What Language Does God Speak?

I served one summer as an intern with a church in Tanzania. While there, I was asked several times, “What is your mother tongue?”

In East Africa, everyone speaks Swahili, and many people speak English. However, these are not the languages of home. Most East Africans also speak their tribal language, which they call their mother tongue.

Whenever I explained that English was my mother tongue, people felt sorry for me. They knew I was a poorer person for not having a language spoken only among my own people.

This concern about a mother tongue is reflected in a story told in East Africa of a man named Msafiri. Msafiri followed the traditional African religion of his people, the Wagogo. He believed in one God, the creator who is the source of all good things. Msafiri approached God by praying to his ancestors who he believed still watched over their people.

An evangelist came to his small village and began teaching the people about Christianity. Msafiri listened to the evangelist as he told about God sending his son Jesus to live among us. The stories of Jesus life, his death and resurrection touched Msafiri and he converted to Christianity. Msafiri was baptized, taking the name Simon, for Simon of Cyrene, the African who carried Jesus’ cross to Calvary.

Simon Msafiri went to church faithfully, always attending the Wednesday fellowship meetings and Sunday services under the grass roof of the mud-walled church.

Simon Msafiri prayed to God in Kigogo, his mother tongue. Simon knew that God understood Kigogo, but he decided that God, too, must have a mother tongue. Simon wanted to learn to pray to God in God’s own language.

One day he asked the evangelist, “What language does God speak?” The evangelist said that God does not have a mother tongue—all languages are the same to God.

As he went home, Simon wondered about the evangelist’s answer. Everyone Simon knew had a mother tongue, so God must as well.

Simon asked some of the elders of the village. One man said that God, as the great ancestor, must speak the language of their ancestors, Kigogo. Another said that God’s mother tongue is Swahili. These answers did not feel right to Simon. He decided to set out on a great safari to find his answer.

He traveled around Tanzania and everywhere he went, Simon asked people “What language does God speak?” When he traveled to the west, he was told that God spoke Kisukuma. He walked north and was told that God’s speaks Kiha. In the northeast, an elder told him that God’s langauge must be Kichagga. The answers changed, but in a way they were always the same, people thought their mother tongue must be God’s language.

Simon decided that he should go to Israel for his answer. Surely there, where so many of the stories from the Bible took place, he could find the answer to his question.

After an impossibly long, hot walk, Simon arrived in Israel. Late one afternoon he walked through a large stone gate into the old town of Jerusalem. Here he used his broken English to ask people about God’s language.

Most of the people insisted that God’s language is Hebrew. One man carefully explained that Moses’ Law was written in Hebrew, so that had to be God’s own language. However, another man was equally emphatic that Jesus spoke Aramaic, so that must be God’s language. Still others said that God speaks only Arabic.

Simon was confused and disappointed. His pilgrimage had brought many answers, but none of them seemed to be the one true answer that he sought. Tired from his journey, he walked out of the city as darkness was falling. He went to a nearby olive grove and fell asleep among the trees.

As he slept, Simon had a vision. In the vision he was on a hill outside the old city of Jerusalem. Unlike the olive grove where he fell asleep, this hill was rocky and barren. Simon was alone. The road from town passed by the place where he stood. He heard a commotion at the gate, where a violent mob yelled loudly as it stormed out of the city.

The crowd stopped and parted. Simon saw a dark-skinned man come forward to lift a beam off a shapeless clump of fabric. Simon knew what his vision was. The barren hill was Golgotha, the place of the skull.

The clump of fabric rose and took shape. Simon saw Jesus rise after the cross was pulled off him. Jesus’ back was bloody. A crown made of thorns tore into the flesh of his brow. Blood trickled down Jesus’ face.

Simon wanted with all his being to reach out. He wanted to help, to somehow stop the madness. But Simon was powerless to do anything but look on in shock. Simon saw the crucifixion and, though he had heard about Jesus’ death numerous times, the vision was much more grisly, more horrifying. It was all too real.

Tears poured down Simon’s face as he watched the soldiers strip Jesus and lay him across the beam. He winced as they nailed Jesus to the cross and raised it into the air. Simon did not want to watch anymore, but the vision continued.

Simon saw Jesus looking down at those who crucified him and at the jeering crowd. Jesus saw the anger of the mob and looked at them in love. He said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”

Then Simon understood his vision. Deep inside his being Simon understood that this was the answer to his question. God does have a mother tongue, God’s own unique language from before time. The language of God is love.

On the cross, Jesus spoke volumes about the love of God, not just with his words of forgiveness, but with his actions as well. Jesus stayed on the cross, experiencing the worst humanity had to offer in return for the love he had shone and yet did not give up on his love for us.

(The Rev. Frank Logue is pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland.)

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