During the last dozen years, I’ve become progressively deaf. Hearing aids help a bit, but I still hear conversations differently. I often think of the aged cartoon guy who uses an ear-trumpet, but still has to say , “What? Huh?” I grow tired of asking for repetition, so a lot of garbled messages remain as such….I smile and nod, which is often the entirely wrong response. People sitting in church pews this weekend have come to hear SOMEthing: will a still-small voice be able to register amid the din of I.T. all around us?
Lectionaries will vary with their offering of the First Lesson; I’ve opted for the ones which refer us to the Tower of Babel (babble?) story, Genesis 11:1-9. My image is that of a family around a campfire of an evening…the smallest girl asks, “Grandpa, why are there so many languages?” The patriarch tells the legend about trying to build a tower to climb to heaven–to be like God–and its subsequent abandonment because the Heavenly Host caused the builders to speak to each other in different languages. This part of the Creation Story is told as a warning not to let our human ego delude us into thinking we can do God’s Work. Is this Original Sin? At any rate, it belongs to the Pentecost celebration with the affirmation that only the Holy Spirit can dazzle us into understanding others.
Acts 2:1-21 is the centerpiece of Pentecost. The wind and fire of God appeared among the people, and they began to speak in all the languages of the known world. No longer a regional cult or sub-set of Judaism, the Christ story is now told in universal languages through the grace of the Holy Spirit. (Compare the people of Babel, who tried to access the heavenly by their own limited skills.) Pentecost tells us the good news that our divided humanity doesn’t have to remain separated by an inability to understand each other.
The Gospel of John, 14:8-27, still leans on Jesus’ farewell instructions to the Disciples. Here Jesus announces the coming of an Advocate, the “Spirit of Truth”, who “will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” Jesus had earlier referred to “the words that I say to you” as being heavenly in origin. The Spirit which we acknowledge at Pentecost refreshes these “words” through each generation as we tell the stories even around the campfires and carry their implications of service, prayer and active hope before an anxious and fearful people.
Even though we know these things, we’re caught in the middle. TV commercials scream at us to buy bigger, flashier toys. The jargon of digitalization convinces us that with the proper software, WE TOO may rule the world. Aircraft carriers in the Gulf intimidate lesser nations into bowing before our supremacy. (Has Babylon moved?) We long for Pentecost, when “the Spirit moved among them and they no longer saw each other as people to be suspicious of, but as fellow children of God.” (Douglas M. Donley, FEASTING on the WORD, C 3:4)
God Bless Us, Every One Horace Brown King
My confrontation with Scripture lessons assigned to the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com
My Blog 
Leave a comment