2026-05-24 Ac 02 01-21 It’s All In Translation
The week after next, Kristen and I will celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary by taking a trip to Iceland.
I tell people and they say,
“Iceland.”
“Why?”
Because I’ve always wanted to go and because my wife loves me.
To me, Iceland looks and sounds like another planet.
Active volcanoes.
Black sand beaches.
Whales.
Those adorable little puffins.
Reindeer.
Isolated fishing villages with peaceful folk eating fermented shark.
And the language.
So many umlauts and vowels smooshed together.
Good news for us – they also speak a fair amount of English.
Just like Alabama.
But to be safe, I’m updating my Google Translate app.
Did you ever notice how the very first, I mean the VERY first gift of the Holy Spirit to the young church is the gift of translation?
Suddenly the disciples can speak ALL the languages.
The Bible lists them all.
In painful detail.
Very painful if you’re the Liturgist on Pentecost.
I always apologize to the Pentecost Liturgists.
For making them say Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Cappadocians, Phrygia and Pamphylia.
Couldn’t the Bible have just said,
“And all them other foreigners?”
The suddenly multilingual apostles drew a crowd.
People looked at them like they were from another planet.
By a miracle they’d become instant, universal translators.
Translators.
Translation IS a gift from God.
If it weren’t for translators, there wouldn’t be a Christianity.
If not for translators, we wouldn’t have a Bible.
All the Bible was composed in Hebrew and in Greek.
We think the King James is hard to understand.
At least it’s English.
Sort of.
Centuries before, Moses, on the mountaintop, was God’s Number One interpreter.
Moses was the original middle-man, speaking to the Israelites what God had spoken to him.
He translated it – into kinder, gentler, less-deadly language.
They said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.”
Without translation, words are just noise.
Dangerous.
WITH translation, words have power to change the world.
Power to unite us.
Power to speak peace.
Power to share love.
Words can be poetry.
Words can touch hearts.
We use words to share the goodness of God with sisters and brothers all around the world.
But even with translation, language is a dangerous technology.
Words can be kind.
Words can be safe.
But words can also incite the very worst violence.
Words can be hateful.
Words can be mean.
Words can be ugly.
Yes, words can save.
But also, words can kill.
So maybe God knew what was at stake on Pentecost Sunday when unleashing the infinitely powerful Spirit of Holy into the world.
It only takes a spark to get a fire going, right?
But the flames – the blast of hot air from our mouths can also explode – with nuclear force.
How has the Word of God been translated in YOUR life?
Was there a time when it sounded like it came from another planet?
How do YOU translate God’s Word to the people around you?
Do your words set hearts afire for good?
Or do they scorch the earth?
I guess it all depends on our translation.
—
Bible Translations.
People ask me which version of the Bible is the best.
I say, “The one you read.”
Thanks to the Internet, you can now read ALL the versions and compare them for yourself.
You, too, can be a universal translator.
If you read enough versions, you start to see that every translation is also an interpretation.
Interpretation is as much art as science.
Pentecost may have been a miracle of language.
But more, it was a miracle of the heart.
A miracle of art.
And art is always open to interpretation.
—
We Christians celebrate Pentecost as the “Birthday of the Church.”
I beg to differ.
The word, “Christians,” doesn’t show up until chapter 11 of Acts, in the city of Antioch.
Antioch isn’t even IN Israel; it’s in what we now call Turkey.
And the name, “Christian,” wasn’t a compliment.
The Antiochenes used it mockingly, to distinguish the Jesus Jews from traditional Jews, whom they also mocked because, you know, immigrants.
Little did the locals know that someday we’d call them all Turkeys.
Karma’s gonna get you.
We Christians tend to think the miracle of Pentecost is something God invented just for us.
As if before that day there was no Holy Spirit and there was no Pentecost.
But look.
Verse 4 of Acts that we read today says,
“Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem.”
Jews from every people under heaven were in Jerusalem because God’s Spirit brought them home.
The home of the Temple, the home of God.
But 50 days after the Jewish festival of Passover, there was another reason.
Jews from everywhere had come for their next holiday, the Festival of Weeks, it’s called in English.
In Hebrew, it’s Shavuot.
Shavuot.
Want to guess what Shavuot translates to in Greek, the language of the New Testament?
Shavuot means…
Pentecost.
Pente- meaning 50.
50 days after Passover (which coincides with our Easter) –
50 days after Passover is the Jewish festival of Shavuot.
Shavuot is the holy day when Jews recall Moses on Mount Sinai, receiving the Ten Commandments and then speaking them to the people.
So, to the Jews, Shavuot – Pentecost was and is a holiday, a holy day, the day the Law of God was translated to the world.
Very much like our Christian Pentecost when news of Jesus was translated to the world.
You know how holidays go.
Everybody likes a party.
So people will “borrow” – nice way to say it – borrow holidays from their neighbors.
Like, for instance, Cinco de Mayo – Fifth of May – a Mexican holiday – is now observed by all Americans as a great excuse for margaritas.
Providentially – or coincidentally – or appropriationally – when Jews are celebrating the delivery of the Law – 50 days after Passover – we Christians celebrate the delivery of the Holy Spirit 50 days after Easter.
We morphed Pentecost into “OUR” holiday.
We “adopted” the name.
Reinterpreted it.
So now we have “OUR” Pentecost.
And 99% of us have no idea it’s not original.
That’s the thing about having the same words for different things.
Unless you know the translation, know how to interpret it, somebody’s gotta be wrong.
More art than science.
Listening. Understanding. Cooperating. It takes work.
All good art does.
I guess it all depends on your willingness – our willingness – to translate.
—
If you remember one of my previous sermons,
LOL – don’t worry, I can’t even remember them –
In a previous sermon I mentioned my friendship with Rabbi Josh and his wife, Sheila.
I’ve told the story of how we were brought together by Wayne Wooten, evangelist to the stars.
Josh and Sheila invited me to a Friday night Shabbat dinner at the synagogue on 9th Avenue.
Spoiler alert: the food is amaze amaze amaze.
Second spoiler: they do the service in Hebrew.
Lucky for me I had four weeks of Hebrew in seminary, 30 years ago.
So - yes - I’m fluent.
Josh coached me through.
Showed me the right way to rock a yarmulke.
And top-chef Sheila served a meal that would make Jesus come back, for seconds.
When we were leaving, one of the members thanked me for coming.
He said he knew it took courage for me to be there.
Courage?
I was confused.
I smiled and said it didn’t take courage at all.
All it took was a generous invitation.
A warm welcome.
And yeah.
You don’t need courage.
When you think you own the place.
And people like me do that.
I’m a Straight, White, Protestant Christian male in good health.
I have enough money to do the things I want - thank you.
I don’t think twice about the places I go because wherever I go, everyone’s pretty much just like me.
It never dawned on me that if the roles were reversed, that if an Orthodox rabbi and his wife dropped in,
unannounced,
on a Christian church service,
hearing us lay claim to Pentecost as OUR exclusive right,
our property,
they might well think twice, or more.
It would take courage.
–
We read Exodus 20 today, the 10 commandments that Jewish Pentecost celebrates.
I’ve been a pastor for 30 years and –
Courageously confessing my ignorance –
I just now realized for the first time, this year (!), how churches don’t usually read the Commandments on our - slash - their Pentecost.
Our Common Lectionary of readings completely ignores the day of receiving the Law, our shared Law.
We just gloss over that shared witness of our shared Bible.
If you put your finger at the start of our “New Testament,” you’ll see that Our Christian Bible is 4/5ths what we call “Old Testament.”
What Jews call “The Bible.”
While we don’t disregard the first four-fifths, we don’t come close to giving it equal weight as the last fifth.
We don’t know our own history.
We don’t speak our own Bible’s language.
We lose the translation.
So we lose the long testament of the Spirit of God.
We lose the Spirit that we often greedily and exclusively claim as property and ours alone.
Like we own the place.
I don’t think I’m anti-semitic.
I’m more like benignly clueless.
Some might ask, what’s the difference?
It depends on where you stand –
and how you interpret your own book.
–
Too many times, churches claiming to speak for the God of love speak words that sound like hate.
Or at best, we speak words of silent ignorance toward people who’re different.
Jews. Muslims. Baptists.
People who don’t fit in OUR pews, don’t sing OUR songs, don’t come to OUR buildings.
We exclude them. We shame them. We ignore them.
Not on purpose. Usually.
And if you’ve ever been excluded, or shamed, or ignored by your own church, I’m so sorry.
And I believe Jesus has given me the courage to say it.
Too many times churches commit sins of omission.
Sins of benign neglect.
Only to find out there’s nothing harmless about it.
Tongues of fire can light up the good.
But untamed and toxic, their fire can also scorch the earth,
scorch nations –
and scorch people,
our sisters and brothers,
sometimes literally –
when we forget God’s Law.
–
I like to think the voice of God is always a voice of love.
But even love depends on how it’s spoken
And how it’s interpreted.
Interpretation can be really hard work.
Not just on Pentecost. But daily.
How do you hear God’s voice?
How do you speak God’s voice?
In your life?
In your every day?
The best we can do is have the courage to try.
Do our words help, or do they hurt?
I don’t know.
I guess it’s all in the translation.
[eos]
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