The only universal language shared at Pentecost was the lovingkindness of Christ. Pentecost was and is to be a celebration of all the different languages!

In some senses the mandate for each of us on the day of Pentecost is to go forth and learn another language! In some senses the poster child for Pentecost is Trevor Noah! In some senses the call of Pentecost is for each of us to honor anyone who speaks a native language and see that language as holy.

Your friend and pastor, still struggling to master  안녕하세요 or annyeaunghaseyo (hello) in Korean, Brook