May 31, 2009

“Between Babel and Pentecost”

Acts 2:1-8, 12-21
Pastor Jum Wood Pentecost Sunday

A new employee walked into the office workroom with a very important document and asked a man standing at a white machine how it worked. “It’s easy,” said the man. Taking the document he put it into the shredder. The new employee said, “Thanks very much. I need twenty-five copies.”

There are moments when using a common language does not yield clarity of communication or understanding. Little wonder then that the world’s babble of languages divides the human family and damages global relationships with misunderstanding, uncompleted messages, suspicion and estrangement. Despite English having become the unofficial international language, barriers still remain, and wrong connotations and mistaken subtleties of language can provide moments of humor, as well as tragic outcomes.

In a one trade magazine, a columnist gathered together signs from various parts of the world that had been translated into English for tourists. In a Bucharest hotel lobby, this sign: “The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.” In a Paris hotel elevator: “Please leave your values at the front desk.” In a Bangkok dry cleaning shop: “Drop your trousers here for best results.” In a laundry in Rome: “Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time.” At a Budapest zoo: “Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty.” In a Norwegian restaurant: “Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar.” This sign from a Majorcan shop entrance: “English well talking. Here speeching American.” And my favorite, in an advertisement for a Hong Kong dentist: “Teeth extracted by the latest methodists.”

Unfortunately, misinterpreted meanings can also lead to international tension and tragedy in our homes and along our streets. Will such confusion of tongues continue to the end of time or is there something that can bridge language differences, which can ensure communication and bring us together in relationships of trust, friendship and mutual sharing? In the eleventh chapter of Genesis, the story of the Tower of Babel endeavors to tell how and why there are so many languages on earth that confuse us. You may recall how the story centers on an attempt by mortals to build a tower that would reach the threshold of heaven in order to access the divine power of God for their own arrogant use. It’s a story of deceitful pride fueled by fear and anxiety. God, however, knew the builders’ thoughts and intentions, and allowed the tower to rise for a while, but then in a moment of judgment God destroyed the tower and the builders’ city, and also laid on them confusion of many languages to humble them.

While we in our enlightened age may consider the story a musty relic of a prescientific time and its explanation quaint and fanciful, the truth in it abides. Our own prideful towers have fallen everywhere around us, our arrogant lust and greed have wreaked havoc with the human family and ecological disaster on the earth. Confusion has come on us, worse than any confusion of language, so much worse that we live in a broken, divided, hostile and bleeding world. As one writer put it: “Beneath our civilized exteriors, deep in the unconscious or subconscious basement of the mind, fires of hatred and resentment lie like the molten lava deep within a volcano.” Classes and races are alienated from each other, nations speak diplomacy while rattling their armaments, and the gender gap, the generation gap, along with the religion gap, keep widening. We live in a fragmented world where people talk past each other as if they were speaking in dead languages. So the question keeps echoing across the desolate distances between us: Will such confusion continue forever? Can the world’s people become and live as a family? Is our human speech, as one person put it, “like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to,” or is there a language that removes barriers, articulates meaning and creates clear, understandable words between us?

Our answer’s in the Pentecost event that we celebrate and claim today, when God poured out God’s power and persuasion on the humble followers of Jesus gathered in a Jerusalem upper room. The engulfing moment made useless descriptive vocabulary and required metaphor:

And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Foreign visitors to Jerusalem who came to see what had occurred heard their own language being spoken by these uneducated disciples, so that everyone could hear the truth clearly and could understand each other as if they were talking in the family circle or to their neighbor down the street. Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Greeks, Egyptians, Cappadocians, Arabians, and Romans—no matter where people came from—were addressed directly in their unique dialect and familiar vocabulary about God’s mighty saving act in Jesus Christ. It was a marvelous experience of at-one-ment, unity and mutual sharing. Artificial barriers and defensive systems were rendered unnecessary, differences were dissolved, people were raised above their learned prejudices, and, for one shining moment, human spirits were joined around the revealed promise of God in Christ that heals us, unites us and makes us whole.

But our problem is that we’re not sure whether we want confusion or communication, separateness or community, sin or salvation, destruction or resurrection, death or life. Dimly we realize that worship of our human works and ourselves becomes idolatry and even demonism. It was George Buttrick who said, “Our world … stands [uncertain] between Babel and Pentecost. We’ve discovered that if we act like animals we are worse than animals, and if we try by ourselves to be angels we are grotesque and [shameless] fakes.” Tower after tower has been built and then fallen in the wake of our pride that attempts to take God’s place, which equates God with our own selfish agenda or desire.

We need a new Pentecost that will come as both a terror and a rapture, which will descend upon us as both a storm and a benediction. The poet T.S. Eliot declared that we’re going to be consumed either by the fire of Pentecost or by some other fire. So we must risk the purging and the cleansing, as well as the blessing and the bonding of Pentecostal power. Have we any other choice? God’s saving love in Jesus Christ is what frees us from our sin, our selfishness, our wrong-doing, and only God’s Spirit of love can bring us together in true communities of mutual respect, openness and trust.

You may remember Terry Anderson, the American, who was released a number of years ago after being held hostage in Lebanon for many months along with others. After his release Terry recuperated on Antigua. In an interview in Time magazine, he was asked, “Do you have any bitterness toward the people who held you for so long?” Terry Anderson replied, “I don’t have any time for it. I don’t have any need for it. It’s required of me as a Christian to put that aside, to forgive and try to understand them. I pray for them. I wish them no ill in their lives. My life is very, very busy—it is full of joy …”

The power of the Holy Spirit will, if we’re receptive, fill us with joy, stir the sludge of our selfish lives and bring us and bond us together in love that is stronger than death. A church that is alive in the Spirit is a church where its people love each other and can speak the language of God’s love to others. That’s how the church was born on Pentecost, as the Holy Spirit linked them together in the face of adversity and failure, disappointment and struggle. Those who were huddled in Jerusalem had the Easter promise of Christ’s resurrection upheld, and they began to live from it with incredible courage and conviction. The gifts of the Spirit were given to them and they realized they could do and be more than they ever imagined was possible or probable. The fruits of the Spirit in them transformed their relationships, made people fit to live with, redeemed the cruelty of the world, restored human dignity and nurtured hope where all reason to hope had been destroyed.

Our world needs Pentecostal power to overcome the barriers between us, to learn the language of love, to communicate toward understanding each other, to learn how to forgive one another. We need tongues of fire in order to speak the word of truth, to speak the word of healing, to speak the word of peace with justice, to announce the good news of God’s salvation and love for the world in Jesus Christ. So “Come, Holy Spirit, our souls inspire/And lighten with celestial fire/Thou the anointing Spirit art/Who dost thy sevenfold gifts impart/Praise to thy eternal merit/Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

Let us pray: Come, Holy Spirit of God. Come with power, energizing our hearts with holy boldness so that we dare to display your love before anyone and everyone. Come with your holy gifts of ministry so that as one body we can speak and interpret, discern and teach, heal and bless in the spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord. Come with blessing, so filling our souls with abundance that we delight to share our resources as freely and generously as did our ancestors in faith so long ago. Come, renew us, transform us, train us and send us so that we can become vessels of your life-giving love, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.