Happy Pentecost! Pentecost originates from the Greek word “pentekoste,” which translates to “fiftieth.” In the Jewish tradition, Shavuot (the Feast of Weeks) commemorates God giving the Torah (the Law) to Moses on Mount Sinai. It is celebrated 50 days after Passover. In the Christian tradition, Pentecost commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles (Jesus’s closest followers) 50 days after Christ’s resurrection. Pentecost is also celebrated as the birth of the Christian Church even though there were no Christians or a Christian church until decades after the first Christian Pentecost.
In the assigned reading from Acts, the Holy Spirit appeared to and among the disciples and filled them with the ability to speak and understand languages other than their own. The disciples spoke Aramaic and probably some Hebrew and Greek. At the Jewish feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem, Jews from all over the Jewish diaspora were gathered, and they spoke a multitude of languages beyond these three. Through the Holy Spirit’s gift, the disciples were able to work the crowd, to hold conversations about Jesus and the resurrection with Jews from the diaspora in their native languages. Pretty cool, right?
Must we believe in this story literally, that the disciples were instantly gifted with the ability to speak and understand foreign languages? I don’t think so. And it’s worth noting that a literal reading of the story was difficult even when the story was first told and written.
To wit: The meat of the Pentecost story is Peter giving a big speech to the gathered Jewish community about Jesus. Peter began his address by declaring that the disciples, who are suddenly and magically fluent in numerous foreign languages, “are not drunk as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.” Our congregation (and probably all congregations) laugh at this.
Every. Year. Even though we know it’s coming. Ancient Jews and modern Episcopalians probably agree that Peter’s defense of the disciples’ sobriety, based on the time of day, was not the killer argument he thought it was.
It’s even harder for us, two thousand years later, to read this story literally, to believe that the disciples were instantly given fluency in languages they didn’t previously speak irrespective of their alcohol consumption. The good news about whether this happened or not is that the metaphorical truths within the story are the point, both then and now.
After his opening remarks, Peter quotes from the prophet Joel (and from King David beyond the end of the assigned reading) to convince the assembly that Jesus was Lord and Messiah, descended from David, crucified, raised from the dead, and sitting at the right hand of God. Jesus was “the (new) Way” forward for the Jewish people, Peter contended. The gift of speaking and understanding languages pointed to the reality of this new unity happening right then, in Christ.
All the signs pointed towards this as the true will of God.
When we read the Bible as a whole, this story also resolves the ancient, pre-historic story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis. In that story, the immediate descendants of Noah were a monoculture, stuck in one place, speaking one language, and building a great tower to the heavens to be nearer to God. That longing for God seems all well and good on the surface, but in the beginning of Genesis God had commanded humanity to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth. To move the people along, in the Tower of Babel story, God created myriad languages among them, making it impossible for them to understand each other. Without the ability to communicate through a common language, the people lost their capacity to cooperate and abandoned their construction project. God then scattered them to the four corners of the earth to fulfill his commandment.
What understanding of God is being conveyed through these two stories?
I think it’s as simple as this: God loves diversity and diversity is Godlike. This is evident in scripture, not just in these two short stories but throughout. It’s powerfully evident in the creation and has been compellingly true in my personal experience as well. Finally, returning to Acts, I believe that the unity in Christ Peter proclaims is about God’s love of diversity, too, although many of Paul’s letters speak to this more strongly and more clearly.
Let’s look at the other readings from Pentecost to see how they might point in this direction.
Psalm 104 is a hymn of praise, focused on God’s greatness and the wonders of God’s vast and diverse works. My favorite lines: “Yonder is the great and wide sea with its living things too many to number, creatures both small and great. There move the ships, and there is that Leviathan, which you have made for the sport of it.” Creatures in the sea too great to number = God loves diversity.
The short reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans concludes a chapter about “Life in the Spirit.”
Paul characterizes those who are led by the Spirit of God as God’s children. I love characterizing all of us as God’s children, It can obviously be challenging at times, too.
I’m reading the biblical scholar and professor Marcus Borg currently. His ideas are definitely influencing this essay and my reading of Paul. Here’s how: Paul described and modeled a “life in Christ” that abided in faith, hope and love in his there and then. Paul sought justice and peace in his present day, centering all these beliefs in forming communities of practice who sought to follow Jesus. None of this was about the afterlife it was about freedom, and specifically about the freedom Paul contrasted with life under “the empire way,” with its inescapable and ultimately futile and dehumanizing systems of punishment and reward. This freedom was both revolutionary and wildly diverse, because Paul saw, preached, and experienced it as equally accessible to all—women and men, master and servant, Jew and Greek, etc.—through faith and a commitment to life in Christ.
Finally, the gospel reading from John is a conversation between Philip and Jesus about Jesus’s divinity and the Holy Spirit as an advocate for his followers after Jesus ascends to heaven.
Honestly, not getting a strong diversity in unity vibe here but the Holy Spirit, as an advocate, points to a living and evolving faith and relationship with God, not a faith or relationship fixed in time in only one specific way.
Is it ironic or tragic that for some Christians it seems obvious that God loves diversity while for others, such as Trump’s Christians, diversity is a threat that must be eliminated through enforced uniformity. It’s no accident that Trump’s Christians are attacking DEI initiatives in our workplaces, schools, universities, and government agencies. They are fundamentalists after all.
And, like the folks who built the Tower of Babel, Trump’s Christians are trying to create a sterile and self-limiting monoculture frozen in time, place, and belief. That’s not God’s way. That’s not life in Christ. That’s mere politics, and self-centered, self-interested, and fearful politics at that.