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"THE UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR"

Carlos E. Wilton

Point Pleasant Presbyterian Church

June 8, 2003; Pentecost, Year B

Psalm 104:24-34, 35b; Acts 2:1-21

Are there any Star Trek fans out there? I’m sure there are, and I’ve got a question for you: Of all the technological marvels on that science-fiction TV show, which is the most incredible?

Maybe you’d vote for the transporter: that gizmo that breaks down human beings into atoms, sends them zooming across the universe at the speed of light, and reconstitutes them again in a new location. ("Beam me up, Scotty!") Or perhaps you’d opt for the tricorder: that little black box, about the size and shape of an old portable cassette player, that gathers all kinds of scientific data. It tells the "away team" instantly if the air on that new planet is breathable, and if there are any "life forms" in the vicinity. Or maybe you’d vote for the phaser: that hand-held laser beam that can be set to "stun" or to do worse damage, whenever the script requires it.

Of all the cool gadgets on Star Trek, perhaps the most remarkable of all is one you never see on the show, and rarely hear mentioned. It functions quietly, in the background. Yet so indispensable is this little device to the mission of the Starship Enterprise, the crew could hardly accomplish anything at all – let alone fit their weekly adventure into a fifty-minute time frame.

I’m speaking of "the Universal Translator."

This little gizmo is, as the computer geeks say, the "killer ap" – the killer application – of all killer aps. It’s a machine that effortlessly translates, in real time, the spoken words of a language it’s never heard before. It matters not if the language is composed of mellifluous phrases or guttural clicks and grunts. Nor does it matter if the alien race speaking it looks pretty much like us (though perhaps with pointy ears or bumps on their foreheads), or if they look more like a cross between an alligator and a kangaroo. The handy-dandy Universal Translator takes on all comers, and renders their speech into perfect English.

Not bad, eh? Don’t you wish you had one?

Many surfers of the Internet have come across something called a "translation engine." It’s a keen little program that lets you type a line of text into a box, hit the "enter" key, and see it instantly translated, before your very eyes, into another language. The only problem is, the translation engines on the Internet leave a lot to be desired. They have a long way to go before anyone could mistake them for a Universal Translator.

There’s a little game you can play with these computer programs. It involves running a phrase through the translation engine, going from English into various foreign languages and back again, just to see what comes out in the end. It’s kind of like the old parlor game of "Telephone" (the one that has people whisper a sentence from one person to another). What you get out is definitely not what you put in.

I decided to try it. Going to the website, freetranslation.com, I typed in this phrase that the Vulcans on Star Trek (that’s Mister Spock’s people, for the uninitiated) must surely have uttered when they encountered human beings for the very first time: "Live long and prosper."

Going from English to Spanish and back again, I came up with, "Alive long and prospers."

Next, I translated "Alive long and prospers" from English into Dutch and back. I got, "Living long and blossoms."

Translating that, in turn, from English into Portuguese and back again, I got, "Live long flowers."

Trying the same thing with Italian, I came up with, "I live long flowers." And finally, from English to French and back again, the machine came up with, "I live a long time flowers." It’s a far cry from "Live long and prosper," isn’t it?

Well, maybe that was a fluke, I thought to myself. I tried it again with the familiar proverb, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink." By the time I’d run that one through four or five languages, what came out was: "It takes is able to a horse irrigate, but you do not be able to the reason of beverages."

Gibberish! That’s what you get, if you try to make a Universal Translator out of today’s technology.

The sad truth is, there probably never will be such a thing as a Universal Translator – not even in the Twenty-Third Century. It may be a convenient device for the Star Trek writers, but it’s just not practical. Human language is too complex for that.

Which makes the story of Pentecost, as related in the second chapter of Acts, all the more remarkable. Luke tells us that "each one heard them speaking in the native language of each." Then he reels off a huge list of nationalities, all of whose languages were suddenly made intelligible by the Holy Spirit: from Parthians and Medes to Cretans and Arabs. [Acts 2:9-11]

All these people, speaking a vast array of languages – many of them now extinct – can suddenly understand each other! When you consider what’s involved here, it’s got to be one of the greatest miracles in all the scriptures.

On another level, it’s a miracle whenever any two human beings understand each other. Take a husband and wife, for example. Any husband and wife. Those two have sought each other out and married because they love each other, and because they’ve discovered in one another a kindred spirit – but even then, it’s a rare couple indeed that never encounters difficulties of communication. There’s a whole cottage industry, in fact, that publishes self-help books to make it easier for men and women to talk to each other. The men come from Mars and the women from Venus, and so they complain to each other, You Just Don’t Understand.

And those are two people who speak the same language! It gets even more dicey in matters of negotiations between nations. When Ariel Sharon of Israel sits down to talk with Mahmoud Abbas, the new Prime Minister of the Palestinians, how many possibilities there must be for misunderstanding!

So what is it that really happened, that first Pentecost? Was it a miracle of linguistic translation – God the Holy Spirit creating, for the first and only time, a Universal Translator, and loaning the contraption to Jesus’ disciples for a day? Or is it something a little more subtle, and a lot more symbolic?

Only someone who was there that day, and witnessed that remarkable event, can say for sure. Yet whether you take the Pentecost story literally or symbolically, there’s meaning to be distilled from this well-loved story: meaning that can spill over and season our lives, if we but pay attention to its lessons.

Suddenly that wild assortment of people, with all their languages and cultures, find common ground. I’d like to think the common ground they discover has something to do with love – the love of God, demonstrated in a man who let himself be nailed to a cross for the sins of the world, and who then returned from the grave to show them his wounds and promise he’d be with them always.

Standing there on Calvary and looking up at that man, a hard-bitten Roman centurion was led to confess, "Surely this is the son of God." You can’t get a wider chasm between two human beings than that: a career military man, officer of an occupying army, and the criminal he’s just ordered executed. Yet those two men – one who will not live out the afternoon, and the other who will go home to a warm supper and a soft bed – look each other in the eye, and experience a sort of communion. That’s a miracle – and it has nothing to do with speaking the same language.

It has everything to do with love. I think that’s what’s at the heart of the Pentecost miracle: love. The love of God, mediated through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. As those knocked-down, dragged-out, hard-luck excuses for evangelists get together in that nondescript Jerusalem house, and begin to recall the things they’ve heard and seen in recent days, something comes over them. Something far bigger than they are, coming from outside themselves and taking possession of their dispirited hearts. Suddenly the world becomes much bigger than the dusty villages with their mud-brick houses, the lakes spotted with fishing-boats, the sheep on the hillsides and the Roman coins clinking in the tax-collector’s purse. Suddenly the gospel they’ve only recently come to understand becomes much more than a Jewish gospel. It becomes a tale they just know – for some reason they cannot put into words – will travel swiftly to the ends of the earth.

It will travel to the ends of the earth because they will take it there. Yes, them: these flawed, hesitant, fearful disciples will take it there, personally. They know then – in the bright, flame-lit clarity of that moment – that they can do it: because the Holy Spirit of God will accompany them on the journey, and tell them what to say.

I experienced a small Pentecost moment as I traveled to Cuba – as I’ve done now, twice, representing Monmouth Presbytery in our mission partnership with the Cuban Presbyterians. I went there not speaking the language, wholly dependent on the members of our little group who had come along as translators. The Cuban church leaders had a bit more English than I had Spanish, but still they were far from fluent. What we had in common was Jesus Christ. I like to think the Spirit of Christ was present and active in those moments, as we came together – people from a Communist dictatorship and a Capitalist democracy – and forged a friendship.

What other explanation could there possibly be for a wonder like that, but the Holy Spirit?

We didn’t speak in tongues – other than our own native languages, and our hesitant efforts to risk speaking the other language. But we didn’t need to. We had Jesus.

Another little Pentecost moment came, for me, a week and a half ago. I’d been out at our church’s General Assembly in Denver, Colorado. At 7 in the morning on Tuesday, I’d just boarded the shuttle that would take me to the airport. I was the only passenger in the van, and the driver – who, from his accent I surmised did not come from the U.S.A. – asked me what I’d been doing in Denver. Was I here on business, he wanted to know?

"Well, in a manner of speaking... I’ve been at the Presbyterian General Assembly."

"Maybe you can tell me, then," he asked with sudden interest, "what’s the difference between all these Christian groups: the Presbyterians, the Baptists, the Catholics?"

"God has some timing," I thought to myself! "It’s 7 in the morning, I’m barely awake, and the Lord’s putting me in a position to witness to a non-Christian."

Well, I answered the man’s question the best I could, then decided I needed to find out more about him. Looking at his dark complexion, I asked the question that comes naturally for a New Jerseyan these days: "Do you come from India?"

"No" he said, pausing a moment as though considering how much to tell. "I come from Iraq." Then he began to tell his story: how he’s from the south of Iraq, and how he’d fled his homeland in 1991, after Saddam Hussein began to crack down on the Shi’ite revolutionaries. He’d lived five years in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia, before begin granted asylum in the U.S.A.: that’s five years of living in a tent.

"Do you have family back in Iraq?" I asked.

He told me he did – and that he’d been able to send a few letters over the years, and occasionally talk on the phone – but never about anything of substance. Never anything more than "Hi, how are you?" Anything more than that, he told me, could put his family at risk.

Had he spoken with his family after the most recent war, I asked? Did he know they were all right?

No, he told me. It’s not possible to contact them right now. I told him I hoped his family was safe, and he nodded, saying yes, he hoped so too. He’d done well for himself in the States, but he hoped to return to Iraq at the earliest opportunity.

Then he brought the topic back around to religion. He told me how, a few weeks before, there’d been a Baptist missionary convention in town. He’d been driving a few people to the airport, just as he was driving me. One of his passengers, he said, was a woman who seemed intent on making him a Christian. She told him – right there on the airport shuttle – that he would go to hell if he did not accept Jesus as his savior.

"I asked her how she could be so sure of that," he went on. "I just know," she replied. "I asked her if she’d ever been out of the United States, and she said no, she hadn’t. I asked her if she’d ever read any part of the Qur’an, and she said no, she hadn’t."

Too bad, I said to myself, listening to the driver tell the tale. Too bad this man’s most recent encounter with a Christian sharing her faith was with a woman who was evidently more intent on speaking than listening. She’d probably come out of that missionary convention all fired up to spread the good news, and the first stranger she meets is this Muslim cab-driver. He was a sitting duck: she let fly with her evangelical shotgun, but failed to bag the trophy.

The driver and I talked some more. We talked about God, in whom we both very evidently believed. We talked of the similarities between our two religions: the importance of loving neighbors, of seeking justice, of giving alms to the poor. When the 45-minute shuttle ride was over, he handed me back my bags and I handed him his tip, and we shook hands warmly. I felt we’d shared much more than just a ride. I think he felt the same way.

Should I have tried to do what my well-intentioned but zealous sister did, and confront this stranger then and there with the demands of the gospel? Should I, too, have asked him to give his life to Christ, just before getting my bags and boarding the plane? I don’t think so. For me to attempt such a thing would have said more about my desire to win a convert – about me, in other words – than about him, and what he really needed. Better he drive away from that conversation knowing he’d spoken with a Christian, and found a caring person who was not pushy, but willing to listen. My hope and prayer is that I was such a person that morning. For only that kind of caring openness will give the Holy Spirit something to work with in this man’s life, in the future.

God did give the Christian church a Universal Translator, that first Pentecost. I think it has less to do with linguistics than it does with love. The more we Christians can learn to speak God’s language, which is love – the more we can learn to love one another, and love those sojourners in our midst – the more the good news of Jesus Christ will come to dwell in human hearts.

Is there something you’d like to do, or say – for God – but aren’t sure you have it in you? The good news of Pentecost is that you don’t have to have it in you. If you undertake the Lord’s work of loving others, the Lord will provide. The Spirit will inspire. So relax, and let it happen. As the prophet Joel says, in those great words quoted by Peter:

"your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

your old men shall dream dreams,

and your young men shall see visions." [Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17]

May it be so for you – by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit!

This page last modified on August 21, 2003

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