Day of Pentecost
May 19, 2024

They All Spoke in One Voice

Tom Are Jr.
Interim Pastor

Genesis 11:1–9
Acts 2:1–13

Pentecost tells of a remarkable day when the spirit of God fell on the followers of Jesus in such a powerful way that they moved out into the streets, streets filled with Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, Cretans, and Arabs, … The whole world was there.

Filled with God’s spirit, these guys from Galilee spoke to all of them, in their own language. No Rosetta Stone, just talking to Elamites in whatever language Elamites speak. It was a miracle.

It was also a moment when it appears that God does some damage control from an earlier time. I’m talking about the Tower of Babel. The story claims the earth had one language and everyone used the same words. God evidently saw this as a problem, so God confused the language so that we would not understand one another. Help me. How is this helpful?

It seems having the same language would aid communication. If we all spoke the same language, then mutual understanding, even unity, would be enhanced, wouldn’t it? Why is God so concerned about the human family speaking one language? I mean it’s hard enough to understand each other when we speak the same language.

If you have ever said this — “I know that is what I said, but it’s not what I meant” — then you know that even when we speak the same language things can get confusing. Why would God want confusion?

If I understand the text, Babel is about rightsizing us in the presence of God. Stay with me.

First: the Tower of Babel identifies the temptation to assume that what is a norm for me is a universal norm. When we surround ourselves with people who use all the same words, think the same things, view the world the same way, there is comfort. That’s not a bad thing. But it’s tempting to assume that our view is the universal norm. And the temptation when we meet folks who don’t share our worldview is to assume their difference is deficient.

You know what this is like. As a little kid you go to a friend’s house. Your buddy invites you over for the day. But at lunchtime things get confusing, because your mom cuts the grilled cheese sandwich in halves, but your friend’s mom cuts it in triangles, and all of a sudden you are eating with Parthians, Medes, and Elamites. Confusing.

You go to college, and while you can’t begin the day without making the bed and putting everything in its place, your roommate has a more fluid organizational plan. You are living among Cretans. Confusing.

You get married and discover that your beloved has to have blinking lights on the Christmas tree, when everyone knows plain lights are what Jesus prefers. And you don’t know if you have married one from Pamphylia, but you know she’s not from around here.

When we surround ourselves with those who talk our talk, it’s easy to assume that what is a norm for me is the universal norm. But that makes our worldview and therefore our faith too small. God doesn’t want our worldview to be small. So God confused speech, so we would be reminded that truth is larger than my experience.

A second spiritual lesson in this tower story is the danger of inappropriate pride that can be associated with the way I see the world.

Fred Craddock said he was on an airplane flying into Oklahoma City. Seated next to him was a young couple, whom Craddock described as wearing their vacation home with them. He asked them, “Where are you traveling from?” Europe. “What did you see?” She said, “Oh, I loved the Alps. The Alps took my breath away. I could have stayed there forever.”

As the plane dipped down toward Oklahoma City, she pulled out a camera, pressed it against the window, and started clicking. Fred said, “Pardon me, you’ve been in the Alps and you’re taking pictures of Oklahoma?” She looked at him and said, “Of course, this is home” (Fred B. Craddock, Craddock Stories, p. 85).

Love of home is a good thing. Cherishing the way of life that home taught us reveals a posture of gratitude. But sometimes that gratitude can devolve into arrogance. Arrogance about our ways is not a good thing.

In the mid-1980s I traveled to Nicaragua with a program called Witness for Peace. I stayed with a family there with two boys, Marco and Jose. My Spanish was limited. By limited I mean I knew “gracias,” “adios,” “taco.” So, unless I was in a situation when I needed to say “Thanks for the taco; I gotta go” I was out of luck. But Marco and Jose were patient guys. We sat together for hours communicating. We used gestures and drew in the dirt, a few words. They were patient.

I didn’t realize how patient until I returned home. We landed in Houston. The first thing I wanted was McDonald’s. I’ve changed a bit since then. After two weeks of rice and beans, I wanted a Big Mac. I found a McDonald’s in the airport. As it turns out, the man in front of me in line was Latino. His English language skills were lacking. He tried to order, but it was slow. The man behind the counter said to him, “I’m sorry, there’s a line. Come back when you can speak English.”

Then he said to me, “How can I help you?” I said, “I’m not hungry anymore.”

If I understand this text, it points to a spiritual temptation of arrogance. The assumption that the ways of home are the ways of God.

But there is a third, and I think more important, spiritual lesson here. And that is the consequence of not simply being unable to understand one another, but of not trying.

The text says they all spoke the same language, and I think, sure they did. How did that happen? The Internet tells us that there are 7000 languages spoken today. Admittedly Lemerig, a language spoken on an island near Australia is only spoken by two people, so it won’t last long. There will be fewer languages, but still 7000 languages.

But at Babel they all spoke one? The only way for everyone to speak the same language is if some languages are not being heard. The only way for everyone to use the same words is for some voices to be silenced.

This is the ultimate concern of the text.

The effort to silence voices is as old as Genesis and as current as today’s news. Harrison Butker, the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, made news this week. It is reported that while speaking at Benedictine College, a conservative Catholic school in Kansas, he called the LGBTQ+ community sinful and told the women graduating with their college degrees that their real purpose in life is to get married and have children. Just because you sound like you are living in the ancient age when the scriptures were written doesn’t mean you are biblical. I find such remarks belittling and out of step with loving one’s neighbor. While I do not agree with his words, I am also concerned that the reaction by thousands was to sign a petition to have him fired. It is one thing to oppose the message; it is something else to attack the person. Colin Kaepernick knows something of that.

Even more common, according to PEN America, in a majority of states, school boards or state legislators have passed policies and sometimes laws to ban books from school curriculum and libraries. Again, according to PEN America, there are identifiable targets of these bans. The effort is to remove the voices of people of color and the LGBTQ+ community. Books that address life among these neighbors, or are authored by these neighbors, are finding themselves targets for silencing. I scanned a list of banned books and was surprised to see that, while most of them I did not recognize, nevertheless I have read a good number of them. I am baffled as to why we would not want our children to know what life is like with folks who may speak a different language, use different words than we use in my house. When I assume my experience is universal, oppression is the result. Perhaps these legislators will want to ban the book of Genesis as well, because they effort to insist my story is the true story and your story can’t be told — well, it seems to me that is what God was trying to stop at Babel.

Pentecost, viewed through the lens of Babel, is instructive. At Pentecost, God sought to bring unity in the midst of confusion. But this is the key: God did not do this by eliminating difference. God did not give everyone the same words. No, God gave the capacity to speak and listen amidst the difference. The bridge was created by paying attention to those of other languages.

When we surround ourselves with voices that are just like ours, the temptation is to assume our thoughts are God’s thoughts. We know what there is to know about God. But that is going to make God too small.

That is why God confuses the language, so that we can be reminded that there are others who have a different experience, others who have a different narrative, others who speak truth with a different voice. And rather than silencing that truth, we should be curious, because it may be the way God is teaching us what we need to learn about God.

At least that is what happened at Pentecost. So, it could happen again, if we are curious about one another.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church