Speaking the same language was not what mattered: it was the ability to listen

Numbers matter in the Bible. In the Old Testament, 50 was the year of jubilee because it was rare for people to live beyond their fiftieth birthday. Of the many features of a jubilee year, three were consistent: slaves were set free; debts were cancelled; and fields for crops were allowed to lie fallow. This meant there was no such thing as lifetime slavery among the Israelites; that they aimed for no cross-generational poverty; and that they cared for the environment.
What Christians celebrate on Pentecost Sunday is that the power of the Spirit is unleashed on us because we have been set free from the slavery of our sin by Christ, all our debts have been forgiven in Christ and we are recreated as a new creation through Christ. Pentecost is meant to see us live as free sons and daughters of God, a people who forgive as we have been forgiven and who care for God’s Creation.

The second element of the story in Acts 2 is equally challenging. If you’re like me, you will have been taught that the most public gift on display at the first Pentecost was that a tongue of fire rested on each of the Apostles, they were filled with the Holy Spirit and had the ability to speak in different languages. But a more careful reading of the story reveals that the gift received that day was not only one of speaking, but equally one of hearing. Luke, the author of Acts, recounts how the crowds that gathered to hear the Apostles asked: “How is it that in our own language we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power?” Not only was the gift of tongues given to the earliest disciples, but their hearers received “the gift of ears”.

When it comes to listening in the Church today, some people mistake uniformity for unity. At the first Pentecost, the earliest Christians had no such difficulty; they knew that speaking the same language was not what mattered: it was the ability to carefully listen, and to hear the Gospel being spoken in different languages. The first Christians were a very complex and diverse bunch. Like the Church today, they had great struggles to deal with, inside as well as outside the community. Within a few years of the first Pentecost, there were fierce disagreements between Peter and Paul over Jewish and Gentile converts. Some were for Paul and some were for Apollos. Some died for the faith and others betrayed their Christian brothers and sisters to the authorities.

Pentecost faith holds that while we build our faith on that of the believers who have gone before us, we also have a responsibility to listen to our contemporary culture and to bring it into dialogue with the Gospel. That’s why courage is one of the Holy Spirit’s pre-eminent gifts. We are not asked to retreat from the world. We are sent out to enter into conversation with it, affirming what we see to be good, and unashamedly standing against whatever we see demeans or oppresses or is life-denying.

This is why we should ask the Holy Spirit to hone our ears as well as to prepare our tongues, so we are equipped to hear and discern as well as to proclaim the Gospel of Christ in the marketplaces of our own day and age. To talk of the things of God in an increasingly secular world requires prudence and wisdom: we must listen before we speak.

Towards the end of Acts 2, we hear a list of the marks of the first followers of Jesus that is as extraordinary now as it was then. If we take Christ’s Spirit as our own, then we too will be filled with awe and be open to signs and wonders; will sell our possessions and distribute the proceeds to those who need them most; will be filled with praise for how God works in and through the world; will discover Christ’s presence in the “breaking of the bread”; and will be joined every day by others wanting to share our joy and fellowship. If we live this out with courage and prudence and wisdom, then we too will be recreated and renew the face of the earth.

Richard Leonard is an Australian Jesuit. His latest book is The Law of Love: Modern Language for Ancient Wisdom (Paulist, 2021).