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Preached - Pentecost Sunday...May 27, 2007
Readings: Gen 11:1-9; Ps 104:25-35; Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17 (25-27)
Not too long ago Allison and I rented the movie “Babel” starring Brad Pitt (amongst others). I’d heard a few things about the film, most notably that it had been nominated for 7 Academy Awards last year. Well, we thought it worth checking out at least. Well, we were wrong. Ok now, perhaps I’m being harsh. The film had an interesting premise—it charted three separate stories of different individuals around the world (from Japan, the US/Mexico, and Morocco) and how their stories interconnected. My beef wasn’t with this idea, or even if the main point of the movie, it was with the fact that it took them three hours to say it! I guess we were looking for something more action-oriented, humorous, or clever. And I suppose I was a little impatient with it because it seemed this was yet another film in the long line of recent movies that explore the brokenness of humanity.
Each individual story in the film portrayed the characters as relationally challenged, wounded, and struggling to understand one another. The different settings around the world simply amplified the point that we as human beings quite often do not speak the same language and the pain and hurt that results from our encounters with one another can be devastating. A husband and wife grow apart and take a trip in an effort to save their marriage only to have the wife shot accidentally and fight for her life (which was greatly impeded by US-Moroccan politics.) A Japanese girl is longing for sexual contact in an effort to feel loved after she witnesses her mother commit suicide. (it doesn’t hurt that she was deaf which made it difficult to make contact with others). A Mexican nanny is kept away from her home in the US after making a few foolish decisions.
The name for the film comes of course right out of our OT reading this morning. It is the story of the tower of Babel—how ancient humanity attempted to build for itself a city and tower to be proud of only to be thwarted by God scattering them throughout the earth and ‘confusing’ their language. In trying to talk to one another the people sound as if they’re ‘babeling’—making incoherent attempts at communicating with one another. It’s a strange story in a way—many scholars believe it was a story inherited from an earlier tradition that was inserted into Genesis. It portrays God as almost afraid of the great potential of humanity so he must interfere before they could threaten him. (Think of some of those ancient Greek tales of the battles between the gods and mortals). In this ancient culture (whose home is in modern day Iraq), the tower was a place where the gods and men would communicate. In one fell swoop God destroys a place of pagan sacrificial worship and eliminates the chances of humanity working together in common purpose in one language.
Some might focus on the injustice of this story—God is surely not cast in a positive light anyhow. And many struggle to find its meaning—were human being simply being too proud of themselves so God had to stop them? We can sort of understand this today—our culture still echoes with the sounds of Enlightenment thinking that maintained humanity’s limitless potential. But we also live under the shadow of Word Wars, terrorism, and violence in schools. Only a few weeks after the Virginia Tech massacre we are saddened to hear of a 14-year old Torontonian gunned down at school. We have no choice but to balance our optimism in humanity’s potential with the horror of our manifested evil.
It is a world where we truly do struggle to speak one another’s language. In the same geographical era where the tower of Babel was destroyed we have a war-torn nation as locals, rebels, and foreigners espouse different goals, different hopes, and different ways of getting there. Those living in poverty we cannot imagine buy into the hopes that hatred and fundamentalism offer so they refuse to hear reason, especially if it comes from those they believe to be children of the devil. The US steps in, probably with some noble intent, but also with the world looking on suspiciously as it chooses to help a country rich in oil while it has turned a blind eye to war-town and disease-ridden Africa for decades. Lies are spun, innocent are being killed, and people are not listening to each other and working together for the common good.
In our personal lives we also bear the cost of misunderstanding. How often do we hold onto painful memories, allowing them to shape us and fester within us, without opening ourselves up to the truth about their circumstances? I know of someone who can remember in great detail when he didn’t get a present he was asking for his birthday as a child—he bears it as a grudge rather than think about the possible reasons why his parents were unable to get him that present. We have marriages and relationships that are stressed and strained when one or both parties feel they are not being heard or understood. Books like “Women are from Venus; Men are from Mars” and “The Five Love Languages” are written to try to help people understand that we all communicate differently and have to understand that truth if we’re going to have healthy relationships. We express love differently, we show our feelings differently and at different times.
And in the context of our spiritual lives how often do we base our faith on what we are able to build on our own—like a great tower of Babel perhaps? We set out to do something that we hope to benefit us and place parameters on God to answer our prayers in the way we want them to be answered. I have to say I’ve been guilty of this in my life. This past week I was on a 5-day retreat—it was something I was looking forward to greatly. I’d hoped it to be a time of refreshing and a time where God would shower me with warm-feelings and dynamic inspiration. Well, 3 days in…and nothin’. I prayed, I was silent, I read scriptures, I followed the advice of my spiritual director. And I got nothin’. No inspiration, no warm feelings, and I still felt tired.
Well I pouted, I complained, I was angry. I thought I’d just give the whole thing up. And after stewing in my own self-pity for at least a day and a half, I realized something. I was blatantly guilty of doing the same thing I’ve warned this congregation about—putting God in a box or treating him like a genie in a bottle. It’s so easy for us to think that if we just do such and such (pray, read the Bible, go to church, receive the Eucharist) that God will have to do what we ask of him. Or we think if I just do enough good things then that will fix my problems. In my own week I have to say that God exposed me as being self-centered to the core. It really was a revelation of sorts—I mean we all know we can be selfish at times, most of us aren’t too proud to admit that. But do we really know how truly self-absorbed we are?
How often do we have conversations where instead of giving our whole attention to the other person we’re already formulating what we want to say next? How often do we make day-to-day decisions that would benefit us over others? Whether it’s finding an excuse to take the car to work that day (rather than be driven or walk), weaselling out of making dinner that night, or feeling ‘too tired’ to spend time with children, we all struggle to put others before ourselves. And I think its self-centred pride that is at the root of the tower of Babel story and in fact in the entire Scripture—and it is at the root of our inability to understand each other.
And so we all fail to communicate to one another because we’re so much slower to listen. We want to be heard. We want to make ourselves known and leave our marks. We don’t want to be inconvenienced, and we only choose to listen to the truth if it suits our purposes. Our world is broken because we all dance to the beat of our drums, and we all speak our own languages.
So what hope is there?
To a group of men who had their own agendas, their own interests and different backgrounds, Jesus promised that he would send someone to lead them in truth. Truth about themselves, and truth about God. This ‘Advocate’ and ‘Helper’ would comfort them and free them from their fear and guilt. He would come to remind the disciples about Jesus’ teaching, and he would give them the power to bring this teaching into reality. The Holy Spirit would initiate a new era for God’s people. It would be a time characterized by great demonstrations of God’s power and truth. The sick would be healed, God’s Word will be preached with authority and conviction, the lost would be found and brought into a community characterized by selflessness and generosity.
Growing up in the PentecostalChurch I’ve heard countless sermons preached on Acts 2. Almost all of them dealt with the wonder of God’s power displayed in the tongues of fire, the rushing of the wind, and the dynamic preaching of God’s Word and mass conversion. We were always invited to join the disciples in the upper room in prayer expecting that the Holy Spirit would arrive to transform our lives with his fire and truth. It’s a message we probably don’t hear a lot about in Anglican circles—sounds too charismatic for our good taste perhaps. But we ought to open to God’s Spirit in whatever way he wishes to work.
For we may not have tongues of fire resting on our heads, but we have been assured that the Holy Spirit lives within each of us. The Holy Spirit is at work transforming our hearts and minds, should we allow Him and participate in this work. And the results of this holy work will be seen…The people in this story are amazed as the disciples begin speaking in languages they can understand. They hear God’s message in a unique way and are moved by its power. The curse at Babel has been reversed: the people are given a holy language inspired by the Holy Spirit that all could understand. The results speak for themselves, 3000 are added to Jesus’ followers that day.
But what’s more, these people do not become church seat-warmers or regular donators. They do not fit our standards of what it means to be a Christian. Our text reads later in the chapter that these converts devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship and had “all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” (2:44-5) The language of the Holy Spirit is the language of love, it is the power to let go of selfishness and self-centredness as one is bathed in God’s presence.
This morning we celebrate the inauguration of the season of Pentecost, and we recognize the continuing presence of the Holy Spirit in God’s Church and in our lives. Will we be open to all the Spirit would teach us today? Will we be sensitive to God’s voice so that we might meet the needs of one another? Let us take time this morning in prayer, gathered in one room, prepared to receive the Holy Spirit afresh in our lives. May God’s living Spirit renew us again, bringing us God’s good news which would free us from our self-centredness and enable us to communicate openly with one another in love and charity.
Amen.
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