June 8, 2025

The Day of Pentecost, Year C

Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-21

Epiphany, Winnipeg

Did you hear that? They were gathered in the house, and suddenly from heaven came a sound like the rush of a violent wind. It filled the house, and then there were flames coming down and settling among them there. Wind and flame: Those are the last things we need to hear about this week, when we’ve prayed along with thousands for an end of the flames, and we’ve hoped for winds that slow down and turn to stillness. No tongues of fire. No sound like a violent wind. This week we all need some gentle.

One day when our children were very young, Val and I were driving home through a quiet Saskatchewan landscape while the young ones slept in the back. As we chatted about this and that, just some road-trip small talk, Val asked a question, just a small question, just an innocent question, that had something to do with family histories and the health of our very young children. I won’t go into details. I don’t remember exactly what I said next, or what Val said after that, but pretty soon we were in the middle of a really hot argument with a lot of hot air and our little tongues of fire saying the angriest things, and neither one of us had any idea how we got there but I’m pretty sure each of us was pretty certain that we were right. About something.

And then it went quiet. We drove through that quiet landscape and burned a little bit inside while we stared out our different windows. After a little bit of forever one of us, and I honestly don’t know which one, just asked, “What are we fighting about?” And then I think Val said, “When you said that thing when it all started, did you mean…this?” And I said, “No, I meant that.” And Val asked, “Well then why did you say that?” And I said, “Because I thought you meant this.”

Then the untangling started and by the time the drive was over we had figured out what was going on, and we understood each other. We even liked each other again.

Since that day thirty some years we have not had a single argument. We haven’t had a single one, we’ve had dozens, hundreds of them. But we’ll sometimes look back on that moment, and now it’s really clear how the argument started and how it kept going, but we still don’t know how it was that one of us finally said “What are we fighting about?” It’s just that once the hot air and the wind and the flame died down, some bit of inspiration started us on a path to understanding each other.

Let’s say it was the Holy Spirit who did it, like the Spirit who makes Galileens and Cappadocians understand each other; like the Spirit who spoke in wind and flame.

Remember that other story today, about Tower of Babel? It’s a good one. Those people all arrive after travelling from the East, and they end up settling in a region called Shinar, in what today is Iraq. They try to build a big tower so that everyone will see it and know who they are, and everyone will be so impressed with their power. They’re going to Make Shinar Great Again! And God sees them doing that, and God says, “If they finish that tower, then who knows what all else they’ll do? Whatever it is, I know it won’t be great.” And so what does God do? God confuses their language. It never really says that God makes them speak different languages. Their own language just gets confused. They can’t understand each other any more so they just get sent out all over. Why stay with people you don’t understand? For all we know, they all still spoke the same language. But their language was confused, and they couldn’t understand each other.

Maybe it’s like this: On that long Saskatchewan drive the problem was not that I was speaking Norwegian badly and Val was speaking perfect English but with that weird Winnipeg accent. We spoke the same language, but it was so confused and we were so confused and we just couldn’t understand each other. Maybe I wanted to be right and Val wanted to be right, we each wanted to build a tower and win. But we just didn’t know what we were doing.

Think about it for a minute: The big fights we have in Canada over all the things we find to argue about are usually fights between people who speak the same language. Danielle Smith and Mark Carney both speak English as a first language. Anybody I’ve ever unfriended on Facebook is a born and raised English speaker like me but we just can’t understand each other and don’t want to try any more. Any congregation or synod that has had tension and division has done it in one language that everyone understands. But our speech gets confused. And we don’t understand, and we end up scattered.

That story of the Tower of Babel is not so much about laying the blame for our divisions at the feet of God. It just shows us what we know can be so true: We can be one people, we can even speak the same language, but sometimes, so often, we just don’t understand. In a nation, in a church, in a home.

It’s the Day of Pentecost today, and we give thanks for the gift of the Holy Spirit who is given to us. The Holy Spirit who moved over the water and God said “Let there be light” and there was light, and life, and night and day and everything that is. It all became clear. It’s that breath of God that inspired prophets to speak God’s word of release for prisoners and sight for the blind and freedom for all those who are oppressed; the same Holy Spirit who inspires prophets of old and prophets today to speak the truth, even when empires and powers and rulers don’t like to hear the truth being told. It’s the Spirit of Jesus who gathers up a new people and heals divisions; who says “Follow me,” and even people who might have wanted nothing to do with each other are suddenly brought together. The Spirit given to us is the one that Jesus that he breathed on his tired and frightened friends with a gift of peace and a calling to bring peace and forgiveness to the world. On this day of Pentecost we celebrate that the same Spirit is even given to us, and has made us into what we call the Church, or the Body of Christ, or All the Saints.

On our good days in this church that the Holy Spirit has gathered together, on our good days we understand each other. Weeks, months, years with a common vision or purpose or calling or whatever you want to call it. And there are days and seasons where even if we speak the same language we just can’t understand, and sometimes we end up scattered. Or if not scattered, maybe a bit like two people arguing in a car, stuck together but not able to understand.

Then we come back every year to this story of the sound of wind and flame, and a strange beautiful miracle. But the miracle of Pentecost is not that a bunch of Galileeans suddenly spoke like Parthians, Phrygians, and Pamphillians. And it’s not the miracle of Cyrenians, Elamites and Mesopotamians making sense of these Galileeans who speak their languages with such thick Galileean accents. The miracle is that they understood each other. They didn’t understand because they studied languages in school or spent half an hour a day on Duolingo; they understood because the Spirit gave them understanding.The Spirit showed them and shows us that our God is one who brings together strangers and who gives the gift of understanding to people who had been scattered and separated. And the Spirit inspires us, the risen Jesus sends us into a world that needs so much to taste some understanding, and some healing.

We’re not sent into the world with a suitcase full of solutions and great ideas. We’re just sent into the world with this Spirit that Jesus promised; this Spirit who is breathed into us in our baptism, who will give us ears to hear and understand and who will give us words and the courage to speak…to tell of the great work of God who raises up life from death.

So we celebrate that gift of the Holy Spirit, who sometimes comes to us with the sound of a mighty wind and tongues of fire, and who sometimes comes along quietly and peacefully, like a few words spoken or sung, like little tongues of flame to illumine our way….