Reversing Babel
Rev. Lee Ann Bryce
Community Christian Church
June 12, 2011
Acts 2:1-21
Seven weeks after Easter each year, Christians celebrate Pentecost. Though Easter and Christmas tend to have a lot more visibility, for me, Pentecost is the coolest Sunday of the year. Most folks associate Pentecost with the coming of the Holy Spirit and that’s certainly accurate – for Christians. What many might not realize is that before it marked the coming of the spirit, Pentecost was (and still is) a Jewish festival. After all, Acts 2:1 says, “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place,” meaning that Jews had gathered in Jerusalem, making their pilgrimage for the festival of Pentecost, more commonly known as the “Feast of Weeks.” The past few months we’ve been examining how the Jewish identity of the early followers of Jesus impacted the developing tradition of what would become Christianity. Pentecost takes place very early in the Christian story and we essentially have a group of Jews, mourning the death of Jesus, telling one another the stories of Jesus’ mysterious post-Easter appearances, and gathering in Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of Pentecost.
And then, the Christian story of Pentecost takes place. And it is quite a story, with fire and wind and lots of unexplained babbling in different languages. As the story goes, the Spirit came upon the community with the sound of a “rushing wind” and with “tongues of fire” resting on each of them. These are Jews, so they are going to understand the story in terms of symbols they hold dear. In the Hebrew scriptures, “wind” and “fire” are both associated with the presence of God. In the creation story in Genesis, the divine wind moved over the face of the waters. And famously, Moses speaks with God through the bush that burned and was not consumed. And so now, Acts is telling us, through the lens of Jewish story, that God is again at work, evidenced by wind and fire.
And then in v. 4, “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” And lo and behold, the Jews who had gathered from all over the world, speaking many different languages, could understand the babble because the followers of Jesus spoke in all different languages. Miraculously, they could understand in their own tongue exactly what was being said. They marveled, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?” Rather than unintelligible babble, they heard clearly intelligible testimony.
And here the author of Acts is alluding to another story from the Jewish tradition, the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. If you’re a little foggy on the Tower of Babel, let me refresh your memory. According to this story, the people of the earth once spoke one common language. But as a result of a prideful attempt to build a tower so tall that its top would go all the way to the heavens, the Israelite people were scattered into many different linguistic groups. Indeed the English word “babble,” come from the name “Babel.” The Tower of Babel is the ancient story, the myth, of how people became splintered into different groups. And as the fragmentation of humanity occurred, hostility between the groups arose. A way of being commenced in which people no longer understood each other or got along very well.
And so Acts, with its story of Pentecost is really about reversing Babel. At the tower of Babel, people were separated, divided. The Holy Spirit signifies people coming back together. For the author of Acts (who is also the author of Luke so he’s commonly referred to as Luke); for Luke, this is the significance of Jesus and the continuation of Jesus’ presence found in the power of the Spirit. This passage from Acts announces the inauguration of a new age in which the fragmentation of humanity was overcome.
In his epistle to the church in Ephesus, the apostle Paul put it like this, “For Christ is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law, with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace…”
And so on Pentecost Sunday we consider what it means to us to reverse Babel; to move from separation to wholeness; from division to unity. Many, many years have passed since this story of Pentecost was first told. Though Christ came, though the Spirit was sent with the promise of unity and wholeness, we continue to fall short. Still, there are these moments, these glimpses of the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. These glimpses keep us going.
I hope you’ve seen evidence of the peace of Christ in your life and in the world. Though sometimes we get discouraged and disheartened in the face of war and conflict, here’s a reminder of what universal community might look like. Think of this video clip as just one more little way we’re still reversing Babel.
(“Stand By Me” from Playing for Change: Songs Around the World)
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