I’d Join a Church Like That!
A Pentecost sermon by Jamie Howison on Acts 2:1-21 and John 20:19-23.
And so we have arrived at the Feast of Pentecost, fully fifty days after Easter Sunday, and now the transition into Ordinary Time begins. We have before us two different stories of the gift of the Holy Spirit; the dramatic story from the Book of Acts filled with wind and fire, and the far gentler story from the Gospel according to John in which Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit upon the disciples. There is something to be gleaned from both stories, and a thing or two to wrestle through as well, so let me begin with that dramatic account from Acts.
The disciples are together, “And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.” What is being described is a vivid and visceral experience, in which they can see and feel God’s holiness—God’s Spirit—right there with them, in them, and through them. “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”
Out into the street they go, where “devout Jews from every nation under heaven” hear them speaking in their own languages. This is hardly what one could rightly describe as an “ordinary” experience! No, this is a sort of landmark or critical moment—in Greek a Kairos experience—in which something crucial is being communicated, both to those folks on the street and to we who read the story 2000 years later.
It is sometimes suggested that this experience of languages is the undoing or healing of the story of the Tower of Babel. That is a story that comes from the early chapters of Genesis often referred to by scholars as a “proto-history”, because after this chapter 11 ends, the style of the narrative changes, as Abraham andSarah come into view and a more narrative and historical sort of story begins to be told. If you recall the ancient Babel story, the people say, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves,” but God then scuttles this plan by introducing all manner of different languages. It is often read, then, as an account of how different human languages came to be, as well as a critique of the human propensity to try to shape and control our own destiny; the propensity to try to be our own gods.
Yet in his book, Not in God’s Name: confronting religious violence, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks offers a most intriguing reading of the Tower of Babel, and one that actually connects beautifully to the Pentecost story from Acts. Rabbi Sacks points out that in the chapter before the Tower of Babel story, Genesis 10, humanity has already been described as having been divided into seventy different nations, each with its own language (10:5). What to make of that? In the reading offered by Rabbi Sacks,
[T]he unity of language at the beginning of Genesis 11 was not natural but imposed. It is describing the practice of the world’s first empires. We have historical evidence dating back to the neo-Assyrians that conquerors imposed their own language on the peoples they defeated… Babel is a critique of imperialism.
Babel represents an empire that subjugates entire populations at the cost of their distinct identities and liberties… When at the end of the Babel story God “confuses the language” of the builders, he is not creating a new state of affairs but restoring the old.
In short, in this way of reading things, diversity and difference are an intended good, not a punishment or wound or sign of division. This is then reinforced in the Pentecost story from Acts, as each person hears the Gospel proclaimed in his or her own mother tongue. This, of course, is one of the great Reformation principles, as for the first time the scriptures and the liturgies were translated into the languages of the various nations of Europe; English, French, German and so on. What’s more, listen to these reflections from David Bartlett, who writes,
Professor Lamin Sanneh of Yale Divinity School grew up as a Muslim and converted to Christianity. He has great appreciation for both faiths, but he has pointed out that Christianity, unlike Islam, believes in the translation of our sacred texts. The Q'ran is really the Q'ran only in Arabic. The Bible is the Bible whether in Hebrew and Greek or in English or French or Hindi. That is a gift of the Spirit.
Yes, in John 17 Jesus does pray that “they may all be one,” yet I think it is quite fair to say that the unity of the Body of Christ is to be expressed in and through our diversity. That is very much what is in view as the Book of Acts continues, and Paul launches into his mission amongst the Gentiles. They remain Corinthians or Romans or Ephesians… but now Christian Corinthians or Romans or Ephesians. It is when the church has forgotten the gift that is diversity and difference that its missionary work has gotten into the most trouble, tying itself too tightly to European and Western culture and neglecting the Bible’s own stories of how the Good News transcends any one culture. The languages of Pentecost must speak to us of the beauty of difference and diversity.
Now what might the story told in the Gospel according to John have to say to us? A story set not fifty days after Easter Day, but in the context of Jesus’ first resurrection appearance to his disciples. As Matt Skinner points out, many people experience this story like this:
Jesus bestows peace upon his worried followers. Great!
Jesus fills them with the Holy Spirit. Great!
Jesus tells them they can forgive or retain other people's sins. Huh?
“Receive the Holy Spirit,” Jesus says to them. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Huh? is right! Skinner’s point, though, is that to get beyond that “huh” and move past some of the more questionable ways in which this passage has been put into practice over the centuries one must pay attention to what Jesus teaches about sin, and particularly how John conveys this teaching in his own understanding of the good news.
“Jesus,” comments Skinner, “is not appointing the church as his moral watchdog; nor does he commission it to arbitrate people's assets and liabilities on a heavenly balance sheet. Sin in John is not about moral failings; primarily it is an inability or refusal to recognize God's revelation when confronted by it, in Jesus.” Sin, in other words, is that which keeps us at a distance from God, and most specifically from God made known to us in Jesus.
“Consequently,” Skinner continues, “the resurrected Christ tells his followers (all his followers) that, through the Spirit that enables them to bear witness, they can set people free from that state of affairs. They can be a part of seeing others come to believe in Jesus and what he discloses. Failure to bear witness, Jesus warns, will result in the opposite: a world full of people left unable to grasp the knowledge of God. That is what it means to ‘retain’ sins.”
This is not a case of a little band of disciples being given power over the eternal destiny of others by virtue of being able to themselves forgive—or refuse to forgive—transgressions, but rather part of their commissioning to bear witness to the good news of God in Christ, and to do that through the Spirit—the very breath of God—which Jesus has bestowed upon them. This is not actually a power thing at all, but really a responsibility to keep living and speaking and “doing” the good news.
And as Skinner notes, Jesus is telling this not only to those disciples, but to all his followers across the ages. Jesus has in this sense breathed upon us as well as upon the disciples, and the challenge that comes with that is to actually live like we are imbued with that Spirit.
Now take that together with the celebration of difference and diversity that is evidenced in the story from Acts, and don’t you have a marvellous picture of what it could mean and should mean to be church? With room for every mother tongue and distinctive culture —English and Hindi and Inuit and South African expressions of the One Body of Christ—and called to be a people who want to open the door to any and all who would come in? A people who have been Spirit-breathed to actually live the good news, wherever we are? Hey, I’d join a church like that!
May God’s holy and healing Spirit be upon all of us, as we continue to learn what it means to be Christ’s Body.
