Pentecost

Some of you may have watched the Academy Award nominated movie Babel
in which there are four different storylines
that are connected in ways not always obvious to the moviegoer.
Most of the confusion stems from the fact that the different storylines
are played out in different languages and no translation is provided.
The movie, more or less, goes like this.
A Moroccan goat herder buys a high power rifle from a friend
to shoot the jackals that have been preying on his herds.
He gives the rifle to his sons who are looking after the goats
and while playing with the rifle
they accidentally wound an American tourist in a passing bus.
The Moroccan police, under pressure from the American government,
who think this shooting is a terrorist act,
track down the man who sold the rifle,
accuse him and his wife of being terrorists and savagely beat them.
Ultimately they find the goat herder and his sons,
who bought the rifle and a tragic gun fight ensues
resulting in the death of the oldest son.
Meanwhile the American woman who is shot and her husband
find themselves stranded seeking medical attention in an out of the way village,
which prevents them from returning home as scheduled.
This delay causes their nanny, who is Mexican, and in the US illegally,
to take the couple’s two young children,
whom she has cared for since birth,
with her as she attends a family wedding in Mexico.
When she tries to return across the border with her drunk nephew at the wheel,
their car is stopped by border guards
who discover that the nanny has no papers with her
allowing her to take the children across the border.
The nephew decides to try to elude the border patrol in a car chase
and then ditches his aunt and the children in the desert and tells them to walk back home. Lost, the nanny leaves the children in what she thinks is a safe place
and searches for help.
When she finally reaches the authorities,
they arrest her and return her to Mexico.
The children are found and are returned to their parents
who have returned home and decide not to press charges.
Finally, in Japan, it turns out that a Japanese businessman
gave the rifle used in the shooting
as a gift to the Moroccan man who acted as his hunting guide.
This Japanese man is being investigated for possible black market activity
by two policemen who interview his deaf daughter
who is struggling to come to terms with her mother’s suicide
and exhibits extremely inappropriate behaviour
in dealing with her handicap and her grief.
The businessman is cleared of any wrongdoing in regards to the rifle,
but the entire movie ends up being very difficult to understand
and seemingly incoherent in many places.
Much of this incoherence is rooted
in our inability to understand what the characters are saying,
since most of the movie is not in English.
In fact I only know what I know about the movie
because I read a plot outline on the internet.
It seems that the lack of translation or subtitles in the movie
is meant to convey for the moviegoer something of the confusion and chaos
that the characters in the various storylines face
when failures to communicate cause unnecessary suffering and even tragedy.
No wonder the movie makers decided to use Babel as the title.
As we know the word babel comes from a Bible story,
from the passage which we read earlier from Genesis.
The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 tells us
that early in human history all people spoke one language.
The people came together and decided to build a tower
which would reach into the heavens, to make a name for themselves.
Seeing their desire to glorify themselves,
God caused the people to speak different languages,
thereby confusing the people and scattering them over the face of the earth.
The origin of the word babel is Akkadian, an ancient Mesopotamian language,
and means ‘gateway to god’
but it sounds similar to the Hebrew word babhel,
which means to confuse,
hence our present use of babel to indicate confusion or lack of clarity.

Speaking of diversity of languages,
in 1951, the linguist Richard Pittman identified 46 different languages
in his mimeographed list which he called his Ethnologue.
Today’s massive 15th edition of the Ethnologue catalogues 7,299 known languages, including 103 languages previously unidentified in the 14th edition in the year 2000.
497 of these languages are spoken by less than 50 people and are in danger of extinction. According to the United Bible Societies,
there are now over 2,370 languages
in which at least one book of the Bible has been published,
far short of the 7,299 languages of the Ethnologue,
but enough to include the primary means of communication
of over 90% of the world’s population.
(Dan Clendenin, The Journey with Jesus: Notes to Myself)

Today is Pentecost Sunday in the church calendar.
On this Sunday we mark the birthday of the church,
the coming of the promised Holy Spirit upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem.
As the text from Acts tells us,
when the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples,
they were able to speak in other languages.
When the disciples went out onto the streets of the city,
those around them were bewildered,
for each person heard the disciples speaking in his or her native language.
Some concluded that the disciples must have been drunk.
But Peter addressed the people and explained what had happened.
He told the people that what had happened to the disciples
had been prophesized through the prophet Joel,
that in the last days,
God will pour out his Spirit upon his people,
that sons and daughters will prophesize,
young men shall see visions and old men dream dreams,
and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

It has often been asked, just what was this language that the disciples spoke
when they were filled with the Holy Spirit?
Was it truly a different language,
such as we who speak English might suddenly speak Chinese or Arabic,
or was it something more like speaking in tongues,
which the Spirit allowed the others around the disciples to understand
as being in their native language?
Luke, the author of the book of Acts,
lists at least 15 different language groups in our text this morning.
What they exactly heard,
whether in their language or in tongues but made understandable by the Spirit,
is not the real question.
The point of Pentecost is not about the diversity of languages
and how the Spirit may or may not cause us
to speak in different languages other then our own,
Pentecost is truly about unity,
the unity that allows people from every nation under heaven to understand
the one true gospel made known in Jesus Christ, the risen Son of God.

Why did the Holy Spirit come at Pentecost?
Was it to show off some neat linguistic trick?
I hardly think God would be so trivial.
The Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples at Pentecost
because the church is to be about spreading the good news
to all the people of all the nations under heaven.
There may be many nations,
but only one goal,
to speak to them about the truth of Jesus Christ,
that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Pentecost is about unity in our proclamation.
And that, my friends, is a critical message for us today.
Like the movie Babel, there are so many situations in our world
in which we find ourselves mired in conflict, confusion, suffering and tragedy.
So much of that comes from a failure to communicate as God intends us,
from a failure to be united.
How true has that been even for the church!
Think about what divides us in the church
and I think we will find that its pretty much the same as our society as a whole.
What divides us is the desire for power,
the need to be more right than someone else.
What was the Tower of Babel all about?
It was about power, it was to declare a name for humanity as opposed to God.
When Genesis 11 says that the people gathered there
said let us make a name for ourselves,
whose name were they then trying to override?
For the builders of the tower, its about power,
to be in control themselves rather than to be under God’s control.
It is to make God’s name subservient to our name.

Sometimes what divides the church is all about who is in control.
Which faction or which denomination controls the Christian agenda?
Just recently we heard about the death of the Reverend Jerry Falwell,
the American evangelist who was the driving force
behind the creation of The Moral Majority,
whose influence is credited for a significant portion of the success of politicians
such as Ronald Reagan and both Bush presidents.
Public opinion of Falwell is deeply divided,
usually along the theological fault lines of liberal and conservative.
No one can doubt, however, the impact he has had
on the mobilization of the role religion has played in American politics since the 1980’s. The role of churches in politics is still hotly contested,
but I would suggest that the argument isn’t about
whether or not religious bodies and religious groups ought to have political influence, since every faction seemingly is desirous of such influence,
but rather in what direction that influence should be.

If we as the church are looking for guidance as to what that direction should be,
then we cannot look anywhere else but to the King and head of the church,
to our Lord Jesus Christ.
And when we do what we find is a startling contrast to the Tower of Babel story. Whereas the people who were building the tower
sought to make a name for themselves, to glorify themselves,
Jesus’ story, the story of his life, is about glorifying God.
If Pentecost is about the church being united under the Lordship of Jesus Christ,
then we must understand that the primary thrust of Jesus’ life is grace.
It was an act of God’s grace,
God’s loving, merciful, forgiving grace,
which sent Jesus to us.
It was an act of grace which took Jesus to the cross
so that those who don’t deserve forgiveness and reconciliation might find it through him.
It is the grace of Jesus Christ
that unites the church of Jesus Christ
in every nation under heaven.
It is the grace of Jesus Christ
which allows everyone, in any place at any time,
who calls on the name of the Lord to be saved.
My friends, this Pentecost more clearly than ever before,
it is clear that the language of the church needs to be the language of grace.

It is so evidentially true that we
as the church of our Lord Jesus Christ in every nation under heaven,
are at our best, when we act with grace.
We are at our God given best
when we think with grace, speak with grace, serve with grace, live with grace.
We tend to be at our worst when we bicker about finer points of doctrine,
when we argue about who’s more right than the other, who holds the power,
whether one letter here or one word there
changes things so much that we feel that we must break away from each other.
It is when the church worldwide acts with grace
in response to terrible tragedies such as Hurricane Katrina or the Asian Tsunami,
it is when the church understands the needs of people
and mobilizes to help prevent and care for victims of pandemics
like HIV/AIDS or leprosy or malaria, that we are at our best.

The commission of the church, first given to the disciples, is still given to us today.
On this Pentecost Sunday we are to speak and prophecy
about the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
But if we are to be united in our calling,
we must be able to speak the language of grace.
People all over the world, and people just outside these walls,
who knows, even some of us inside today,
are looking for grace filled communities,
gracious churches full of gracious people.
People who do not know Jesus as Lord,
are not looking for churches who declare
that they are more right than the church down the street,
that they are more pure in their doctrine or theology.
What those who hunger for the good news are looking for
is a place and a community
which practices the grace lived out by Jesus Christ the Son of God.
On this Pentecost Sunday,
the church in every nation under heaven, the church in Canada,
the Presbyterian Church in Canada and Grace Presbyterian Church,
must become more and more familiar with the language of grace.
It is what unites the church, it is what allows us to be at our best.

My friends the goal of Babel is so very different from the goal of the cross.
Being in control is so very different from being a servant.
The tower that vainly strives for temporary glory
is so very different from the cross
that humbly overcomes with an eternal love and forgiveness.
Friends, people of Grace, we are so aptly named as a church.
I see how this church lives out the grace God has entrusted to us.
I see it in our mission and outreach, in our fellowship and friendship, in our worship.
I know how that grace is lived out in the individual lives of many in our community.
We know that we can respond with legalism,
with asserting our rights and expectations,
we know that we can insist on our way,
but we also know that sometimes, more often than not,
the language of grace is what gets the desired results,
grace is what unites us, what brings us together.
We need to be evermore familiar with the language of grace.
The language of the church must be the language of grace.
The gift of Pentecost is the gift of unity in Christ.
There is no language that speaks of our unity more than the language of grace.
May we continue to learn it well and speak it fluently.