The “speaking in tongues” described in St. Luke’s account of Pentecost is different from that which St. Paul talks about in First Corinthians and which 20th century “Pentecostals” still practice, a kind of ecstatic speech, a form of prayer. The story the author of the Acts of the Apostles tell us about the coming of the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with tongue speaking in that sense. Rather, it has to do with the impact of the Holy Spirit on the early church, one of which was that men and women who had been separated from one another for centuries by nationality, race, religion and culture, now felt inseparably bound together, “Parthians, Medes, Elamites... residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phyrgia and Pamphylia...” and many more.

In our own day, while there are some manifestations of the Holy Spirit at work, between Russians and Americans, between blacks and whites in South Africa, Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, some Jews and some Palestinians in the Near East, despite these good signs, fragmentation and division seems to alive, both in the United States and around the globe. Once again we seem to be defining ourselves by what separates us from others. I once made the mistake of calling a man from Yorkshire an Englishman and he joked about it, but there are many places in the world where a similar mistake would not be tolerated. We tend to think of this as a foreign problem, but now we know that being the wrong kind of patriotic American could identify you as the enemy. While we pray for the unity of all Christians, (How can we, of all people, heirs of Pentecost, not be united?) We know that there are formidable differences between Christians, such as that between the religious right and the mainline churches. There are sincere Episcopalians who reject communion with their own bishop because they consider him or her the wrong kind of Episcopalian. I am mystified by the divisiveness which is infecting us at a time when there is so much that should draw us together.

I do know, however, that God, working as the Holy Spirit, still acts to bind together those of us who have many reasons to be separate, and that part of our mission as Christians is to pray and work for that unity with all people to which the Spirit calls us. When I experience that unity with someone who is different from myself, I re-experience that gift which the Acts of the Apostles describes. One such time for me was when I was on the faculty of Seabury-Western Seminary. One of my advisees, with whom I met every other week, was a Native American from Minnesota, a member of the Lakota tribe. Sam had grown up on a reservation and only learned to speak English when he went to school. He is a huge man who was a great addition to the Seminary football team in our annual game with Nashota House. Sam could block three opposing players all by himself, but he was a gentle soul, a man of few words. I admit that I started the year with some anxiety. How do you spend an hour every other week with someone of few words? I had never worked this closely with a Native American before, but in the year we grew very close. Our fifty minute advisory sessions consisted of more silence than talk. I learned to live with the silence. I learned that, in Lakota society, it is impolite to look in someone’s face as you talked. Through what Sam taught me I was able to be a friend and mentor to many other Native American students. There was little common to Sam and my background except our common faith, but it was enough.

As difficult as it is for Christians and Moslems of different persuasion to be together, we know from the tragic events in Israel, Bosnia and other places in Eastern Europe that unity can be even harder between those of different faiths. This is illustrated for me in one of the lesser known operas by Verdi, I Lombardi or The Lombards at the First Crusade. The story, like that in so many operas, is one of attempted murder, intrigue and bloodshed. It depicts the struggle of the Christian crusaders against the Moslem defenders of Jerusalem, and accurately portrays the violence and barbarism on both sides. The opera ends with bodies all over the stage, with the chorus singing, ironically, to the “God of Victory,” and an immense Crucifix hovering overhead. But at the end of the second act there is a moment of light. The Crusaders have just taken Jerusalem and slaughtered the Moslem defenders without mercy. The daughter of the leader of the Crusades who has been in love with a Moslem prince is “liberated” and greeted by her father. Griselda, however, instead of rejoicing in her liberation and the victory for her side, catches a vision of the horror around her and how this will lead to a continuous cycle of revenge and violence. She cries out, “God’s just cause is not served by soaking the earth with human blood. It is vile madness, not piety. This is not heaven’s desire. A divine force has removed the blindfold f rom my eyes. ... God never ordered this! God does not will it. He descended to earth only to speak of peace.” Griselda’s own father reaches out to strike her dead for uttering such heresy, but her uncle rescues her by saying, “Stop. She has lost her reason.” With this the curtain comes down and the final acts go on as if Griselda had never spoken. I believe, though, that Verdi had some notion that Griselda was speaking the real Christian truth, that God does not will humans to treat each other as enemies, and that the Holy Spirit was sent to break down barriers between people so that, in St. Paul’s words, there should be neither “Jew nor Greek, slave nor free,” man nor woman.

The good news of Pentecost is that God has set lose in the world the Holy Spirit and that the Spirit is at work to break down not just the barriers of language and nation, but all of the barriers we have created between people, to bring us into that union for which our Lord prayed, “that they may be one as we, O Father, are one.”