Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

The Feast of Pentecost, Year C
How Is It That We Hear In Our Own Native Language?
Deacon Richard Buhrer

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”

The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.[1]

The story I just read is obviously the story of the Tower of Babel from the Book of Genesis. Today’s reading from the Book of Acts in, in fact, what scholars might call a midrash on this passage from Genesis. Midrash is a rich form of Jewish biblical interpretation and one form of midrash is telling a story that is really a commentary on another story.

So in the story of the Tower of Babel, we find human beings united and conspiring to reach up to the heavens. This is another form of the temptation that Eve faced in the Garden: The serpent told her: “You will not die (when you eat the fruit of the tree); for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”[2] So once again, we find human beings trying to steal what God has in fact given us as a gift. So to prevent the realization of their schemes, God confounds their speech and introduces a new level of diversity in the human family, alienating one from another, so that collaboration is no longer possible.

In spite of the emphasis our culture puts on individualism, we are at the core really herd beasts. I’ve heard it said that in the depths of evolutionary time we came up from bands of hunter-gatherers in kinship groups of only about thirty individuals. If you have ever seen films of chimpanzees or rhesus monkeys when a stranger arrives in their territory, how anxious and agitated and aggressive they become, you can understand why people different than ourselves upset us when they enter our space. Difference is often, even usually, a source of alienation between us. And the range of diversity in the human family is truly amazing: In 1951 the linguist Richard Pittman (1915–1998) produced a mimeographed list of the known languages of the world, his "ethnologue," as he called it, identified 46 languages. The 15th edition of Ethnologue printed in 2005 identifies 7,299 known languages, including 103 languages previously unidentified in the 14th edition of 2000 and  includes 497 languages threatened with "language death" because they have fewer than 50 speakers.[3]

There is a medical condition called “fluent aphasia” where a person makes sounds that may or may not be recognizable words but they do not make any sense in the person’s native language. As a student nurse, I once cared for a woman who had just had a stroke. All she could do was recite recipes: Take one cup of water and pour it into a bowl. Add one teaspoon of flour and stir…” on and on she would go—frowning, visibly anxious and frightened that she could not make herself understood. As I listened to her, I noticed that water kept coming up repeatedly in these recipes. I asked her if she was thirsty and gestured with the water cup. That was the problem; she was thirsty and could not ask directly for water.

I’ve often thought since then how frightening it must be to wake up and speak in what seems to you to be perfectly understandable language and to face the blank looks on the faces of the people around you, clearly unable to understand you. This was the experience at the Tower of Babel, and in the light of the new level of diversity, the people scattered and were separated.

The day of Pentecost was an experience both similar and different from that at the Tower of Babel. “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”[4] The Spirit (in Greek the word is pneuma and means both breath and wind) rages trough the house where they were, and creates divisions between the members of the first church. Each begins to speak in a different language. But rather than alienating them from each other, their love of God and each other keeps them together, celebrating God’s goodness and even this gift of diversity in the community. Rather than eradicating their differences, the Holy Spirit, literally, inflames them.

“Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’”[5] So this early church, because they could embrace this sudden inflammation of their individuality, can preach the gospel to all nations.

And Peter, in spite of his bravado at the Last Supper, turned craven and afraid during the suffering of the Lord. He denied knowing him three times in one night; now Peter is transformed, strong, assertive and clear spoken: “But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them”[6] The danger has not diminished, that will become clear as the story unfolds and Stephen the deacon is martyred, but the danger does not make a difference any more.

So what does this say to us today as we celebrate this gift of the Holy Spirit? St. Paul’s has a long history of not only tolerating but almost reveling in diversity. For more than thirty years, we have welcomed  lesbians and gay men among us. But we can do more. We are still pretty homogenous in race and class and socioeconomic status. We need to accept and become comfortable with the inflammation of our differences. We can be even more welcoming than we are. We have to do this mindfully—I don’t want us to count up the “different” people among us like notches on a gun. What matters is not who comes to be with us, what is important is that we welcome everyone, absolutely everyone.

How do we do this? I think that the most important process is that we learn to really listen to each other and to the guests that God brings us. There is a Benedictine proverb: “Hospes venit, Christus venit”: When a guest comes, Christ comes. Father Eric Law, a Chinese-American Episcopal priest has written several books on the subject of multiculturalism, inclusion and the church. He teaches a method of interaction called mutual invitation, where we invite others to share their thoughts with us and (for white folks, this is the hardest step) wait for others to invite us to share our thoughts.

What might have happened at the Tower of Babel, if the people had been able to overcome their fears, listen patiently to one another and learn each other’s language?

Let us pray for this gift of hospitality and openness to diversity, this patience and willingness to learn each other’s ways. Let us pray that we can be fearless, unimpressed by our differences and embrace each other and all the human family with love and grace and joy. Let us pray that God will help us grow in hospitality and openness to diversity, to help us enjoy our differences and love one another deeply. That way the promise of today’s Gospel and the story of Pentecost will indeed be realized among us: “I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”[7]