Have you ever been in a new place, walking in a strange land, wading through a different culture with the slightest sense that you are blending in? You’ve done your homework. You’re dressed like the people on the street. Your tone and gait aren’t that distinct. And then the inevitable happens: you speak.
The last time we were in France we were making our way through the city incognito. Just a couple of Europeans-about-town, and then we needed a taxi. The driver looked at me with a look of paralyzed confusion as I told him where we needed to go. Seeing his wheels turning I finally said, “I’m from Africa.” It was an instant “lightbulb” moment! The accent he expected never came and the one that did he would never have expected. My accent betrayed me.
Working cross-culturally we all strive to lose our accents, those distinguishing marks on our loaned language. We spend countless hours on parsing and vocabulary but then spend a lifetime trying to use them in the same way as the people we’ve come to serve. We fear that our message will get lost in the slip of vowel or the truncated consonant. We listen to a sound over and over again painfully aware that our mouths will never be able to mimic it perfectly. Our accents betray us.
An encouraging reality is that accents aren’t new. People have been struggling with accents as long as multiple languages have crisscrossed the globe. I think part of our fear is because accents often serve as cultural shibboleths (Judges 12.6). They negatively signal our “otherness” and create linguistic demarcation lines where we are left as aliens, suspect and strange. Our accents betray us.
Peter sat in the courtyard of the high priest as Jesus was judged (Matthew 26.58). They vaguely recognized him as being with Jesus from Galilee. They told one another, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.” And with each accusation, Peter’s own accent testified against him. They said, “Certainly you too are one of [his disciples], for your accent betrays you,” (Matthew 26.73). Peter’s strong Galilean accent stood in stark contrast to the Judeans that filled the courtyard.
Even after he was restored in Jesus’ grace and mercy (John 21.15-17) Peter’s accent never changed. His Greek was rough and twisted (just try reading the letter of 2 Peter!) but in every misshapen phrase and mispronounced word was the accented voice of a man who had been with Jesus.
Peter preached in Jerusalem in his rough fisherman’s brogue and saw the Holy Spirit breathe revival (Acts 2). He stumbled his way through chicken-scratch Greek in the home of Cornelius and saw the nations invited into redemption and transformation (Acts 10)!
For the rest of his life, as Peter journeyed through the nations, his accent testified that he had been with Jesus. Can the same thing be said about us? When we speak, do our forms and phrases reveal a proximity to Jesus that speak louder than our split infinitives and awkward conjugation?
Even if our accents never improve, may our ever-increasing love for Jesus as His Spirit’s transforming power is at work in our lives reverberate into the lives of those God our Father places around us.
May our accents betray that we’ve been with Jesus.
