Pentecost
I read a novel this last week called Meshugah by Isaac Bashevis Singer. It was an interesting read because one of the themes in it was the importance of language. There are many other themes, and significant passages but I would like to take just a two and relate them to today’s reading from Acts, the story of the first Pentecost, which the church calls its birth day.
The first sentence from Singer which took my attention is this: “The Gemara tells us after the Temple was destroyed, prophecy was taken away from the prophets and given to madmen.” The Gemara is part of the Talmud, a repository of wisdom from the rabbis of the Diaspora. It is the collection of sayings which explain passages from the bible and a definitive commentary on the Torah. I consider that this sentence from the Gemerah is another explanation of the first Pentecost. After all, isn’t that what Peter says, “These men are not drunk as you suppose …”?
Don’t the mad appear as men who have drunk well beyond the limit? They are mumbling about this and that, sometimes unintelligible to even their best friends and their families. I think they are given insight in that madness and when we listen to their ramblings we might gain illumination. The point that I hope I am making is that the mad in their chattering sometimes hit the mark as we walk by. I worked in a hospital many years ago and Jack sat by the door by the nurses’ station so that he could be looked after. He would mumble and shriek, never making much sense whenever I was part of his day. I remember that I visited the hospital after being away for a month studying, and Jack was there by the door rambling as he normally did, but then, all of a sudden when he saw me, he called out “Hello, Stilman!” Everyone was astounded, no one thought he remembered anything because of his behaviour. Certainly we all thought that he was seized up completely, both physically and mentally. But he was not, he remembered me, he stretched out his hand for me to shake his and we had two sentences together which made sense to us, but then he went off again, into his own world as we imagine the mad do, don’t we?
So the mad do occasionally join with us in our world, just like those drunken friends of Peter two thousand years ago. There they were babbling, but all of a sudden when the strangers from other countries listened, they heard their own language, something was being directed to them individually and in particular. I do not intend to explain this event. Rather I want to interpret it for us here and now. I want to give this what they call a gloss, and make sense of it for me.
You see, I think the mad are just as sane as I am, only they sometimes endanger themselves and others. But the mad are prophets as the Gemarah says. When the Temple was destroyed, there was no longer a collective focus for the Hebrew people. When the Temple was destroyed those who were given the insight of the prophecy appeared mad because their focus of attention was lost. After all the prophets wanted Israel to live properly and be worthy of worship in the Temple. The mad just don’t have that focus which the prophets had. The mad speak about meaningful events in their lives, but since we don’t have a focus in common the mad are heard to ramble and make no sense.
It is like being at a party, where there is a lot of noise, conversations here and there, everything disjointed because there is no connecting thread between on voice and all the others. All of a sudden someone catches your attention and you are compelled to listen to that one voice.
I would like to take another example from the world of the novelist Singer. The yeshivah is a school, but it is unlike any school we in the developed world have ever been in. The schoolroom is a din everyone is speaking at once, just like that party. I think the idea is that if you can remember anything from that mass of noise you really have grabbed a hold of it and you can’t let it go. There is one voice on which you concentrate and you bring it all into focus for yourself.
Perhaps that first Pentecost was just another yeshivah where as the bewildered visitors said, “We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” After all, the yeshivah is a religious school where the Talmud is learned, where the stories of the tradition are remembered, where the faith is alive through telling.
That brings me back to my theme for this Pentecost reflection – Language. The speaking in tongues has too often been understood as “babble” — glossolalia, the Greek word translated “speaking in tongues”, is understood as speech which does not accord with ordinary speech, but it needs an interpreter so that everyone can gain from it, as the apostle Paul tells us in his letter to the Corinthians. But I would rather take my cue for understanding from the passage in Acts, for the tongues here are foreign languages. The interpreters are needed because these poor fishermen don’t know any foreign languages! They are just like the rest of us. Wenn ich Deutsch spreche, verstande nieman hier, nicht wahr? Sorry, even I get caught up in the Spirit – speaking to the Germans among us. Languages are those tongues. I think the point of the story is that the disciples were able to speak about the glories of God to everyone. No one should not hear the message of God being with us, that Jesus Christ brought salvation to the world and we are saved through his coming, nothing more and nothing less, if only we believed.
The great commission would mean nothing if we were not able to make sense to people who did not speak our native language. That is the intent, I think, of this story of Pentecost. Pentecost and the great commission are the same, “Make disciples of all the nations.” To do that, we must speak with them. Those madmen whom the strangers in Jerusalem heard, those madmen were communicating the joy of salvation, rambling and babbling along like so many brooks where we think we can understand and hear nothing, but all of a sudden one note, one voice catches us and we are like Paul caught up to the third heaven, finally understanding what it means to us, each of us, and the water of life flows on and we drink deeply of it.
Pentecost is the resolution of the OT story of the tower of Babylon. When men made the tower they were vying to become like the Elohim, like gods. Now that the Temple is destroyed and the madmen are prophesying, perhaps we can listen to each other and learn about the greatness of God in each of our lives.
There are miracles happening all the time. In fact one of the greatest miracles is happening here and now. Not that you haven’t gone to sleep, though that is miraculous in itself. No, the miracle is that of language. You are listening to me speak. I am communicating a meaning to you. That is the most profound miracle – that I can convey to you something that I am thinking about.
Sometimes I feel that I am like those disciples who appeared on that first Pentecost. Here I am rambling on. I have a thought and I utter words to express it. There are some who look at me with disdain, undoubtedly thinking, “He doesn’t make any sense at all”, or saying when they get home, “He was speaking gibberish, wasn’t he?” But I give forth because I hope that there is one person to whom I will make sense, that there is one person to whom I will be able to convey my joy in God, that there is one person who will perhaps remember something of what it means to me to be a follower of Christ in this yeshivah we call the world.
I hope that we are all like those madmen of whom the Gemarah tells, that we will be speaking in tongues so that everyone can understand our joy in Christ.