Lately, I find myself praying for a new expression of the “gift of tongues.” I received my “prayer language” a number of years ago, and I still find myself “praying in tongues” pretty regularly. Sometimes I seek them out as a way of opening myself to God in prayer, other times they just happen, especially in moments of deep spiritual joy or sorrow.
Instead, the gift that I desire these days is more akin to that which manifested on the Day of Pentecost than the tongues that Paul spoke about in 1 Corinthians (and indirectly in Romans). The gift that I have been allowed to move in so far is edifying, but only to me. It is a regular infusion of the intimate Presence of Holy Spirit to inspire, to heal, to guide. Just the awareness of the Spirit’s Presence in this way is transporting and liberating. It empowers me to see beyond the narrow horizons I’ve created for myself and step into a more expansive inheritance than I often perceive.
But it doesn’t always translate into something that I can share the way that I’d like to. I find myself wanting to be able to bridge gaps these days with language that isn’t well suited to the task, and I need something miraculous to happen if I’m to be understood. Even if I’m trying to communicate with English speakers.
Humility
One valuable thing that we learned from the deconstructionists of the 20th century is that we do well to approach language with humility. As much as we might like language to be simple and straightforward, it isn’t. We just cannot assume that when we say “apple” the person to whom we say it will understand exactly the thing that we intended. When we insist that “our” intended referent to a given word is the only right referent, we fall into patterns of abuse, abuse of power. The same becomes true when we demand that only one particular set of sounds (phonemes) is the correct set to describe a given reality.
And all of that means that when I say something in English to someone who speaks English, I may well not be understood to be saying what I think I’m saying or wanting to say. This is where “tongues” come in. Tongues bridge the gap between my (unavoidably) inadequate choice of phonemes to describe the reality that I perceive and the (equally) inadequate ear of my hearer. It can do that in two ways that I can see.
A Bridge
I think that when many people think of this kind of manifestation of tongues, they think of suddenly discovering that they can speak in a foreign language. There are documented cases of missionaries to whom this gift has been given. Not many, but they exist. I long for this expression of tongues, but not so that I can do missionary work in a foreign country. I’ll get back to this in a bit.
The second way that tongues bridges the gap between people who don’t understand each other is that it allows the hearer to understand the meaning the speaker intends to convey, something deeper than, independent of the limitations of language. This is, as far as I’m able to discern, the real gift of tongues that fell on the Day of Pentecost.
Acts tells us that there were gathered in Jerusalem people from “every nation under heaven.” And among those who came together on that day, each heard the disciples speaking in their own tongue. What Scripture tells me here is that Holy Spirit enabled the followers of Jesus to speak with such inspiration that the Gospel they proclaimed could be heard in spite of the limitations of the language in which they gave it voice.
This is the manifestation of tongues that I pray for when I get into a pulpit, when I have the humility to remember it. Unfortunately I do find that this expression of tongues doesn’t always translate well into ink on a page or pixels on a screen. There is something about the immediacy of speaking and hearing that facilitates this translingual connection that the written word doesn’t have. Perhaps that is why Paul says that “faith comes by hearing” (Romans 10:17) and not “by reading.” I confess that I have, at least in the past, thought too rarely to pray for Holy Spirit to bridge that written gap somehow.
But I am aware of the limits of my language, and I don’t want to fall into the error of insisting that my way of proclaiming the Gospel is “right” and that others had better just get used to it. And so I lie awake at nights sometimes praying for that other manifestation of tongues. I would like to be given new words to try to describe the God and the Kingdom that I know, words that will carry the same meaning and power for others as my present words do for me. I first learned about this way of understanding tongues from a prophet named Larry Randolph. He spoke at a meeting I once attended about the way that God has sometimes enabled him to speak to bankers in their language, and engineers in theirs. All English, but nonetheless very different “languages” into which he’d been enabled to translate the Gospel.
Different Words
I find myself these days trying to speak to groups whose language is almost as different from mine as Hungarian is from English. Some of them are Christians whose understanding of the Gospel is nearly unrecognizable to me. I desperately want to be able to hear beyond the words they use to the Holy Spirit that I want to believe lies behind or beneath them so that I can use their words to say what I hear the Spirit saying. I haven’t done that very well so far.
But the group I really want to be able to speak to is a group much younger than myself. They have been wounded by the language about the God that I love. I have a deep affection for the words that God used to lift me out of some painful places in my life, and I have a hard time letting those words go. Often I settle for the prayer that others will be able to hear beyond the limitations of the language that I use, but lately that prayer has seemed inadequate.
I want to find new words, words that speak to the power and passion and intimacy of the Gospel that saved me, but to others. Up to this point, much of the inclusive language that I have encountered has been too impersonal for me to use it and still feel the weight of the Spirit’s power in them when I speak them or write them. I think that at the same time, I may secretly worry that these new words may fall like lead on the ears of hearers from my own generation the way that they have so far on me. If the time comes that I find I can use other words, I still find myself hoping that Holy Spirit will translate for me as I have in the past, though in the other direction.
Then there are the people for whom religious language of all sorts has been contaminated by their experiences of rejection, exclusion and violence by “religious” people. Any openness to the possibility that there is in fact a God whose love can free them from the vicious treadmills on which they find themselves appears to mean also being open to the condemnation they have been taught to expect. How do I speak healing into that wounded heart? I need new words, not churchy words. And I need a church behind me that recognizes and accepts that they may not be able to “understand the words that’re coming out of my mouth.” (Sorry, had to stick that Rush Hour quote in there.)
I’m not the only one who needs these words. I just speak in the first person so that I don’t make assumptions for everyone who might read this. The world desperately needs a new Pentecost, a new proclamation of the deeds of power of a God whose purpose has only ever been to save.
Come, Holy Spirit!
