A sermon for Pentecost, Year C (Genesis 11:1-9; Psalm 104:25-35, 37; Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, (25-27))
Isn’t it interesting that the tower doesn’t get destroyed? That’s the detail I kept coming back to as I studied the scriptures this week for our great feast of the Holy Spirit.
The mythic and apparently unified human family has newly settled on this plain in the land of Shinar. They are accomplishing a great feat of engineering, ingenuity, and single-mindedness. God takes notice:
Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
It’s tempting to read this story as a simple morality tale. That’s what some of us might have learned in Vacation Bible School as kids. That’s basically what I was taught.
But if that was the writers’ and ultimately God’s intention for this story, I think they needed to include more fire and brimstone. I kinda can’t believe those words are coming out of my mouth, to be honest, but life in the Spirit teaches us to expect the unexpected.
Of course, as a Christian community we have rightly been formed to be wary of the pursuit of purely prideful accomplishment and any ethic of self-sufficiency.
Do I think God wishes her children had chosen a project other than to “make a name for themselves”? Absolutely. Is a really tall building basically a metaphor for a common and misguided and probably characteristically male response to feeling like one has something to prove? You bet.
And yet, there is no formal admonishment here. No statement that “the people did evil in the sight of the Lord.”
I submit to you that the action God takes, “confusing their language,” is an act of what Roman Catholic educator John Gresham calls the “divine pedagogy,” the way in which God teaches us. Not “Why I oughta go down there and teach them a lesson!” but rather “My children need me to show them the way.”
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There’s a second reflexive temptation to interpreting these Pentecost readings, and it is like unto the first. As my colleague Ian Lasch pointed out this week, we certainly shouldn’t view these paired readings according to the idea that a problem pops up in the Old Testament and God fixes it through Christ—or here, the Spirit whom Christ send—in the New Testament.
Genesis: Punishment – languages confused, people divided. Acts: Deliverance – languages understood, people united.
That’s not how Christians are supposed to read scripture, though we can easily fall into this habit. We believe it’s all one God, one multifaceted collection of scriptures, one unfolding love story between Creator and creation.
When we take these passages together, we get a rich commentary on human endeavor, human community, and humanity’s need for an energizing Spirit of love and, yes, of power.
We’re not meant to be monolithic, monolingual automata, producing and piling bricks in a monument that may have been a marvel but could probably never truly be marvelous in the rich sense of that word.
Many languages, geographic dispersal—in a word: diversity—these are not a punishment from which God suddenly relents but the catalyst and spiritual treasury through which God accomplishes her ongoing work: creating, sustaining, and redeeming the world as we know it.
Difference is the challenge but also the joy of human community: differences of culture and personality, differences of perspectives and priorities. You don’t have to be an industrial engineer or corporate diversity consultant to know and trust that a team or community full of different kinds of people is going to be more creative, more effective, and a hell of a lot more interesting to be a part of.
And notice that on the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit’s gift of languages is not just experienced as one more tool of proclamation for the apostle’s mission. It is a tool, but that tool proves meaningful because all those immigrants living in Jerusalem experience the Pentecost miracle not first or primarily as a message—good news though that message may be—but as an experience of grace. This experience is generous, unexpected, gut-level, joy-producing. It is inclusion and embrace, a moment’s perfect communion, unity not uniformity.
Once again, God’s people recognize God’s presence in a voice calling out to them in a specific and personal way. From their unfamiliar, probably frightening, possibly hostile environment, they hear a sound that feels like home.
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The Divine Pedagogue, the Source of all wisdom and truth, the Wellspring of life, the Advocate, the Comforter, the Holy Spirit: she is teaching us still, leading us still, sustaining us still.
The Spirit of God is still accomplishing miracles of understanding, inspiring creativity that will nurture our souls and hopefully save us and our planet from our own selfishness and runaway consumerism.
And she has chosen you. The Holy Spirit has chosen you.
I don’t care if it’s your first or third or four hundredth time here. God has chosen you to be a part of the unfolding work of life and redemption in which we live and move and have our being.
You each have diverse qualifications, of course, and different ways to contribute. Your work will be both ordinary and extraordinary, and you will know when you encounter the invitation.
On this Feast of Pentecost, I invite you to pay special attention to moments when the people around you will need your speech, moments when they will need your understanding, and moments when they will need your action.
And in particular, I invite you to be attentive to these moments here in the Trinity+St. Peter’s community. This is an exciting time for us.
It’s a season of discernment, so we will need your voices and your listening ears. Where should we be heading? What should we be working on? Who should we be partnering with? May the Spirit show us the way, and may we recognize when we’re being called to speak up when we hear a word.
I submit to you as well that this is a season of action. There is much to do as we prepare to call a new priest, continue to do the work of repairing our building, and continue our mission and ministry: being the church for this neighborhood, for each other, and for the God who acts for the wellbeing of all.
I don’t think it’s inappropriate for me to say that some of our leaders are tired. Smaller churches can wear people out far too easily if we don’t all do our best to support one another. That’s not a reason to despair, nor is it a reason to be a martyr.
But listen for if God is calling you to take on something new or something different, something that will help bear the Spirit’s witness in the world and to we who gather here each week.
“Look at these people of Trinity+St. Peter’s,” I can imagine God saying. “Nothing they propose to do will be impossible for them.”
You know this better than I. May it continue to be so, by the power of the Spirit.