Meditation for Pentecost 2025
Collect for Pentecost
Genesis 11:1-9 The Tower of Babel
The whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel — because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world and scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Acts 2:1-6 The Holy Spirit Comes at Pentecost
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken.
From confusion to unity.
Of all the strange things happening on the Day of Pentecost, perhaps the most puzzling is when God appears to have second thoughts. In Genesis 11, He makes it difficult for people to understand each other’s language – “Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
And then in Acts 2, He does the opposite – in the crowd, from all four corners of the Earth, “each one heard their own language being spoken.”
We feel like saying Lord, make your mind up – you divided us, now you want us to be together?
But that’s not what’s happening. In Babel, arrogant humans think they can build a tower that will let them reach what they think would be heaven through their own ability, and exercise secular dominion over creation. They believe they have no need of God. With a common language, the result would be uniformity, not unity. Heaven? I Don’t think so. Stultifying boredom, more like.
Instead, God, working through the power of the Holy Spirit, unites people with the gift of understanding each other in their glorious technicolour diversity. They each still have their own language, culture and traditions, but they are as one in Him, united in proclaiming the name of Jesus as Lord.
We don’t need bricks and tar. Through Him, His example, and the strength of the Spirit, we are built by love, transcending those things that divide us. As Heaven reaches down to us, we reach out in turn and share that love to all Humankind, whoever and wherever they might be. We see the Kingdom of Heaven shining like a jewel in all its multifaceted splendour.
If the world only, just as an experiment, really, truly, tried to love as Jesus loves His apostles, disciples, and us – perhaps for just one day – I wonder what would result?
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