Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17

The Reverend Paul D. Allick, St. George’s Episcopal Church, May 23, 2010

 

 

Last week at the 10:15 Holy Eucharist I received a glorious vision. I looked out on the congregation of one hundred gathered that morning and noticed all of the different people. First I noticed what all of us see right away: all of the shades of color, the range of ages and the differing physical abilities. Then I could see deeper. I saw the diversity of political opinion and religious viewpoints. I saw the array of family arrangements and relationships.

 

 

In all of that perceived difference I could hear and see the unity. We were all speaking one language. It was the language of liturgy. We were reciting our common prayers together. Moving as one with our bodies or within our hearts. Through our common prayer we were speaking the language of love: the love of God in Christ; the love for God and one another. And all of it was bound together in the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

 

We sang a Sequence Hymn that morning, number 603, lyrics by Brian A. Wren. I got choked up as I sang those words,

 

When Christ was lifted from the earth, his arms stretched out above every culture, every birth, to draw an answering love.

 

Where generation, class, or race divide us to our shame, he sees not labels but a face, a person, and a name.

 

 

This is what the Church is called to be, “an answering love.” It isn’t easy to be this. We fail at it all of the time.

 

 

Often we fall into the same trap as the people in the Story of the Tower of Babel. They had found peace and unity and instead of answering that love they went off in their own arrogance. They used that unity, that strength, not to serve God’s will but to serve their own. Like Adam and Eve eating from that Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they went off and built their tower to compete with God’s glory. Instead of appreciating all that God had given them, they tried to get more.

 

 

 

We do that in the Church. We think that it is all up to us to “grow” the Church. That if we just hone our human relations skills we can attract people and build a great monument to heaven. We think that we are solely in charge of Christ’s Church.

 

 

The people who built the tower were rebelling against God. God had told the people after the flood to go out and fill the earth. But they liked being together. They liked where they were and who they knew. Their self-aggrandizement came from their affluence. They were content to stay right where they were and keep doing things the way they had always done them.

 

 

In the Midrash Tradition, Rabbi Helbo observes this about the Tower of Babel, “Where ever you find contented satisfaction, Satan is active.”

 

 

And so they lost their peace and unity and were scattered. They lost their common language and that unifying spirit.

 

 

We see in the story from the Book of Acts how that unifying Spirit returned. It is the reversal of Babel. The faith community was gathered together in prayer and liturgy on a Holy Day in the middle of the week. The Spirit comes upon them just as Christ had promised. Now they begin to speak one language. Everyone is understanding each other. Peter preaches from the prophet Joel, “God will pour out his Spirit upon all flesh. All will begin to prophesy and have vision.”

 

 

When the Church learns to seek the unity of God instead of the prestige and comfort of institutions then we will begin to live into that answering love. God is perfect unity. As Christ tells Philip in the Gospel today, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”

 

 

God is one in three persons or aspects. We are called in all of our differences to become one. We can do that only through the power of the Holy Spirit which trains us how to love as Christ loves.

 

 

 

 

 

We have a training manual in that shows us how to become one. It is called the Book of Common Prayer. When we study it and pray it we learn how the Holy Scriptures and the Catholic and Apostolic Tradition leads us into a divine harmony. In the Catechism, the liturgies and our Baptismal Covenant we find our mission. That mission is to reconcile all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.

 

 

Reconciliation only comes out of profound humility and grace. We can only reconcile our differences if we depend on God. We can overcome our human distinctions of race, class, gender, sexuality, ideology and theology through our willingness to give our minds and hearts over to God.

 

 

Every gathered congregation of Christians is meant to be diverse in opinion, culture and religious understanding. Anything else points away from reconciliation and toward human arrogance.

 

Midrash & Babel References:

 

The Torah, A Modern Commentary (pp. 80,85)

 

Edited by W. Gunther Plaut

 

Union of Hebrew Congregations, New York, 1981