This Sunday in churches all over the world people will celebrate the Day of Pentecost, the birthday of the church. A lot of people know that fact, but it’s worthwhile pointing out something that happened on that day that reversed something that happened thousands of years before.
Genesis 11 tells a story of separation from God, and separation from each other. We know it as the story of the Tower of Babel.
All people on the earth had one language and the same words. When they traveled east, they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them hard.” They used bricks for stones and asphalt for mortar. They said, “Come, let’s build for ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and let’s make a name for ourselves so that we won’t be dispersed over all the earth.”
Then the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the humans built. And the Lord said, “There is now one people and they all have one language. This is what they have begun to do, and now all that they plan to do will be possible for them. Come, let’s go down and mix up their language there so they won’t understand each other’s language.” Then the Lord dispersed them from there over all of the earth, and they stopped building the city. Therefore, it is named Babel, because there the Lord mixed up the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord dispersed them over all the earth. (Genesis 11:1-9, CEB)
Lots of things actually go on in that short passage. For context, remember that God had commissioned humans to spread out across the world, but they did not do that. Thus they defied God and sought to live without him.
“Babel” means confusion. The Scripture tells us it is called that because the Lord mixed up the language of all the earth. But before their language was confused, the people were confused—they thought they could live without God.
So they could no longer understand each other.
Perhaps you find yourself technically speaking the same language as someone else, and yet not understanding them. They don’t understand you, either. Humans naturally desire connection, and yet we inevitably struggle with it.
That’s why the empowerment of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost included the miraculous detail that the crowd understood in their own languages. In other words, the Holy Spirit enabled a message of connection rather than division; of clarity rather than confusion.
Pentecost reversed Babel. The language of salvation is simple and clear.
It’s a different question, though: are we listening?