"Spirit Church"

I sometimes walk our dog, Emmett, in a park near our house.  While in the park this last Wednesday, I stopped a moment to take in a beautiful field of wildflowers. I saw coneflowers, Indian Paintbrush, Black-eyed Susans, and many others I couldn't name. Colors ran from various shades of yellow to purple to white.  Observing this beauty, the thought in my mind was: "My, how God must love diversity and variety."  Well, this morning we read two scriptures that seem to confirm this thought. The first scripture, the story of the tower of Babel, pronounces God's judgment about the people's desire to build a city based on undifferentiated unity, while the second scripture, the Pentecost story, celebrates the creation of community built on the foundation of variety and differences.

Let's begin with the Genesis story, as it takes us back to the start of human history.   After the great flood, humanity was given a new beginning. God had made an everlasting covenant with Noah and his descendents. All creation was given a fresh start. We're told that there was one language and one people.  At first glance, that sounds like a good thing.  One language meant that there could be mutual understanding and clear communication.  The group from our congregation that went to the Congo last summer shared some of the challenges they faced due to the language barrier.  They told of trying to lead Bible classes for several hundred children, none of whom spoke English.  We'll face some of this same challenge next week in Mexico. Obviously different languages make relationships, communication and community more difficult. Thus the idea of everyone's speaking the same language sounds pretty appealing.  Also, the people's fear of being scattered sounds reasonable. We parents grow anxious when children leave home for distant places. Church families feel diminished when members move away.  The people's desire to stay together as one people with one language resonates with us as a desirable model of community. 

But apparently God see things differently.  When God sees the people's desire to build a city and settle down in one place, God confuses their language and scatters them abroad over the face of the earth. It's tempting to read this story as a simplistic story of human disobedience and divine punishment.  But Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggemann suggests that God's problem with these descendents of Noah is that they are attempting to form community based on the wrong kind of unity.  Even though, after the flood, God told the people to spread abroad, they chose instead to remain in their own safe mode of homogeneity.  They retreated within their own tribal group and attempted to secure and exploit a portion of the earth for their own protection and benefit. True, they enjoyed a kind of unity, but it was a self-serving unity, one grounded in fear and characterized by a "fortress mentality." 

And even today we continue to see attempts to form relationships and to build community on the basis of this false unity.  Imagine a couple at the altar of marriage.  They face one another and make their declaration of love. They pledge their faithfulness to each other. Such a declaration of makes for a beautiful moment. But if their love stays focused only on themselves and their own welfare, it will not be the kind of oneness that God wills in marriage. Figuratively speaking, if couples build a white picket fence around their marriage to wall off the world and attempt to be sufficient unto themselves, then their unity is ultimately in vain. 

Churches too, can attempt to form community on the basis of like-mindedness and conformity.  In fact, some analytical literature promotes homogeneity as the surest ingredient of church growth.  After all, likes tend to attract. Most folks prefer to gather with others who look, think and act like them.  We Christians can erect our own version of the tower of Babel, when we seek shelter under a sacred canopy that requires conformity and excludes differences.  Surely God's judgment pronounced against the tower of Babel continues today whenever individuals, couples, churches and even nations try to seal themselves off form the larger world.

Look now at the Pentecost story.  At Pentecost, the unity God wills for creation found expression.   If the Genesis story is about community based on sameness, the Spirit empowered community is based on diversity.  Luke sets the story of Pentecost in an international, multi-cultural and multi-lingual situation.  Present were Jews from every nation under heaven. There were Libyans, Romans, Cretans, Arabs, Egyptians and others. This diversity of languages, cultures and nationalities clearly wasn't a barrier to the workings of God's will. In fact, it was a necessary ingredient.

Latin American theologian Juan Luis Segundo has suggested that God's will for a diversified humanity has its foundation in the life of the triune God.  God is a differentiated unity in which the persons of the Trinity share an unlimited love for one another, to the point that "injury to one is affront to all and praise of one touches upon the glory of all."  In this light, human community that is created by God's Spirit will be based on love for the other in which injury to one is viewed as an affront to all. 

In a recent seminary chapel sermon, seminary President Ted Wardlaw reminded the seminary community of an African concept called ubuntu.  Ubuntu was the underlying ethic that sought to reconcile South Africans following the years of apartheid.  Bishop Desmond Tutu describes ubuntu in his book entitled No Future Without Forgiveness:  "A person with ubuntu," says Tutu, "is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."  And then the Bishop concludes, "What dehumanizes you inexorably dehumanizes me."  Ubuntu has its origin in scripture--"rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep"—and this scripture has its origin in the life of the triune God.

Last year our Session at UPC adopted a resolution declaring ourselves a multi-cultural church.  The resolution, we recognized, didn't so much describe the current make-up of our congregation as it was a conviction that diversity, not homogeneity, has been God's intention from the beginning. The resolution challenges us with what our denomination has called the mandate of Pentecost:  "We are called, both as individuals and as the body of Christ, to open our doors, our minds, and our hearts to persons whom we see as strangers."

One of my journals records the story of a congregation in Northern California that was founded in the early 20^th century by a group of Danish immigrants. Over the years, the Danes died off, and only a handful of Danish speaking members remained in the congregation. One Sunday, which happened to be Pentecost Sunday, the congregation received a visit from a Danish pastor, who preached in Danish, a language few in the congregation understood.  Still, worship occurred in a powerful way for the congregation.  The congregation's pastor introduced the Danish guest with these words:  "We are delighted to have Pastor Bogh with us today.  Most of us may not understand his words. But, witness today the ways that the Spirit moves among us as we worship together, as we receive Holy Communion together. Watch for the power of the Holy Sprit as it is alive here today, enabling us to understand, each in our own way, the love that God has for us. And when we are finished this morning, go back out into the world with the spirit of Pentecost in your life, empowered by God to destroy walls of separation, empowered to reach out and communicate in new ways as you touch people with the language of love that Christ has taught us."