Pentecost and Celebrating the Diversity of Languages

 

                                                                  Canadian Language Museum 

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.  And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 

Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

                           Acts 2:1-4 NRSVue

 Listening to CBC Radio can be a "wheat and chaff" experience, with a fair number of impossibly earnest and lengthy interviews on subjects for which I have limited interest. Some of them go on...forever!

Then there are the interviews which open doors both figuratively and literally to experiences which I didn't know existed and at the end I feel that I am much the better for them.

Today I listened to the director of the Canadian Language Museum which is in North York, Ontario. As the name states clearly, it shares the diversity of languages which are the reality in the land we know as Canada, including those of the First Peoples who preceded speakers of French and English. I discovered that Mandarin and Cantonese are spoken by more people than any other beyond the two official languages. I visited the website after the interview and saw that there has been an exhibit on Yiddish, the language of European Jews before Hebrew was revived as a spoken language in the late 19th century. 

This conversation seemed highly appropriate a couple of days before the Christian Feast of Pentecost, the celebration of the birth of the church. As the passage above tells us, on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit comes upon the first People of the Way in manifestations which include speaking in a variety of languages. Rather than ecstatic speech, these languages were undestood by those who were gathered in Jerusalem from around the ancient world for the Jewish Pentecost.

There are people in Canada who respond to a diversity of languages negatively and often with anger. There are conservatives who want what they presume is a Christian nation, which means white and English speaking and without respect for other religions. This often means denigration of those First Peoples and denial of the harms done, including erasure of language through the Residential Indoctrination Institutions. 

This Sunday folk at Trenton United Church will be invited to share their different language background as part of the Pentecost celebration, always a great idea. 

We need the reminders that not only are we made up of ethnic and linguist diversity, the birth of Christ's Church was marked by the mosaic of languages which signalled that the gospel of inclusion was meant for all. 

                         Soichi Watanabe (Japanese, 1949–), The Coming of the Holy Spirit, 1996.