Today is Pentecost, commonly
called the “birthday” of the church, the day we remember how God’s Spirit was
poured out on the apostles, but let’s go ahead and be honest about something: it
is difficult to understand the power of the Holy Spirit, or even describe what
the Spirit is. It’s the person of the Trinity that, at least I suspect for many
of us, presents the biggest challenge to our intellect. God the Father and God
the Son are, for the most part, easier to grasp, even if belief in them is weak
at times. But God the Holy Spirit? It’s often depicted as a bird. A bird can be
seen…maybe even photographed…but never tamed. Or look at the Spirit’s other metaphors
in Scripture: fire and wind. Neither of those can be touched, much less held. They
don’t really have substance or volume, yet their presence can always be felt. And
while they can at times be harnessed and channeled, they can never be fully controlled.
I mean, who can control the wind?
This is how God’s Holy Spirit
seems to function: it is energy, able to go anywhere, able to touch anyone, and,
most importantly, able to bring about change. It’s the side of God that we find
the most unpredictable, especially when we get in the habit of trying to
predict God. It’s the aspect of God’s nature that reminds us most of God’s
inherent inaccessibility, especially when we get in the habit of trying to
access God. The Holy Spirit is the person of the Trinity who draws us in to the
community of God’s people when we would rather make a name for ourselves.
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| The ' Little' Tower of Babel (Pieter Bruegel, 1564) |
That, as it turns out, was
the root problem at the Tower of Babel: humans wanted to make a name for
themselves. The ancient Hebrews had this pre-historic tale tucked away in the
early part of the book of Genesis that told about the time the human race tried
its hardest to access God, to literally climb into the heavens to reach him. In
direct defiance to God’s joyous command that they disperse after the flood and
fill the earth, humans decide instead to band together and build a tower. Instead
of fanning out with the Spirit’s power and trusting his promise wherever they
went, humankind opts for clumping together in one place and, to symbolize their
power, to build a tower up into the sky. It was all about making a name for
themselves, rather than thankfully receiving the name God had given them.
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| Ozymandias? |
The idea of “making a name
for themselves” was as well-known technique in ancient architecture, which we
know now from archaeology. The pyramid-like structures in Mesopotamia, where
this tower story originated, were often constructed by the rulers who wished to
be known forever. They would have the slaves inscribe the despots’ names in the
brick and cylinder seals that were placed in the foundations of these towers. But
like the toppled statue in Percy Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias,” eventually the
rulers would die and, like their temples, succumb to the sands of time. So much
for making a name for themselves.
For ancient Israel, the story
of what happened at the Tower of Babel helped explain several things, including
the diversity of world languages and cultures, and the difficulties in human
communication. Most of all, however, it illustrated how speech, as glorious a
development as it was, was just another arena where sin could wreak its havoc. In
other ancient religions’ pre-historic stories, diverse human languages came
about, for example, as a result of a war between the gods in the cosmos. But for
Israel and its one God—the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob—it was a result
of human selfishness and pride and our desire to use whatever means necessary
to reach God on our own terms.
Eventually the whole scheme
is undone when God causes everyone to start speaking gibberish. What had begun
as a plan to consolidate human strength becomes an accident of confusion. All
that’s left of Babel today is the term “babble,” a word that means incoherent
speech.
We are no less familiar with
the gifts and challenges of speech in our day: words can build people up and
words can break people down. Language has the power to bring us together, just
as it has the ability to alienate. In fact, I you think about it, speech and
language are in the same category as fire and wind. Words have energy and
power, but no volume or substance. And no one can hold a word or really harness
its power once it’s been spoken, can they? But, by golly, a word can bring
about change, can’t it?
So, altogether it really fits
that on the Day of Pentecost, as the disciples are, once again, gathered into
one place, speech becomes a conduit or catalyst for the work of the Holy
Spirit. There is fire and there is wind—the traditional hallmarks of the
Spirit’s presence—but there is also speech…loads of it, in all kinds of
languages! But this time there is no babbling. Instead, it’s intelligible. Each
of the foreigners gathered there is able to understand what the disciples are
talking about in their own native tongue.
In ancient times, humans had
striven to ascend to God by their own might. In the life and death of Jesus and
then again at Pentecost, God descends to us in our weakness. At Babel and at
countless times throughout history, humans had formed bricks to construct a
grand but lifeless monument that eventually goes unfinished. Here at Pentecost,
God uses people as living stones and assembles a temple which will finish his
work of creation. Long ago, people and their languages were scattered out of
their desire to make a name for themselves, and I presume we are still
scattering, even as I speak. Now, by God’s grace, we are also being gathered
back up through the only name we need
ever to be concerned about: the name of the one who gives himself for the
world.
Several years ago I was on on
a trip to China with a group of seminarians where we witnessed to a
Pentecost-like outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We had traveled to one of the
most remote, interior locations in China. No roads were paved there, and some
of the villages we visited still did not have electricity or running water. The
churches in which we worshiped, which had been built decades before when the
first missionaries had arrived, were very primitive and bore almost no
resemblance to our grand buildings in the global west. We sat through hours of
worship services spoken in tribal languages almost no one could translate
accurately and which were accompanied by no organ or guitar or drum. We were
served food that I couldn’t identify or name but which tasted, for the most
part, fairly good.
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| our group in Yunnan Province, China (January 2000) |
On the whole our group was
feeling very tired and very foreign, as if God had, in fact, scattered us rich,
Anglo-Saxon westerners to the end of the earth. I had started to focus on
myself and my own fears and needs quite a bit during those long hours of
incomprehensible worship in the un-air-conditioned heat when one little quartet—two
middle-aged men and two middle-aged women—formed in the middle aisle and faced
each other like a square. “What next strange custom am I going to have to
endure now?” I remember thinking to myself. Then the leader of the group lifted
his hand as if to direct a choir and when he dropped it, the four of them threw
their heads back and began to sing, in perfect harmony,“Hal-lelujah! Hal-lelujah…!” Unbelieveably, and without a single hiccup, they then went on to finish the entire
piece from Handel’s Messiah:
“And his name shall be cal-led, Wonderful Counselor!
Almighty God!
The Everlasting Father! The Prince of Peace!”
The Everlasting Father! The Prince of Peace!”
Once again, there in that
far-flung mud hut, we found ourselves drawn in by the name on earth that
matters the most: the one who has been crucified and who is raised to bring all
of God’s people into one communion. In spite of my boredom, in spite of my
pride, in spite of my self-centeredness, the Spirit still managed to reach out
and draw me in again. Like fire and wind, those words of gospel created a
change in everyone who was there, and that same Holy Spirit desires to bring
ever more into this God’s embrace, especially those who’ve never heard it
before.
We look today at these young
people on the front row, we look at their youthfulness and bright eyes, we look
at these confirmands with their talents and their gifts just beginning to blossom and we are tempted to say: the
world is yours, O child of God, go make a
name for yourself! Of course, we want them to prosper, but if all they are
to do is make a name for themselves, then it might end up turning out like
Babel in the long run.
No, no, no. On this
Pentecost, the Spirit teaches us to say to them—to say to everyone, in fact—don’t
worry about your own name so much, but instead the name of the one who saves us.
Call on his name and go make his
name known. Don’t waste too much energy building monuments that reach to the
sky, that attempt to dominate the world or escape from it. Hold back on that
desire to leave a mark that promotes your own self above all others’. Rather, build
monuments of compassion and justice that have his name inscribed on every
action, every prayer, and every word you speak. Those are the monuments that
will last. Jesus himself says his disciples will be capable of greater works
than he is. Ha-lle-lujah, my friends! Stand up, for God’s sake, and lend your voice to the quartet that draws the
scattered world in.
Thanks be to God!
The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.
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