Song: Catch the Break | The Tower of Babel | Pentecost |

Friends,

Wow! Visiting family Friday, Racial Justice training Saturday, workshop on in New Hampshire on Sunday. Lots of sleep into Monday.

And then! Real shoes. Walking without crutches! Just a bit but it gives me hope that I'll be walking around at Alum Weekend in 10 days.

-Liz

Pentecost

The holy spirit arrives at Pentecost, pulling us all together to create the church. It is easy to imagine that the arrival of the holy spirit reverses the separation of the people in the Tower of Babel story.

In Christian language we often interpret Christ as redeeming the thing that earlier went wrong. Thus Christ is the new Adam, this time without misbehaving. The early christians reverse the inhospitality of Sodom and Gomorrah by their radical welcome and care for strangers. In this version of Christianity, the holy spirit at Pentecost turns the story of dispersal around, and the people of many languages are brought together.

But it is possible that dispersal of the people at the Tower of Babel is more about celebrating diversity, in contrast to an enforced monoculture. Imagine for a moment a farming community, or a group of nomads, or a hunter/gatherer society. Who is it that decides to build a tall tower? What if a group leader decides that the people must have a tower? He manipulates the religion, and the rules of their community, so that he can tell others what to do. And what he wants is a tower, a show of strength, of authority, a grasp at glory.

But who does the building? The people at the bottom of the social rung, pulled from their farming, and moved into construction. The tower is a sign of unity, but it is unity forced on the people by a leader who is more concerned with the tower than with food for the people. It is top down unity, it is requiring everyone to work for one person's goals.

And so, with God's help, these workers rebel. They leave the project, ignore the goal of unity, and are dispersed with the new and widely different languages that God has given them. This diversity is a gift that God offers, a way for each to appreciate their own gifts, set their own goals, to be out from under the authoritarian unity.

If this the Babel story, what then is the Pentecost story? I notice first of all that this story is not about all the languages becoming one. It is instead a story of people able to hear the good news in their own language. This is not an erasure of our differences but an appreciation of them. The good news is not that everyone can now do it our way, but that Jesus message of liberation can be applied to all the different cultures, with different results.

There was a time that we (European protestants) thought that faith in Jesus required our culture as well. That english (and before that latin) was the best expression of the gospel. That marriage, and meals, and clothing, and social norms should be those of our european past. That unity requires our creeds, our worship style, our music. We were not only saying that unity meant we are the same, but also that unity meant that they would learn to do things the way we do.

The Pentecost story does not make that claim. And how is that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? (Acts 2:8).

In this story, each person did not suddenly understand the Aramaic or Greek that Peter was speaking. There was no single common language. When the holy spirit arrives, each hears the good news in their own language. The unity is in the message, not in the language, the culture, or the food, or the social norms. The message of Pentecost is that it is diversity, appreciating diversity, in honoring the way each person is different, that we find unity of faith.

What is your church doing to identify, and appreciate, the differences in your congregation? Reply to this email to let me know what's happening. ​
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This Pentecost sermon is based on the April 2026 article on the Tower of Babel in Sojourner's Magazine.

Ashes and Arrows was one of my favorite bands at Wild Goose Festival. They went on to become semi-finalists in America's Got Talent. (3:08)

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