Year B
Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
Romans 8:22-27
John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Genesis 11:1 says… Now the whole earth had one language and the same words…  but when those people…  decided to build that tower…  whose top was in the heavens…  because they were getting a little too big for their britches…  and wanted to make a name for themselves…  God came down…  and confused them…  created different languages…  purposely threw a wrench into the gears of their building project…  and while Pentecost can be understood as the undoing of God’s action at the Tower of Babel…  there’s another angle to it…  another…  deeper perspective…  

Not only were the disciples filled with the Holy Spirit…  and able to speak in the dozen or so languages of those present…  from all those other places…  not only were those who heard able to understand what was being said about God’s deeds of power…  but by simply facilitating this understanding…  the Holy Spirit implicitly affirms this linguistic diversity…  celebrates it in fact…  doesn’t try to go back to Genesis 11:1…  with one language and the same words…  and because this linguistic diversity was celebrated…  then all of the subtle influences…  all of the diverse factors which contributed to the creation and development of these languages…  had to be celebrated too…

A Hispanic pastor tells the story…  that when he was young…  a staff person at a Christian youth camp he attended…  made fun of another Latino kid and him as they played together and spoke Spanglish…  the staff person chided them…  I bet you two can’t even do math in American…  you best be speaking English here…  the absurdity of that confounded him at the time…  as if Spanish and English had different numerals or mathematical rules…  but the racism was clear…  the Christian counselor’s scolding taught him…  that to speak Spanish in the United States has been racialized as a refusal of U.S. Euro-nationalist culture…

So at Pentecost… God does not impose a common language…  instead…  God affirms human diversity as holy…  I will pour out my Spirit upon allflesh…  and the book of Acts tracks the migration of the Holy Spirit…  as the Gospel of Jesus wanders through peoples…  and across lands…  flowing from one body to another…  a nomadic gospel which trespasses borders and cultures…  and which validates diversity by not avoiding it…  and the people described in Acts…  the Jews who had been dispersed…  who were now gathered back together in Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost…  these Jews have been born into a new family…

And there’s another important aspect to the Gospel part of this story…  Jesus says…  if I don’t go away… the Advocate won’t come…  because the Advocate will testify…  will tell the Truth…  and he instructs the apostles to do the same…  tell the truth…  even if your voice shakes…  and as Bp. Satterlee pointed out…  that if the Holy Spirit gives faith to those who receive the Gospel…  then Jesus is the what of preaching…  and the Holy Spirit is the how of preaching…  then Jesus is the word of preaching…  and the Holy Spirit is the breath of preaching… one of them without the other…  just doesn’t work…

And let’s remember…  the Holy Spirit comes on…  falls on the company of apostles…  on the community…  and not just on individual apostles…  the Holy Spirit is Jesus’ gift to the church…  and receiving and discerning the gifts of the Spirit…  happens in the church…  that’s why…  for example…  some things are discerned in the church community…  like the discernment of gifts…  and some things in the wider community…  like whether mask-wearing remains prudent even when the CDC loosens restrictions…  and some things which seem like great ideas…  may turn out to be not-so-great ideas…  and some things which seem like they’d be bad choices…  may turn out to bring blessing…

The great wisdom of Pentecost is the recognition…  through the Spirit…  of an underlying unity amidst many differences…  but diversity was never meant to be divisive…  though there may be some exceptions…  like selfishness… arrogance…  greed…  racism…  white supremacy…  any of those unholy spirits which put oneself…  or one’s group…  over and above all others…  and which are unholy to God because they don’t lift up the unity that Jesus and God and the Spirit shared…

The Rev. Kathleen Walker…  who serves the black ministries in the Diocese of North Carolina…  writes…  that after Dorothy arrives in the land of Oz…  she makes three new friends…  the Cowardly Lion…  the Scarecrow…  and the Tin Woodsman…  the lion is seeking courage… the scarecrow wants a brain…  and the tin man is pleading for a heart…  but what the Wizard reveals…  is that they already possess the very things…  for which they were searching…  the qualities they desire are already within them…  and these three archetypes remind me of what Richard Hooker’s three-legged stool provides us…  the courage to break from tradition when it no longer serves us well…  the reasoning brain which is capable of new insights and creativity…  and the prophetic heart which calls us back to the Word when we’ve strayed too far afield…  

There’s another story…  about a peace ceremony which included Native Americans and Europeans…  and when one of the white men began to speak…  one of the Native Americans began to translate for the Chief who spoke no English…  and immediately…  the Chief hushed the translator…  and said in his own language…  please don’t…  I love to feel where the words come from… I wonder if he wanted to listen for the sighs of the Spirit…  which are too deep for words…  you see…  whether there’s one language and the same words…  or a thousand languages and a billion words…  God understands them all…  and understands the heart from which they arise…  as Jesus said in Matthew 15:11,18…  it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles…  and what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart…

There are our truths…  and there’s God’s Truth…  there are our experiences…  and there’s God’s experience…  and sometimes they’re just not the same…  that’s why today’s reading from Romans refers to our birth pangs…  to the light that’s inside of us and that is just clamoring to get out…  though because of fear…  ignorance…  and heartlessness…  we can become more concerned about political correctness…  than truth telling…  but the Spirit invites us into unity… prays for us in our weakness…  the Spirit helps pull us out of ourselves…  and helps us to love our neighbor as ourselves…  the Spirit helps us discern the diversity which is of God…  and that which goes against God’s will for us…

And sometimes…  it takes courage…  a brain…  and a heart…  to speak God’s truth…  even though our voice may shake…  and to hear the Spirit reassure us…  that God and not the ruler of this world…  will be victorious…