Day of Pentecost C June 8, 2025
Acts 2:1-21. Ps. 104: 25-32
Romans 8:14-17 John 14:8-17, 25-17
Our lives in this world seem to be governed by the rule of diversity and differences. We are all different and because we are different we often make our differences our chief identifying features, so much so that we find reason to be in conflict with each other. Even when we find common ground, such commonalities are often not enough to save us from war, conflicts, or petty but spiteful disagreements.
Even things that we share are often not winsome enough to keep us from serious disagreements. People being American does not keep Americans from conflict with each other, sometimes in very vitriolic ways. One might think that speaking the same language might or should be a unifying for people but we are reminded of the Shavian/Wilde quip about the British and the Americans being peoples divided by having a common language.
Today is the Day of Pentecost, and the story of Pentecost is told in the Acts of the Apostles as being a healing of the poly-glottic curse which had long befallen humanity. One would think that unity is a good thing, but according to the ancient story of the tower of Babel, a mono-glottic world, where people were unified by speaking the same language was actually an occasion for unifying in a prideful attempt to overthrow the most High God. And the Most High God was not amused by their unity in such a coup, so the Most High God cursed the people of Babel with the sudden imposition of people speaking many different languages, so confusing that they had to disperse throughout the world into their different language groups with different locales.
Attempts to unify the world through language have occurred as various lingua franca have been imposed on the world by the various conquerors, whether the ancient Assyrians and Aramaic, or the ancient Greeks after Alexander the Great and his generals brought a "common Greek" to their conquered world. It is this "common Greek" which was used for the New Testament writings. One could also say that for many the "common Greek" had conquered the Hebrew Scriptures because the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, the so-called Septuagint was the preferred version read by many in the post-Alexander the Great world.
Linguistic unity does not guarantee social unity or peace among people. People who speak the same language can violently disagree. This means that the real issue of the Tower Babel story was not a language issue; it was an interior character issue. If people are united by denying their connection with the Most High, then prideful egos ruled the day and the ownership of the universe was usurped. The result is what we have today; people fighting over the ownership of their land and lives and not having the humility that recognizes that all belongs to the great conditions that came before and the Greater Life that continues to endure after we are gone. In short, the Tower of Babel story is a parable about the fallen spiritual condition of humanity.
Do we automatically solve the unity problem if we speak the same language? Certainly not. No universal lingua franca can solve the spiritual problem of prideful usurping of the ownership of the world by the Greater Life that pre-existed us and that will outlast us.
The Pentecost insight is not to impose a single language upon everyone; rather it is about how to use the languages of our births in a way that is evidence of our spiritual healing, a healing of our prideful separation from God and our fellow humans in our world.
Spirit, a multi-language world, and Christly nature are definitive of Pentecost and they it provide us with insights for personal and global health. We need clean hearts and renewed spirits within us to foster our personal healing and the healing of our world.
The Holy Spirit of Pentecost is not a monolithic God creating exact copies in a cookie cutter sameness imposed upon all people; rather the Spirit of Pentecost is the inside job upon the lives of people giving them freedom to live Christ-like behaviors with each other in this world.
What historic churches have mostly done is to declared that Holy Spirit unity is a dominant administrative Empire-like organization that through canon law says, "we are all one, because you obey our dogma, doctrine, and specific practices." Churches essentially decided that the Roman Empire and worldly empires are the best models for spiritual unity, even to the point of imposing worldwide the uncommon language of Latin as the official language of prayer.
A more insightful understanding of Pentecost is to understand the presence of the Holy Spirit as always local and personal, as renewing one heart at a time in various circumstances so that people are converted to Christly ways which is also the way of peaceful living together.
We really find it difficult to conceptualize about Oneness and Unity because our lives are so conditioned by rampant and obvious diversity and differences. How might we appropriate a workable notion of Oneness?
What is One is the continuously expanding in time of the One Great Container, who we call God, and who continuously surpasses the Divine Self in each creative occasion of becoming. How do we who live and move and have our being in this Great One Container express oneness and unity. First, by acknowledging the alway, already experience of connectedness and togetherness within this Great God Container of All. We are irretrievably together and to humbly acknowledge that is the first step in living in unitarian ways. In this Great God Container of All, we are connected by the ability to have mutual experience of the things, the creatures, and people of our particular setting. We might call this omnipresent connecting essence within the total divine ground, the Holy Spirit of Life.
We best live in unitarian ways by celebrating togetherness in our differences through what we might call the harmony of love and justice. Love and Justice cannot be imposed by empires or governments, either sacred or secular. Empires and governments can impose laws for versions of their justice; but true love and justice must come from interior winsomeness of the Holy Spirit as connecting essence of us with all.
Let us today submit humbly to our connected togetherness with all, and make our interior lives open to new spirits and new hearts caressed by the great Holy Connecting Spirit within the complete divine milieu. And as the Spirit works in winsomely persuasive ways to melts us toward Christlike behaviors, let us endeavor to also live winsomely with each other in our specific locations so as to spread the effects of Holy Spirit in collateral ways.
Let the Gospel of Pentecost for us today be the winning of our hearts to the togetherness of all within God whose connecting Holy Spirit inspires us to live in the unitarian ways of love and justice. Amen.
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