Totally Authentic - Week Two
April 01, 2025
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The revolution will be subtitled
The revolution may not be televised (as Gil Scott-Heron’s searing song has it) but we do need to put the subtitles on! This week we celebrate Pentecost — a theological, multilingual revolution that shocked and comforted, confused and inspired and goes on shocking, comforting, confusing and inspiring us!
SEEDS TO SOW: How could you use another language to praise God this week? Perhaps you could learn a simple prayer in another language (ideally one you don’t already speak) or could read a translation of the Lord’s prayer in a different language?
Read Acts 2: 1-21
Put the subtitles on!
The authentic voice of the Holy Spirit is multi-vocal, multi-lingual, and multi-cultural! This is monotheism (one God) not monoculture. Real authentic truth is not tied down by one language, truth is beyond language (indeed it can be expressed in all earthly languages and in the languages of heaven). Into the multilingual explosion of Pentecost Peter rises to the occasion speaking poetry and prophecy into the drama of the moment.
Sometimes in our desire to be authentic, relatable, and relevant we can miss the vivid and heartfelt and fail to capture the imagination of those who hear us. We have perhaps conflated monotheism and monoculture — thinking that there is only one language, style or shape of worship that is ‘authentic’. How true is this? Discuss as a group!
Read 1 Corinthians 9: 19-23
All things to all people?
So how authentic is Paul? If he keeps being all things to all people?
Read Ephesians 4: 1-16
One body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism… and countless languages…
Unity is not everyone looking the same and sounding the same. A heap of red thread piled up is not united, it is in fact a tangle waiting to happen. Red, yellow, and blue threads woven together in a bigger pattern — that’s unity. Our unity gets its meaning through our difference, not in spite of it.
But it takes work! ’Speaking the truth in love.’ Now that’s five words to live by (although of course in other languages this same sentence could be more or less than five words!) We don’t live authentic lives by always sticking to the same script. bur rather by pairing love with truth and communicating it. Truth without love is cold and will freeze us. Love without truth is scalding and will burn us. Love and truth unshared will wither and wilt.
Discuss ‘Speaking the truth in love’ as an approach to life. What would a life guided by those five words look like?
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