“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place . . .” so begins the second chapter of Acts, and because we all have read the firstchapter of Acts—haven’t we?—we know who the “they” are. They’re the apostles, recently augmented by one Matthias, chosen by lot to replace the, ahem, recently departed Judas. Why, you might ask, was it so important to have twelve apostles? After Judas left, couldn’t they have limped along with eleven, maybe inviting in a “guest apostle” or two when things got busy? Well, there’s a symbolic reason if nothing else. The number twelve is significant because as the first community of Christ, the first “church,” if you will, they represented the new Jerusalem and how many tribes of Israel were there? Exactly . . . twelve.
Anyway, there they were, together in a house—traditionally the one with the “upper room,” though Luke doesn’t say so—they’re together in a house to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Pentecost. Actually, Pentecost wasn’t what the Jewish people called it, in Hebrews it’s Shavuot,the Festival of Weeks, a major holiday celebrating the giving of the Ten Commandments. Pentecost is Greek for “fiftieth,” so named by Greeks because it came fifty days after Passover. We Christians celebrate the coming of the Spirit—some call it the birthday of the Church—fifty days after Easter, so we retain the same name: Pentecost, that is to say, fiftieth.
And suddenly, a sound like a rushing of wind filled the house . . . and it wasn’t some little breeze, it wasn’t a genteel zephyr, come to softly rustle their hair, it was a violent wind, it was powerful . . . if you’ve ever been through a tornado, I expect you associate this with the proverbial freight train sound that everyone and their brother likens to such an event . . . I know Ido . . . I think of the time my son Michael and I were huddled in a bathroom with four snarling cats and the same number of dogs, and though it was a relatively small tornado, and it didn’t last long, it was loud and scary. Even though it didn’t sound much like a train to me . . .
To Luke, it was a sound likea violent wind, and notice the “like” part—it clearly wasn’ta violent wind, but it was like one, and I bet they were “sore afraid,” or to put it in modern terms, scared out of their gourds. I know Iwould have been . . . but wait, there’s more! Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each apostolic head. And once again, notice the hedging language . . . they were as offlames, likeflames, but clearly were not. As we talked about last week, sometimes all we can do, when faced with the ineffable, is say what something is like . . . it’s why aliens in science fiction movies bear suspicious resemblances to humans or rocks or other animals. Sci fi authors have just as much trouble imagining something outside the bounds of their experience as Luke did.
But though we think about the fire—that’s why we wear red on Pentecost—what Luke calls the things that appear is “tongues,” like that squishy thing in our mouths, only these are divided, as in a snake’s. And I have a lot more trouble picturing thatthan flames, which is probably why Luke described them this way . . . actually, it sounds kinda gross to me . . . were they, like, tongues that had been ripped out of someone’s mouth? Were they coated with someone’s previous meal? It’s probably good that we emphasize the flame-y part.
Except . . . that the divided tongues represent the divided nations, the people of which spoke different languages, different tongues. . . and of course, we know how thatcame about, don’t we? Pam just read it . . . after the flood, all people of the world spoke the same language, and they decided they were going to build a tower, a tower that would reach up to heaven. And God said “let us go down and confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech.” And God scattered them over the face of the earth, and I don’t know about you, but this story sounds familiar . . . Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, so that they’ll know just as much as the Lord . . . the people of Shinar build a tower so they can reach heaven . . . God says of Adam “the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil” and casts them out of Eden . . . in the story Pam read, God worries that there will be nothing they cannot do, and says “let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech." In both cases, the humans threaten to get too big for their britches, to become like God . . . the sin of Babel, and the garden, is the sin of hubris, of supreme pride and arrogance . . . trying to become great on their own. Trying to erase the distinction between creator and created . . .
And tongues divided by sin rest upon the heads of the twelve—who represent the New Israel—andthe Holy Spirit fills them and they begin to speakin those divided tongues themselves, they begin to speak in the Babel of that half-built tower—those divided tongues wereupon them, after all—and because it’s Pentecost, there are people from all nations there, all the nations created when God scattered the people so long ago, and the thing is,the thing is,they each hear in their own language . . . Parthians, Medes and Elamites . . . Mesopotamians, Judeans and Cappadocians . . . Phrygian, Pamphylians, Egyptians and Romans . . . each hear them in their own tongue, it is as if the curse of Babel, the sin of pride and idolatry that God had reacted to millennia before, has been erased, wiped out by the power of the Holy Spirit.
And though we remember and celebrate Pentecost for the coming of the Holy Spirit, I think it’s equally important that we consider what that Spirit did when it came . . . it’s not just a story of the coming of power, of empowerment of the nascent Church to do God’s work—although it certainly is that—it’s a story of redemption as well. It’s a story that points to God’s continuing acts of redemption, and the role of the Spirit within them . . . the sin of Babel, the sin of the divided tongues, is the sin of Adam and the sin of Eve, a propensity of human beings to attempt to elevate themselves to the level and place of their creator. The coming of the Spirit erases that, the nations can understand each other again, through the power of the Spirit of God. And it’s a symbol of the unifying power of God, of erasing differences and God’s overwhelming love for everyone,as the bumper sticker says, no exceptions.
But not everybody thinks that’s a good thing, do they? Luke says that while some are amazed and asks what it all means, others sneer saying “They are filled with new wine.” And it’s easy to dismiss these people as sinners, as unbelievers, as somehow evil people, and yet . . . is that really the case? Are they really all that different from a lot of people, who feel threatened by the different, by those who are not like them?
As the title of this sermon indicates, whenever I read this story I can’t help thinking of another one, about a girl from Kansas heading down a road of yellow bricks. She’s with a couple of characters who couldn’t be more different from her—one made of tin and the other of straw—and as the forest gets darker and the road overgrown, and strange things chitter at them from the trees, they imagine the worst, chanting “Lions and tigers and Bears, Oh My!” . . . even though they haven’t seen one of those, even though none of them have ever seen one, they are afraid of what they do not know, afraid of the unknown.
And I imagine there is some of that in the reaction of the scoffers, a little “Parthians, Elamites and Medes, Oh My!” about them, a bit of “Phyrgians, Arabs and Jews, Oh No!” going on . . . it seems to be a human thing to be afraid of what we don’t understand, isn’t it? That’s why we call them “phobias,” from the Greek word for fear . . . we have Anglophobia, fear of the English, gerontophobia, fear of the aged, and homophobia, fear of gay people. Our current obsession with Hispanics in this country is, in my opinion, a species of xenophobia, the fear or dislike of foreigners.
Now these would be harmless except for one thing: our fear turns to dislike which turns to hatred, and from there, it’s a short jump to demonization, a process the psychologist Carl Jung called “projection.” Jung says we ascribe all the things inside of us that are socially unacceptable—things like greed, prejudice, dishonesty, laziness—onto those who are different from us. Soon, we are blaming all our troubles on them, all the things that are wrong with our country, our society, our communities. The German people—good Christians, a lot of them—became convinced that Jews were the source of all their problems. The poor are often demonized—they’re lazy or stupid or licentious—and programs to help them are dragging our economy down. And in a time of gridlock in congress and children being gunned down in schools, many are convinced that if we just got rid of “illegal aliens” everything would be ok.
Dorothy and friends feared the unknown, feared those lions and tigers and bears, but when they finally met a lion, they discovered that their fears were groundless, at least in the case of thatlion . . . once they spent some time with one, communicated with one, they found their fears to be groundless. Familiarity may breed contempt, but it also breeds understanding and peaceful coexistence. And it all begins with communication.
Friends, the message of Pentecost is not just the coming of the Holy Spirit, the coming of power, but it’s also what that power entails . . . it’s not the power of domination, as some would have it, or the power to accumulate wealth and influence. It’s the power to communicate, the power to understand. It’s the power and ability to reconcile ourselves and others to the nations, to people who are, like us, creations of a loving God. Amen.
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