what are you trying to say?

Pentecost Sunday
Trinity United Church of Christ, Deerfield
Kent M. Organ, Interim Pastor
Texts: Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-21

What Are You Trying to Say?

    At Pentecost  a group of people  were able to speak  in such a way  that they were understood  by everybody.  It was a considered a miracle, a gift  of the Holy Spirit:  to be understood by everybody.  It makes you wonder,  what language they used.
    The word “Pentecost”  comes  from the day when it happened.  Pentecost is a Jewish festival  that arrives  fifty days after Passover – the word Pentecost meaning  “fifty.”  So, on this particular Pentecost,  it was also  fifty days  after  Jesus’ Resurrection.

    The disciples assembled in Jerusalem.  They were expecting something.  Jesus had told them  not to leave the city  until they had received power  there.  So they gathered, and continued to gather,  praying, singing songs, reading the Scriptures, sharing a meal “in remembrance of [him].” And suddenly, on that  morning,  there was a rush of wind,  and there appeared to them  tongues of fire.

    In the Hebrew Bible  fire and wind  are  familiar disguises  of God.  God approached Moses  in the burning bush.  God appeared in the desert after the Exodus  as  “a pillar of fire  by night.”  And the Hebrew word for Spirit  is the same word  as for wind.  
    So  when fire and wind  both appear,  this is major, something  world class.  God is here  in an extraordinary way, giving the followers of Jesus  an unexpected gift, the gift to speak  in such a way  that everyone will understand you.

* * * *
    Pentecost is a wonderful story in itself.  But it is really  the sequel  to another story,  about the Tower of Babel – Babel  probably being the root word  for  Babylon,  where there used to be  a huge tower  that  dominated the city.  
    Archaeologists say  Babylon  was a magnificent city, a remarkable achievement of human civilization.  But…  given the threat  that the empire to the north was  for ancient Israel,  in the view of the Bible  Babylon  was  an evil city, built on the deadly sin  called  pride.

    The Tower of Babel story begins, in the Revised Standard Version,  with this  intriguing sentence:  “Now the whole earth had one language  and few  words.”  What  “few words” do you suppose they were  if  the world  was the way  God intended.  
In the beginning,  there was  “one language  and few words.”  But then,  according to the ancient myth,  human beings built a tower  climbing to the heavens.  They are trying to usurp heaven, trying  to take the place  of God.  In the stories of ancient cultures, we see this kind of  over-reaching pride  most often  in Greek mythology.  The Greeks called it  hubris.  Hubris is the arrogance  that goes before a fall.  Which is the point of the Babel narrative.  With the result being:  many  languages,  many words – and no  communication.

    The Tower of Babel story  is a description of the human condition.  Writ large in the news  these days.  Just listen to the bravado,  the  boasting and bluster,  that emanates from the highest precincts in Washington these days.  Illustrating  humanity’s besetting sin,  pride.  And pride’s consequences  are  alienation  and separation.  Its cure  is  modesty,  humility,  which is a language  spoken  so that  all can be included, all can comprehend.  It makes you wonder,  What could that  original language have been  that all  people  could understand?

* * *
    There is something else about these texts  that we shouldn’t miss.  They both  concern cities:  Babylon  and Jerusalem.  Both  were real cities in the ancient world.  But in the Bible  they take on  a mythical dimension.  In the Bible, Babylon symbolizes  what is wrong with the world.  And Jerusalem  symbolizes  God’s plan  for the world.
    Babylon is the image  many people have of the city.  That suspicion  is deeply imbedded in  middle-American consciousness.  It is as if cities  are  intrinsically evil,  and small towns are inherently  good  and virtuous.  Generally,  Americans feel little loyalty to cities – except maybe  to their sports teams.  
    I remember my first exposure to Chicago.  My dad was doing post-graduate study at the University of Chicago.  I was in the eighth grade.  I came home from my first day at Ray School  very excited.  In my class  there were  Filipinos, Japanese, Germans, a Swedish girl, a Finnish boy, Mexicans, “Negroes,” and… – to me, this was the climax – and…  a boy from Atlanta, Georgia!  Chicago is amazingly  multinational,  multi-ethnic,  multi-religious.  How much more so now,  60-some years later.   A babel of tongues  are spoken in Chicago.  Is the city – like Babylon?  Or Jerusalem?

    “Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven   living in Jerusalem.”  Acts then proceeds to name them all:  Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesapotamians, the whole lot of them,  all  named,  so you would know  every nation and culture  was represented in that city.
    If Babylon  means babel, confusion,  Jerusalem  means peace,  harmony,  symbolically.  The name Jerusalem  is derived  from shalom, the Hebrew word  for peace:  Jeru – shalom,  the foundation  of  shalom.  It was the vision of the prophets  that some day  all the peoples of the earth  would come to Jerusalem, the city of peace,  and live together as one family.  It’s the vision of the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible,  that the perfect city  is  Jerusalem,  now existing in heaven, waiting  until history is complete,  when God’s will  is done  “on earth  as it is in heaven.”  Then  Jerusalem, the perfect city,  will descend to earth  and God  will dwell with us.
    What a beautiful image:  the city  as the model of what God has in mind  for the world, a place where all people  of all nations, all of God’s creation,  will dwell together in peace.  And at Pentecost  it was  that way  for a few days, or  maybe  just a few hours.  The point is, the day of Pentecost is remembered  as one extraordinary instance  when it happened:  God’s Spirit came down.  And Jerusalem, the city of shalom / salaam, became for a moment  what it is called to be,  a place where all  peoples  are reconciled  and remade  as one.

    Here’s the point:  it happened  because  these followers of Jesus  were empowered by the Holy Spirit  to transform  the city  that was filled with a babel of tongues  into one  community,  with a language that all  people  could comprehend.  If we wonder  what that language was,  it was surely  the language  of reconciliation  and understanding. 
* * * *
    We, in our time,  face a similar challenge.  America is now filled  with people and traditions  from every nation under heaven.  Every one of the world’s religions  can now be encountered in this country.  The question is:  What do we have here?  Babylon?  Or Jerusalem?  Is this  a curse?  or a blessing?  Clearly, a lot of middle America has decided that this  is Babel.  And wants to keep  racial and religious minorities  out. 
    But I would suggest  in light of Pentecost  that we, followers of Jesus,  have  no choice  but to see this  as a blessing.  God has invited us – and others – to be ambassadors of hospitality and reconciliation,  to speak in such a way  that all people can understand,  to challenge  whatever continues to alienate peoples,  and to create communities  in which  all the diversity of God’s creation  may meet.  
    Jesus said to the disciples, “Stay in Jerusalem.”  And they did,  until they received power  to discern a new city.  That power  enabled them to speak  so as to be understood.  The language they spoke  was a language of reconciliation.
    There is no question what the content of the message was.  It’s recorded in the second chapter of Acts.  It’s Peter’s sermon.  In it  he proclaimed  what God did in Jesus Christ,  and everybody understood that  in their own language.  That’s the crux of it.  It has to be spoken  in such a way  that it will be heard.
    I don’t expect it will be heard  if we proclaim it the way Peter did,  standing on the street corner  and shouting it.  Today,  that delivers a different message.  People just shake their heads and walk on by.  Briskly.  So,  what  language  would recreate the miracle of Pentecost  today,  the miracle of  universal  understanding?
    We search  for such a language  in ecumenical and interfaith efforts.  Your Council sought such a language  by signing the “Out of Many, One” anti-bigotry statement.  The Rainbow Flag out front is an attempt also.  Underneath such endeavors  there is one  original miracle.  That basic  Pentecost miracle  is simple,  transforming, persuasive – and  it can’t be faked.
It is  love.  Love  is the language  that all people understand.  Love is surely  the original language  with  few words.​

• with thanks to Raymond J. Bakke, Mark Trotter and D. J. Wiseman