The
speaking of another’s language signifies a life lived in submersion and in
submission to another’s cultural realities. Nothing is as humbling as learning
the language of another in which the very rudiments of daily life must be
identified in the signification system of another people . . . .Those who heard
the words of cultural intimacy on the day of Pentecost were invited to act on
the meaning of this event. They must choose Jesus and be baptized in his name.
The narrative of Acts shows that this early church event remained fundamentally
in Israel, so that the disciples did not realize the ramifications of speaking
the languages of others.
Willie
James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins
of Race (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2010), 266-267.
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