May 22, 2010
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What I meant, what I said, what you heard, what you understood
Communicating is probably one of the most complicated and difficult activities we do and yet we do it with very little thought or effort all the time. Verbal communication requires at least four functions. Your brain has a concept it wishes to communicate to someone else, the concept is translated into words, and tones, facial expressions, and body language in an attempt to bring the concept to the receiver. The mouth and body then attempt to express the concept. The receiver then perceives the words, tone, expressions, and body language and conveys them to his or her brain. The receivers brain then analyzes the words, the tones, the expressions and the body language and creates a concept of what they all mean. All of this is done in a relatively short period of time. It takes a little longer for those of us who now play the word search game as one of our primary pastimes. Perfect communication requires that our brain comes up with the right words, tones, expressions and body language to convey the concept and then that the body and mouth execute them perfectly the receiver sees and hears them perfectly and then their brain has the exact same understanding of what those words, tones, expressions, and body movements mean. Considering all of this, it is a wonder that we communicate at all. It is even more complicated when communication occurs in a more limited medium like the written word. Now our concept model has lost tone, facial expression, and body language. We try to compensate for this by adding little faces to show we are smiling, smirking, laughing, frowning, or any other number of emotions. Even with the extra effort, quite frequently there is misunderstanding or even worse hurt feelings.
Two of our readings for today are about communication. The story of the Tower of Babel explains how God confounded the language of the people so they could not communicate with each other because they were plotting evil. I read the story as one of the Bible myths that is not necessarily grounded in fact but is a story to teach us a lesson. The lesson being that when we come together and use our wisdom to try to become God, our efforts will not lead to good things and God will interfere in our plans. Communication that says we can come together and control other people and use them for our purposes is communication that is trying to make us gods. Communication that says we can come together and control all of the world’s resources so that we have abundance and others will suffer and die is communication that is trying to make us gods. Communication that says we can control who is welcome in church and who is not is communication that is trying to make us God and this church our church.
The second story about the day of Pentecost when the Spirit came down like flames, or like red, orange, and yellow helium balloons and rested on the people and they spoke so that everyone heard in their own language. This is a reverse Tower of Babel story, people are no longer prevented from understanding each other because of language differences. Once again, I don’t spend a great deal of energy trying to determine if the disciples suddenly were able to speak foreign tongues or whether the foreigners were made to hear what was said as if it were spoken in their native tongue. It really doesn’t matter to me. What matters to me is that God determined that what the disciples were saying was very important for everyone present to hear and understand. They were sharing the mighty works of God. They were telling those present the Good News. They weren’t trying to dominate anyone, they weren’t trying to gain advantage over anyone, they weren’t condemning anyone. They were telling of the might works of God so everyone present could know God as they knew God. God does not confound our speaking and our understanding when we are sharing what we know about God and God’s love for all we meet.
It makes a great deal of difference in the way we communicate with another if our communication comes from our love for them. Our understanding of what another is saying to us is much better if we are listening out of our love for them and our belief that they love us. Communication in our relationships with spouses, parents, children, friends, fellow congregants will seriously break down if our trust in their love for us has been diminished. In the work I do with congregations and with counseling people in domestic relationships, I frequently hear people say they don’t trust another person, or the person has lost their trust, or other words to that effect. What they are saying is they don’t believe the person loves them. It is only when we sense the love another has for us that we are able to trust them. Communicating God’s love to another is not about the words we say, it is about the love we feel for them. Jesus didn’t come to just tell us about God, he came to live God for us. We see God’s love in the life Jesus lived on this earth and we are to live that love so others can see God in us. Our words will fail us, we will be misunderstood, sometimes we will speak without thinking, and we will do things we wish we hadn’t but, if we truly love others as God has loved us, these things can be forgiven. If we speak very carefully, and we act very properly but do not speak and act out of genuine love our words and actions are worthless. The universal language we receive when the Spirit comes upon us is the language of love, God’s unconditional love. Amen.
