Keep Talking!

A few weeks ago, my girls asked if I would play a game with them. We were to sit in a circle, while one person whispers a story to the person next to them, and the story then gets whispered and passed to each person around the circle until the final person that hears the story shares aloud what they heard. Yes, my girls had discovered one of my favorite childhood games, “Telephone.” We played and we laughed, and we laughed and we played. Some of the stories made it around the circle fairly intact, sounding almost identical to the original version. We laughed a little less at those. But sometimes, “Katy Perry” would become “St. Mary’s,” and “eating popsicles outside” became “eating mom’s circles by her side,” or some other totally nonsense sentence. We laughed a lot at those. I loved this game as a kid, and would always try to start with a lot of details in my story so that there were more chances for it go awry as it traveled between folks.

The game of Telephone also has me thinking about Pentecost, the miraculous event we read about in our lectionary text for today from the book of Acts. To set the stage, remember that Jesus has ascended back to heaven, commissioning his followers to spread the Gospel by telling the story of all that happened with God’s redeeming work in the world. The disciples are not supposed to keep the story to themselves, and wait for the return of Jesus. They are to go out and be storytellers, to talk to anyone and everyone they encounter about the Good News of what God has done through Jesus the Messiah.

The disciples are in Jerusalem, an urban center filled with diversity – with people from different places, who spoke different languages. And just like with Palm Sunday, the town is crowded with folks who have come to celebrate a Jewish festival, this time the Feast of Weeks, which is celebrated 50 days after Passover. All the followers of Jesus at this point were probably a pretty homogenous group. The disciples who originally were called by Jesus were probably all Galileans, presumably speaking the same language. So any attempts to carry out the great commission given by Jesus to his followers were limited by these facts.

Which brings us to Pentecost... The Book of Acts tells us that folks were gathered together, probably still mulling over the question, “What are we supposed to be doing now again?” Jesus had told them to stay in Jerusalem and wait for a sign. And the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, enters the place where they are gathered like a rush of violent wind. And then there’s flaming tongues that appear over their heads. I actually imagine this was kind of scary. In my mind I always picture this scene looking something like the scene in Indiana Jones: Raider of the Lost Ark, when the Nazis open the Ark of the Covenant and things go nuts with wind and fire and things flying around!

So the Spirit comes with wind and flame, and all of a sudden the disciples are able to speak all of these new languages. The Holy Spirit broke the largest barrier in sharing the story of Jesus, language. So now it was all on the disciples, to tell the story and expand the Christian movement. And they did! They answered the call of Christ because of the power and the miracle of that sprit-filled gathering on evening.

And here is where our Christian story gets a little like my favorite childhood game of Telephone. Most of the books in our New Testament were written by the earliest members of the Christian movement, and scholars tell us that they were probably written in the period of time from about 50 years after Jesus’ death to about 150 years after his death. And the books in the New Testament were not all written by the same folks in the same place. There were other written sources floating around, but aside from these few written documents circulating in those earliest years, Christianity was a largely oral tradition.

At first, as we see in the numerous resurrection accounts in the Bible, the Jesus story was passed on from person to person, from language to language, like one big game of Telephone. And much like a game of Telephone, some of the details of the stories get shuffled around a bit. The timing of events shifts. The stories gain embellishments added to make them more interesting or compelling to a particular audience. So we end up a Bible that contains the results of a lot of simultaneous games of Telephone. And we can clearly see the evidence of this in our Bible. There are contradictions. There are differences in the details of the same story. Not every Gospel contains the same stories or has them listed in the same order. The words of Jesus differ. The instructions to the early church in one location don’t always make sense to a church in another location.

Now, some people would use this “messiness” of the Bible as a reason to discredit or question the Jesus story altogether. It certainly helps explain how we have ended up with the fractured church we have today. But what if the most important message of Pentecost is found in this messiness? What if the confusing game of Telephone our Christian ancestors played actually teaches us something incredibly powerful?

When I sit around with my girls and play the game of Telephone, we usually get the story wrong by the time we reach the end of the line. We change details. We switch words around. And then we laugh, at how such a seemingly simple task of passing a story along a line of people is such a challenging thing. We don’t get mad when the story gets changed. And usually, not always, but usually, the final product still somewhat resembles the story we started with. The general gist of the message makes it to the end of the line.

But in Christianity, we find that so many times the focus of our communities is on getting it “right” - orthodoxy, or right belief, is central. Many of us even seek perfection. We spend so much time and energy fighting over it. Whenever there have been places where the Jesus story and the church story deviates or we have two competing understandings, this has been the source of massive upheaval and schism.

Even when we are given the messiness of our Bible, cobbled together from stories passed down orally, and then written by individuals within different contexts, so many of us are still are unable to embrace the reality that sometimes the stories that we tell might look and sound a little different. We don’t all talk about Jesus the same way. We may have different understandings of and opinions about the things that Jesus believed were most important for us to address in this earthly life. As communities and as individuals, we read the same sacred text, and come away telling very different stories about Jesus, and God’s work in this world.

And you know what? I actually think that is OK. I think that God’s tent is large enough for all of those different stories to be told and held underneath. But usually we, the church, don’t think it’s OK. And so rather than tell our different stories to one another, we stop talking. We silo ourselves off into our different communities, insist that one story be told – the “right” story, told in one way, and we stop telling the story to folks who have a different story to tell. And while it’s comfortable, to put ourselves in a space where we all tell our one, “right” story, it’s so very dangerous when we do this.

Did you know that storytelling actually ties human beings together? And not just in some sweet Hallmark way, but scientific studies have demonstrated the powerful role that storytelling shares in human connection. On functional MRI scans, many different areas of our brains light up when listening to a narrative being shared – and not only the parts that deal with language processing. Listening to narrative activates the parts of our brains tied to emotion. Uri Hasson, Professor of Neuroscience at Princeton, says that when we listen to a story unfolding, our brain waves actually start to synchronize with those of the storyteller. His research team noted that as one person told a story and another listened, the greater the listener’s attention and comprehension, the more closely the brain wave patterns mirrored those of the storyteller. Scientists also note that these deeper connections made through narrative, as opposed to just reading a story, often lead to the story sticking with someone over a longer period of time and can result in actually leading to changes in perspectives or behavior. The act of telling stories to one another, particularly ones that include personal connection, is one of the most powerful ways we both connect with one another and influence one another. 

So the focus on getting it right, that keeps us from talking with one another and from connecting with one another, is perhaps the greatest affront to celebration of Pentecost that I can imagine. When God poured out the Holy Spirit in that room those many years ago, it was an affirmation of those imperfect humans gathered in that space. The men and WOMEN. They weren’t all there with Jesus throughout his earthly ministry. They didn’t all witness the things they were supposed to talk about with others. They were sharing the stories with one another, as a way of building connection and deepening their faith. And God said to them, “Yes! Keep talking! Go tell others! Go tell everyone!”

Perhaps if we were less focused on perfection, we would free ourselves to talk more. To keep talking. Syncing our brain waves and building the church through relationships with each other. This is the message of Pentecost.

So keep talking. Even if you don’t know the story perfectly. Keep talking to others. Even when you feel awkward or silly. Keep sharing what you know to be true about our faith, about your faith, and its transformative power in you and in this world. Because talking is how we bridge the deep divides that seek to tear us apart.

So go on…Keep talking.

Amen.