Pride and Pentecost

Pentecost is often referred to as the birth of the church: the start of the full understanding of Christian truth.  

Pentecost is also sometimes described as God’s reversal of the Tower of Babel: building on what was broken when the languages were scattered.

The story of the Tower of Babel, from the 11th chapter of Genesis, answers a question that many an inquisitive child has likely asked a parent: Why are there so many different people and languages in the world?

The story tells us that once upon a time, the whole earth had one language. A group of people migrated to a new land, and started building a city, and then decided that they would build a tower with its tops in the heavens. The motivation for this tower is “To make a name for ourselves, otherwise, we shall be scattered abroad upon the whole earth.”

In other words, the tower was an attempt to consolidate sameness into a channeled power: power that was believed could rival God’s power, reaching the very heavens.

God comes down to see the city and the tower, and is not impressed.

Ultimately, God scatters the people over the face of the earth, confusing the languages.

“Babel” refers not to the name of the tower, but is derived from the Hebrew word “to jumble.”

This action by God could be understood as punishment, but isn’t necessarily so. The Rev. Jeff Paschal writes that the implication is “...that God uses humanity’s city and tower building as the occasion to fashion a diverse humanity, flung like a divine sower’s seed all over the planet. Apparently God is uninterested in a people united for the purpose of assuring their own fame and safety.” Instead, God relishes having a world full of faithful people of different colors, sizes, shapes, ideas and languages. (Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 3, Eds. David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, 2009)

The Day of Pentecost moves humanity beyond Babel. It is not a simple undoing of the jumble. A reversal of Babel would restore humanity to the state before the jumbling. This is not what happens. The languages are not recombined into a singular language that everyone is to use. Everyone in the room doesn’t become the same.

Instead, something far more powerful happens. The Gospel is heard in everyone’s native language. The disciples, by the power of the Holy Spirit, were suddenly able to speak in other languages: not spiritual language, but the languages of the people present.

Pentecost does not dissolve difference, but it transcends the barriers that difference sometimes creates. God’s people are not all made the same, but are united in a sense of oneness.

The events of Pentecost leads us to the conclusion that the Gospel is to be TOLD in every language: available to all for the sharing of the spiritual truth of God’s love for the world, and in doing so celebrates the remarkable diversity found within it.

It is amazing to discover that the Church started under the principle of oneness within difference.

Sadly, the church has often struggled with this understanding of “Christian truth.” From the beginning, people have feared difference, otherness, and the strangeness of the stranger. We often see a threat from those who are different in looks, sounds, or thoughts. The threat lies not in the differences that God has woven into all parts of God’s creation, including humanity, ....but in any group’s lust of power over others, and its insistence that its identity alone reflects God’s nature and God’s way. (M. Jinkins, FOW)

Oneness is not sameness. The charge is to share the Gospel, not mandate it. We are called to translate the Gospel, not just to every language, but to reframe it so that the underlying message can be understood in every context. Having our four Gospel accounts, not one, provides us with a constant reminder that the particular words used are not as important as the truth to be found within them.

Pentecost is ultimately the charge to share our truth as we understand it: the path by which that we have encountered God.

This is why so many of us will be at Pride today. It is an opportunity, in solidarity, to share and testify to the good news of God with a community that has been belittled and threatened by those in power.  

Last night at the Diocesan Pride booth, most people I met knew little about The Episcopal Church.  Some responded in understanding as I explained the blend between Catholic and Protestant.  Others were pleased that our leadership and members reflected the diversity of race, gender, and sexuality.

But the biggest reactions came when asked if they remembered back in January when the woman preacher, Bishop Budde, spoke publicly to the new President about respecting human dignity, honesty, humility and mercy.

People really reacted to that, with surprise and hope.  

“That was you all???”  

Yeah, she’s one of us.

Philip asked Jesus to “show them the Father.”  Show us, Jesus, what God looks like.  Jesus answers that Philip has seen the Father in Jesus, in his words and actions.  And with that understanding Philip and the others are to show God to others by respecting human dignity, honesty, humility and mercy.

Let us dare to show THAT love, out in the world.

(A sermon given on Pentecost 2025, which was also the day of the SLC Pride Parade)