Do You Speak English?

On our way to church last Sunday as we approached an intersection an obviously distressed and anxious woman waving her arms at us approached our car straining to see our faces and asking us, “Do you speak English?” Now, keep in mind that we live in the very culturally diverse South area and such questioning only underscores the frustration this woman was feeling. We found out she was trying to get to her mother’s home where her elderly mother had fallen in the shower. We drove her to assist her mother but be assured in the midst of our Good Samaritan trip we wondered if we were helping, enabling or God forbid, being set up to be victims. How much we helped… well, only God knows but I’m glad we spoke English.

Well, of course you speak English… you’re Americans. It’s the universal travel language and hey, the Bible is written in English! At least we sometimes act as if that were true. We seem aggravated by those living within our borders who don’t know how to speak English especially if we’re trying to purchase a pack of gum at the 7/11 or decipher a telemarketer’s pitch. Speak the language…we insist in patriotic tones! I sometimes wonder if we would have insisted that Jesus stop the Aramaic chit chat and stick with Greek or at least Latin. We seem to want the Spirit’s enabling on Pentecost (Acts 2:1-13) to mean that when everybody heard in their own language it was probably English and they just thought they heard it in their own dialect. Which brings me to what I really wanted to say…

Our desperate woman who posed the question, “Do you speak English?” Was really asking the question, “Can we communicate?” Now, that’s what Acts two is about and that’s the most important task of the church. Can we speak the name of Jesus and model his presence in the world so that he can be understood and therefore, be believed upon? Can we keep the message of God relevant? Can we articulate the faith of our fathers in a way that is true to our heritage and God while also being user friendly to the world we live in? The answer is a resounding, “YES!” And I believe that the key to making it happen is for us to speak in the only true universal language… the language of love! When we stop loving the lost… when our focus becomes so internal that we are deaf to the voices beyond our four walls, then I’m not sure we are communicating! May God enable us all to speak so that we can be heard (check that… so He can be heard). -DAN