Speaking of Love…

“…we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 

 

Fire and tongues.  The sound of a violent wind.  It’s a confounding scene, full of mystery and awe on what had started as an ordinary day of ordinary gathering, waiting for the fulfillment of a promise, for the next great act of the Easter story.

 

The Trinity comes again in language.

 

God the Father spoke.

 

The Word became flesh.

 

And the Spirit?  Mystery upon mystery, the Spirit pours out words into each of the ordinary faithful.  She gives words to those gathered in the name of Jesus to speak invitation to all those who haven’t yet known the Word.

 

Is this not gift upon gift, grace upon grace, that we are somehow invited into this communion of the speaking God, the Word from the beginning, to receive words in our own native tongue, to be those who now have language to proclaim the Mystery?

 

Remember the time you held a baby in your arms, eyes locked deep and heart fully present?  Babe with no language but presence, receiving as you held your gaze and held nothing back from the speechless word of a smile.  That profound elation when eyes widen, breath is held and cheeks are pulled back into a grin so uninhibited, so pure.  You are held together in that moment by the most universal of all languages: Love.

 

This is the language of God.  If God is love and God is infinite than surely there are infinite languages for our love.  The Spirit gives to each and we’re struck at our core: God has spoken, Word has come, and the words of love now reach even me.  The Communion of love sweeps me into a beautiful symphony of love in a thousand voices.  Like babes we receive this language first.  Then we learn how to share it with the world.

 

Babel’s ugly cacophony still rings loud but there is a chorus of love calling everything back to our first tongue.

 

We who have heard the Voice are ushered into song, each with our own voice, singing the sweet Story our neighbors have been longing to hear in the language they deeply understand.

 

Yet we must lament the ways we’ve spoken in tongues of Babel and not of Pentecost, when our language has not been Love, but of division and scattering.

 

So listen again.  Hear Him who speaks, remember Christ the Word, receive that profound mystery and learn to sing in that language of Love.  Perhaps then it will be your neighbor who is moved to ask, amazed and perplexed, “What does this mean?”

 

Acts 2:1-12