Spirit, Wind and Fire

May 23, 2010 – Pentecost

Genesis 11:1-9 and Acts 2:1-21

There is no doubt that the Tower of Babel story is one of the most familiar episodes in the Bible. Adults and children can recite it in broad outline, at least.

There is no doubt either that the story was first told to explain the multiplication of languages on earth, and to warn about the trouble that seeps in when people cannot, will not, or do not listen to each other.

Again, there’s no doubt that our ancient preoccupation with language continues even now. Global communication – 24 hours a day, seven days a week – is a goal for every business, a challenge for most adults, and second nature for the young.

In addition to the deluge of sound hitting our ears from TV, radio, and iPods, 300 million searches are done every day on Google, and nearly a quarter of a trillion emails are sent – 80% of which are spam! That’s 2.8 million emails a second – which is considerable, even for a fast typist … until you realize that the average American teenager sends 80 texts in that same 24-hour time frame, using only her thumbs.

Finally, there is no doubt that Pentecost is the Church’s answer to Babel and our antidote to failed communication. Pentecost celebrates God’s power to restore common language and to revive our ability to understand one another.

I guess that means Pentecost is the world’s first “social networking app.” By sending the Holy Spirit, God empowers believers to speak and listen – so that all have a voice, all understand, and no one is “unfriended.”

Yet if we think these texts are solely concerned with language and communication, we probably quit listening to them before they were finished. For there is always something more to notice in these passages – as God always manages to speak to us in new ways.

* *

Did you notice, for instance, that the same God who unites people through language in Acts is the One who scattered and confused them in Genesis?

That suggests that God’s goal isn’t just to bring us together, but to equip and enable us to go back to the world. Usually we think of unity as a good (God-given) thing; and often it is. But in Genesis, it’s the people who want to stay together, while God has other plans.

Why do they build their tower? Because “otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth.”

They are afraid of what God will do, afraid of being taken from the security of their sameness – afraid of being sent to other people and places.

And where does that happen? On a “plain” – a place where everything is flat and the same – and “in the land of Shinar,” which archeologists and scholars say was in ancient Babylon – a nation that held Israel captive, a place that would not allow them to scatter. (Notice the similarity of the words, “Babel” and “Babylon”!)

So it may be that the story was meant to mock Israel’s Babylonian captors. It was a subtle (but effective) dig at people who do not go with God into the world, a subversive taunt of people unable and unwilling to leave home and become mobile. The Babel story hints that Babylonians wouldn’t associate with anyone but themselves. They had a case of national agoraphobia, the fear of strangers and crowds. They were inward, insulated, inoculated, isolated, and socially awkward in relation to others.

In direct contrast to that stay-at-home lack of faith among Babylonians in Genesis 11, Genesis 12 presents God’s commission to Father Abraham and Mother Sarah, to “go from your country and your kindred and your ancestors’ house to the land I will show you” in order to be a blessing to all the nations and families on earth.

Rather than staying home and building a tower, Israel’s honored ancestors allow themselves to be “scattered” – in order to be a blessing to the nations.

So a virtual line can be drawn between people who have to hold everyone (including themselves) as exiles or slaves, and those who are accept their freedom to travel and be at home anywhere in the world, knowing God is always with them.

* *

True as that was for ancient Jews, it is also true for followers of the Man from Nazareth. In Matthew 28, the risen Christ sends his followers, to “Go and make disciples of all nations.” And in chapter 1 of Acts, before the wind and fire of Pentecost arrive, he declares: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Again, unity isn’t all bad. But the difference between Israel and other nations is that God’s people did not seek unity through uniformity. They are not afraid to explore.

Our unity is not in uniformity, but in the one God. That’s the point the Apostle Paul makes in 1 Corinthians 12, and our Call to Worship this morning. We have a variety of gifts; and we exhibit various ways of serving. But with every gift and all of the serving, there is only one God, one Spirit who enables them all in everyone.

Scripture teaches that God forms faithful, multidimensional people – people open to many meanings and capable of a wide range of appeal. God doesn’t make cookie cutter Christians and clones, all the same, afraid of being seen in mixed company, or worried about being scattered abroad in the world.

Rather, God makes people who cross boundaries, to talk and listen and learn with the Medes and Elamites, Mesopotamians and Judeans – citizens of all parts of the world.

In effect, then, Genesis and Acts are not opposite, contrasting stories. The same divine impulse is at work in both places, equipping people to live with each other, regardless of nationality or other human distinction, in all parts of the world.

Yet there are those who resist it. Just as we have the Babylonians in Genesis, some onlookers at Pentecost, “sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine’” – meaning that the disciples were drunk.

But Peter refuted that argument, saying, “These [people] are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine in the morning” (which leaves open the thought that later in the day, drunk was a real possibility!)

In any case, Peter knows that unity is not the result of being drinking buddies for each other or having social affinity with each other. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit.

* *

There’s one other detail in the Pentecost story I’ve pondered over the last week. It’s the use of wind and fire to revamp human language.

Wind and fire were the ancient world’s best images for ways to introduce sweeping changes. If wind is strong enough or fire hot enough, everything will have to be made over again.

For us, though, in the twenty-first century, fire and wind take on another connotation that our ancestors did not know. And it too has altered how we talk to each other.

I’m thinking about the fire of September 11, 2001 and the wind of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. I won’t say the Spirit was in them or that the Spirit caused them, but our speech patterns and thought were certainly altered by their arrival.

After 9/11, for instance, I did what many others did – I vowed to stay in closer touch with family and loved ones wherever they live. Nine years later, I’m disturbed at how much I’ve fallen back into old habits, but that horrible fire did bring a change in me.

It brought a collective return to others as well for what really matters. Where we live, the color of our skin, language we speak or personal politics were suddenly less important than the fact that we are all equally human, with lives that are fragile and precious. Because that fire seared itself into our lives, we promised to treat each other differently and more compassionately forever after.

Likewise, the wind in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast caused us to go in person to reach out to the victims. We turned off our TVs after seeing the news, and “scattered” to the places where there was need. One flood (of water and wind) was met by another “flood” – in the form of short-term mission workers, armed with hammers and compassion heading to the Gulf Coast.

Out of that terrible devastation, a new form of communication was given – a form of communication that claimed each and every person in God’s love.

Is it Pentecost? I don’t know. But these are our experiences of fire and wind, by which lives are changed and God’s purposes renewed. In places of deep heartbreak and unspeakable horror, God leads us (even now) toward what is healing and humane.

We didn’t (and don’t) always get our words right, have the same ideology, or agree on the meaning of things we see the world. Language alone is not the fix. Life can’t be construed in “flat” terms of true and false, black and white, evil and good – as it was on the plain of Shinar in Babylon.

Truth was not (and is not) couched in one single answer, but as people talking – and more importantly, listening – to each other.

That’s Pentecost. It’s what God intended at Babel as well, when scattering the people. God rejected inward communication and isolated living in favor of a larger, fuller way of living – a way of living that even the grave cannot hold captive.

The people at Babel thought that uniformity was a suitable way to build a tower to the heavens and look God in the eye.

But Israel knew that, if you want to meet God, you need to get out of the house, out of the church, to scatter and look around in the world. That’s where God is – on earth, not up in the sky.

If the Tower of Babel and Pentecost teach us anything, it is that we aren’t in Babylon any more (Toto!). And we don’t have to live as if we are. United in Christ, under the loving mercy of God, and sent by the Holy Spirit, we are free to live fully in all of the world.

So I leave you with an old saying. It is often attributed to St. Augustine, but was probably coined by someone more recent:

In essentials, unity.

In non-essentials, diversity.

And in all things, love.

I think that describes Pentecost rather well.

To the glory of God.