Sermon for the Day of Pentecost

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There are people in this world who enjoy a good fight, but I am not one of them.

I tend to enjoy conversations more when people with differing opinions can come together on some kind of common ground. As a result, I try to look for that common ground whenever I find myself in a debate with someone. I think that, if we can just identify the core values on which we agree, then we will see that we don’t really disagree, and we can work out the minor details of whatever differences we appear to have.

I imagine that I am a typical midwestern Episcopalian in this respect. We are nice people. We don’t go in for loud fights about rigid dogmas. We like everyone to get along. Our liturgical church tradition allows for a great diversity of theological interpretations. After all, we are descended from the Church of England, the land of good manners, so politeness is in our DNA.

Most of the time, this tendency serves us well. There are times, however, when it doesn’t. When I worked as a chaplain, I once had a patient who was a very bitter and bigoted man. He would rant for hours and use all kinds of ethnic slurs against the groups of people he didn’t like.

In particular, he believed that Hispanic people “would never fully integrate into American society” because they were too different from white people. The funny thing, though, is that this patient didn’t realize that I have one parent from Philadelphia and another from San Juan, Puerto Rico. With my light-colored skin and English last name, he assumed that I was just another white guy like him, but in reality, I am half-Hispanic. Our family integrated so well into “American society” that the dividing line between cultures ran right through the middle of my own body.

I could have said something about this to my patient, but I didn’t. This was partially because healthcare chaplains are trained to avoid controversial topics with patients, but it was also because I simply didn’t feel like dealing with it. By keeping silent, I allowed a part of my identity to be erased in the interest of keeping the peace.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had politely mentioned the truth about my ancestry to my patient. Maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything at all, but then again, maybe that might have been an opportunity for the Holy Spirit to open up an avenue for growth in this man. I will never know because he passed away before I got to do another visit with him.

There are all kinds of ways that people build walls of protection around themselves. Sometimes, it takes the form of a hostile attitude that pushes other people away. Sometimes, as in my case, it takes the form of polite silence, with a smile and a nod. Sometimes, as in the case of today’s first reading from the book of Genesis, it takes the form of a literal wall around a great city and its mighty tower.

The legend of the Tower of Babel is a cautionary tale about the downside of human progress. The human race, as we read in the text, settled in the land of Shinar and spoke a single language. According to most traditional interpretations, God felt threatened by human progress, so they punished the people by confusing their languages and scattering them across the face of the earth.

I find this interpretation unsettling. Human progress, after all, is largely a good thing. In the last hundred years alone, humanity has cured diseases, ventured into outer space, and reduced extreme poverty to a fraction of where it was in previous generations. On the other hand, we have also continued to pollute the land, water, and air of our planet, constructed nuclear bombs with the power to destroy entire cities, and committed cold-hearted acts of genocide with industrial efficiency, as we did in the Holocaust. Progress, it seems, is a double-edged sword.

In the beginning of the biblical story, when God first created the heavens and the earth, they invited humanity to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28). But humanity, it seems, had another idea. They preferred to remain stationary, centralize power, and maintain a homogeneous culture in a walled city. This was the opposite of what God intended for the human race. God had made a huge planet for humanity to explore, with all kinds of diverse life-forms and creatures. God meant for the human race to be explorers, but we settled for being settlers in the place where we were.

This is the real reason why God confused the languages of the people of Shinar at the Tower of Babel: not to punish us, but to push us out of the nest and into the wide world. Diversity of language and culture is not a curse, but a blessing. It calls us out of our comfort zones to become the kind of people we were always meant to be.

Fast-forwarding to this morning’s New Testament lesson, from the Acts of the Apostles, we read about the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus’ disciples and allowed their message to be heard and understood by people of many languages. Some interpretations of this passage have understood this miracle as a reversal of what happened at the Tower of Babel. The confusion of languages was resolved by the movement of the Holy Spirit.

Once again, though, I find this interpretation unsettling. It is based on the former assumption that what happened at Babel was an act of punishment. But, if I am correct in thinking of the diversification of languages as a blessing, then what happened at Pentecost is a fulfillment of that original blessing. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the people were able to discern a single message that was being communicated through multiple languages. Underneath the diversity of cultural expressions was a common thread of understanding: One Spirit speaking one message in many different ways. This interpretation of the Tower of Babel and the Day of Pentecost has profound implications for how we practice our faith as Christians today.

We live today in a world that is both more connected and more isolated than ever. Through the miracle of telecommunications, we have the ability to talk to people on the other side of the world in real time. Through the magic of the internet, we have access to a vast supply of information that previous generations couldn’t even dream of. However, our human tendency to gather in homogeneous groups of people who think alike, look alike, pray alike, vote alike, and love alike has led us to seek shelter from the vastness of the universe in echo chambers of people who will only confirm what we think we already know.

Kindred in Christ, I think it is past time for us to reclaim the double blessing of Babel and Pentecost in our own day. The price of remaining isolated in sheltered towers of like-minded individuals is nothing less than the survival of our species itself. As the great American intellectual Benjamin Franklin once said, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we will all hang separately.”

God is once again calling us to discern the voice of the one Spirit speaking in diverse tongues. What this requires of us is that we listen intently to the voices of our neighbors who speak different languages, practice different religions, vote for different candidates, and love different partners than we do. It requires also that we speak courageously, tolerantly, and lovingly from our own perspectives on these issues.

Let us not hide in fear behind walls of hostility or politeness, when it comes to the questions that matter most, but “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15) so that we might discern the voice of the one Spirit who speaks through many languages. Let us place our faith in God, who inspired St. Paul to write:

“There are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit, and there are varieties of services but the same Lord, and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”

(1 Corinthians 12:4-7)

Beloved kindred, let us not give way to the cynicism of this age that despairs of finding common ground and sets humanity on a common course toward oblivion. Let us instead place our faith in Christ, who came that we “may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Let us take the risk of speaking our truth and listening with love, that we too might hear the voice of the one Spirit who speaks in many ways.

Amen.