May 23, 2010

Today we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, the fiftieth day after the Resurrection, when “The Advocate,” “The Comforter,” the one Jesus promised his disciples would come among them actually arrived.  That one, also known as God’s Holy Spirit, bursts into a gathering with a rush of violent wind and tongues of fire bringing encouragement, empowerment and guidance.  Today, we celebrate the fulfillment of Christ’s promise to his most devoted followers as we try to make sense of its meaning, for the Holy Spirit is a perplexing concept.  The Holy Spirit is both mighty and mysterious and we are a rational, sensible people who find mystery curious and unnerving.  We ponder and consider exactly what God’s Holy Spirit is?  How does it work?  When is it present?  How can we be sure?  When is it misidentified?  When is it overlooked?  How do we come to understand its nature and movement? 

The collected record of our faith tells us that from very early in our relationship with our Creator, God used the Holy Spirit to fortify our connection with each other.  The Spirit is often dispatched to keep us on the right path, to keep us secure, to keep us engaged with the Father.  After the expulsion from the garden, after the first murder, after the great flood, after God’s promise to stay in relationship with humanity despite their weak nature, the world begins to populate more rapidly.  Soon, God’s graciousness and his omnipotent power are forgotten.  Nations rise up and people begin to see themselves as masterful and wise, the authors of their own success and overlords of their universe.  Their conceit is epitomized in our lesson from early Genesis.  “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.”  They said to one another, “Come let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens.  Let us make for ourselves a name.  If we do not establish ourselves in this way, we will be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”  In this story, we see God’s beloved children appropriating glory for themselves and dismissing God’s promise to keep them safe.  Moreover, they forget his ultimate power to determine their destiny.  The people decide they know best.  They assert God is on their side and will favor their conclusions.  This pattern repeats itself throughout our history.  We hear it today from politicians and commentators.  “We know who God favors.  We know He will approve our plan.  Come let us build a tower to the heavens . We can build and create as he has.  We can elevate ourselves to his domain.  We can reach him by our own devices.  We can bring in the kingdom he left unfinished by our energy and with our well drawn schematic.”  “Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered, lest we be weakened upon the face of the earth.”  Fear, fear, a lack of trust in the abiding presence at God’s grace drives humanity to hubris and ill-conceived power plays. 

The early people, the newly formed nations come together to erect a great tower to set upon the earth a visible sign of their dominance.  God sends his Holy Spirit to disrupt their unhealthy plot.  The Holy Spirit moves over and through the body and around the tower at “Bab-i-leni,” the tower at “the gate of the gods.”  As the Spirit moves, the tower at “Babel” becomes the tower of “confusion.”  The Holy Spirit moves and the sure confident efforts of misguided man became undone.  Communication, direction, progress goes awry.  The Holy Spirit moves and language is garbled and disjointed.  The people become disconnected.  Their plan is foiled.  They will not surpass God in initiative.  They cannot create perfection apart from God’s direction.  They cannot wholly corrupt his ideal. T he Holy Spirit moves and human language born out of human pride and human fear is contained and brought under God’s domain.

Many more accounts of the Holy Spirit’s work are recorded in our faith narrative.  In the pillars of fire and cloud leading the Hebrews in the desert, in the proclamations of the prophets Samuel, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Joel, in the narrative of Jesus in Mark, Luke and John, in the letters from Paul to the churches in Rome, Galatia, Corinth and Ephesus.  Then there are the descriptions of the Holy Spirit at work, in action, moving mightily through the acts of the apostles.  Today we hear its inescapable introduction to the disciples gathered in one house trying to determine their next move.  Unlike the leaders at Babel, rather than setting their own agenda, these faithful folk are in prayer and discernment.  The Spirit blows in, in answer to their call.  As at Babel, God’s Spirit does God’s will with the gift of language.  Before, language was used to disrupt human progress, to circumvent human pride arising from human fear.  Now language will be used to draw humanity closer to their loving, creating God.  Language will be used to remind all humanity of their enduring, sustaining relationship with their Father and the extraordinary sacrifice of his appointed Son.

“When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples 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.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them the ability.”  Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans, Cappudocians, Asians, Phrygians, Libyans, Romans, Cretins, Jews and Arabs heard them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”  Now, this action of the Holy Spirit may be taken in either or both a literal or a figurative sense.   It is possible that those disciples quickly developed an ease with the grammar, syntax and vocabulary of a foreign tongue so that they were able to articulate the essence of God to a people they could not understand before. 

Or…it may be that the Holy Spirit moved within the disciples and helped them reconnect with their original language, the language of their Father, the language of the human heart yearning to speak to its loving creator.  The original language, the first and primary language, is the expression of awe and wonder and grace.  The Father’s tongue is universal communication.  It is the speech and experience that connects and grounds us all.  It is the language we use when we stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon overcome by its massive beauty.  It is the language we use when we stare at the new moon low in the sky casting its orange glow over breaking waves in the sea.  The Father’s tongue, our first language, is what we use when we see a human baby in a bassinette.  We respond with a protective instinct seeing possibility and goodness rather than a potential threat.  The Father’s language is the fluent speech and heart felt truth that assures, that promises and predicts goodness.  The first language is not the language of Phrygia or Crete.  It is not the dead language of Rome or Mesopotamia.  It is not the language of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party or the Tea Party.  It is not the language of the North or South Korean governments, the Palestinian or Israeli Parliaments.  It is not the language of the Taliban or the Vatican.  It isn’t even the language of the Archbishop of Canterbury or my good friend Bishop Curry.  The language of the Father, the language set into the human heart cannot, will not be appropriated.  It can come through human voices but they never own it.  The Holy Spirit refuses to give way.  The language of the Father can only be used with right intent.  The original language, the language of Father is used to draw his beloved children together.  It is used to draw his beloved to their best selves.  It is used to draw his beloved to himself.  There is no split infinitive, no dangling participle, and no misused word in the Father’s language.  It is perfect expression, perfect communication.  This is our native tongue.  We are fluent, conversant, and incredibly articulate in its use.  God’s Holy Spirit sees to that.  We have the gift of that elevated, powerful language.  We have the skills and tools, the vocabulary and the definitions to express God’s amazing power and God’s stupefying grace.  We have the gift and ability to speak God’s truth and love to those who may have forgotten it.  We have the ability to use God’s language to encourage, to lift up and transform. 

The Holy Spirit continues to move and pour out lessons in words it gives us.  What will we do with our fluency?  How and where and when will we speak our primal, inbred tongue?  How, where and when will we give God’s language voice?  The Holy Spirit is let loose in the world prodding, pouring, creating space and grace for us to let loose God’s words of awe, of wonder, of forgiveness and compassion. A re we Babelites or Apostles?  The world will know by the language we choose.  The Spirit burns within us.  The Spirit moves around us.  Let us respond to its presence in a language it will recognize.

Amen.