The Feast of Pentecost; 28 May 2023; Day of Pentecost A (RCL); Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:25-35, 37; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13; John 7:37-39.
I know I have heard sermons, and have probably preached one or two myself, claiming that Pentecost undoes Babel. In the story of the Tower of Babel, all the people had one language, and set out to build a ziggurat, so they could stay in one place. So, God came down and confused their languages, and scattered them over the face of the earth. It’s a wonderful etiology for the existence of the multiplicity of languages.
Only recently did I read an article that forced me to reconsider what I thought I know about Babel and Pentecost. I can’t remember where I read it, but the gist was that what God considered inappropriate about Babel was not the ziggurat, but the fact that the people had intended to stay at Babel. When God had kicked our primal parents out of the garden, God had sent them to populate the earth, to spread out on its face, and “be fruitful and multiply.” Humanity was to have husbandry over the whole earth.
Babel threatened God’s intention by stopping the spread of humanity. So, God confused their language. That makes the story of Babel not just an etiology of the multiplicity of languages, but also of the spread of humanity across the face of the earth.
Luke’s account of Pentecost does not “undo” Babel, but continues the process. People from all over the inhabited world had gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast of Shavuot (Weeks), and they hear in their own languages the disciples recounting the mighty acts of God. So, now, not only are humans scattered over the face of the earth, but as these pilgrims return home, so will the accounts of God’s mighty acts be disseminated across the earth as well.
I think this understanding can help us undo some of the supersessionism implicit in Luke’s story. Shavuot celebrates the gift of Torah on Sinai, and Luke chose Pentecost to contrast the gift of the Spirit to the gift of the Law (recall the prophecies of both Ezekiel and Jeremiah that in the coming day, God would replace the law written on stone with a law written on hearts of flesh). The tongues of fire recall the pillar of fire leading the people through the wilderness. Here the fire rests on each individual, rather than over the whole people. In these ways, we have often read Luke as implying that the Church is recapitulating or fulfilling the history of God’s people related in the scripture of his day.
Instead, perhaps, we could read the story of Pentecost as continuing God’s desire for the spread of accounts of God’s might acts across the earth. The fact that the disciples speak in the languages of the people gathered, rather than all the people again speaking one language would fit with Luke’s story of Paul spreading the word of God’s deeds to all people, without undoing the diversity of languages and cultures.