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Pentecost

Acts 2
1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[a] as the Spirit enabled them.
5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,[b] 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”


The wettest spring on record finally came to an end, and the children of Noah and Mrs. Noah spread all over the earth.

And they came to the Plain of Shinar. And they said, let’s build ourselves a city, constructed with bricks from clay and we’ll use bitumen as mortar (must be a biblical story from Alberta). And they decided to include a tower, not just any tower, but a tower to reach to the heavens, to make a name for themselves throughout the world. And so they did.

Now God came down and saw what these people were doing, and God being God, was able to quickly get the heart of the problem. “These people,” God said, “speak one language, planning together and working together, and proving that when they work together, they can achieve the impossible.”

Remember these are early days for God. Punishing Adam and Eve, cleansing the earth at the flood, God appears to be coming to terms with the tension between human disobedience and the power to destroy them all.

Back to our story, God hits upon a plan: ‘If I confuse their language, so that they can’t understand each other, then take the added measure of spreading them all over the earth, it seems unlikely that they will be building any more tall towers.’ It was good in theory. Then the editor adds a note to the end of the story, this story recorded in the 11th chapter of Genesis, saying, “This is why it was named Babel, because the LORD confused the language of the whole world.”

Now, Babel is a funny word. The note in my Bible suggests it comes from Babylonia, the region in the east where all this happened. Then it suggests Babel is Hebrew for confused, a suggestion that might better fit the editors of my Bible. My own theory, though the Internet tells me I’m not the first to think of this, is that Babel is simply onomatopoeia, a word that does what it says. Spoken at once, these languages sounded like nothing more than babble.

I sometimes wonder if Toronto is the story of the Tower of Babel in reverse. Back in 1968, when Canadian National first decided to build a tower to the heavens, Toronto looked pretty different from today. The world was on its way to our fair city, but it was near the beginning of our story of great diversity.

So they began to build, and when it was complete, the world began to notice the city by the lake, and our open spirit, and down to today we have the tower and we have a population that speaks over 140 language and dialects. We are not just diverse, but the most diverse in the world, according to the United Nations, so take that New York and London!

So here we are, sitting in the shade of our tall tower, speaking 140 languages and dialects, and living in relative harmony. Then God spoke:

6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,[b] 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”

I sometimes wonder if Pentecost is the story of the Tower of Babel in reverse. Back in Shinar, languages were invented to confuse and divide, but in Jerusalem that day, languages are used to clarify and unite. Here are the Galileans, humble fishers and farmers, speaking the languages of the known world, and even speaking a dead language, the language of Medes, just in case we forget that the message of Jesus is for all time.

They speak and they declare the wonders of the God, then Peter preaches, and we read that those who were moved by the message were baptized that day and 3,000 were added to their number.

Does this mean that the Babel is ended, that we have overcome the burden of human division? Clearly, no. The scattered peoples of the world erected new towers, and build weapons and defenses, and moved against each other on far too may occasions, and generally made a mess. Pentecost is the birthday of the church, and the beginning of a new age in human development, but not the answer to the very problem that God identified near the beginning: we continue to demonstrate that nothing we set our minds to is impossible.

No, maybe you’re thinking to yourself that this is, in fact, the promise of humanity, that nothing we set our minds to is impossible. And you would be partially right, for our clever minds and opposing thumbs have done extraordinary things, taking us from caves to the moon in just a few thousands years, a mere speck in the sands of time. And for you ‘glass half-full’ people I have only one word: Plutonium.

You see, back at the beginning of the atomic age, the scientists who were developing the brave new world of nuclear energy were confronted with a choice: thorium or uranium. Thorium is more abundant than uranium, it is less radioactive, meaning unable to meltdown in the same way we know uranium can, and useless to anyone wanting to make an atomic bomb. So governments chose uranium, and its evil by-product plutonium, as the atomic fuel of choice. Neil Reynolds, in describing all this, points to the wonderful irony found in the names: Thorium is named for Thor, the guardian of the earth, while Plutonium is named for Pluto, the God of Hell.

So the day of Pentecost was not the answer to the problems of the world, and not the beginning of an obvious progression toward some type of human perfection. Going a step further, the birth of the church was clearly not the answer to the problems of the world, and not the location of an obvious progression toward some type of human perfection. Quite the opposite, in fact. For the church is the place were broken people come together, where those in need find other people in their need and they speak. They speak in any one of 140 languages and dialects (in Toronto at least) and they declare the wonders of God. They declare God’s grace, that unconditional love that only God can give. They declare God’s mercy, the forgiveness extended in the face of all of our foolishness, and they declare God’s compassion, best demonstrated in God’s son, Jesus the Christ.

And is was Jesus, in the simplest way possible, that described the heart of Pentecost long before Pentecost, in close to his shortest parable of all:

And again he said, Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God? It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. (Luke 13.20,21)

To Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome, Cretans and Arabs, the disciples of Jesus were leaven, nothing more than common yeast, hidden in three measures of meal untill the whole world is leavened. It can’t happen over night, or even in 2,000 years, but slowly, mostly hidden, and happening still. It is Pentecostal hope, and the only hope we have. Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 3:34 AM