"The Holy Spirit came down on this day from heaven, lighting upon the disciples, to teach them and to lead them into all truth; uniting peoples of many tongues in the confession of one faith, and giving to your Church the power to serve you as a royal priesthood, and to preach the Gospel to all nations."
Is it any wonder that the language of Emmanuel's congregation is not merely English? God with us means God has been walking beside us all our lives. The Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end; the before, the now, and the evermore; always and everywhere.
Our congregation is impressively multilingual and multicultural, and like the wonder that is Pentecost, the wind of the Holy Spirit has been with us in our origin stories and accompanied us on our travels, where we have picked up and shared human languages along the way.
The real miracle of Pentecost is not the many human tongues we speak. It is the unifying almighty power of the God we love, who speaks to each one of us in the language of our hearts in ways that are beyond all human linguistic explanation.
At Emmanuel, we come together to hear to that voice, the one that is eternal and defies all human understanding. Yet somehow, it is most the primal language, the one we spoke in our hearts from birth. The one we seek and need above all others, it's like going home, but it is a home more welcoming and more vibrant and full of diversity and wonder than we could have ever dreamed. This is our language. This is Emmanuel.
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