The narrative conclusion of Babel

There is an not uncommon framing of Jesus as being the Second Adam, Adam like the guy from the Garden of Eden, meaning that in all ways that Adam caused us to fall into sin, Jesus accomplished the inverse, he repaired the damage of the fall, he bridged the gap that had formed between God and humanity making reconciliation possible again, meaning that sin would no longer have the final word over us.

There is a lesser known, perhaps, framing of the Pentecost as the narrative conclusion of story of the Tower of Babel. Of course, the story of the Tower of Babel is just a little bit of Genesis chapter 11 that describes the people of God as united and with one common language who aspire to build a tower that reaches the heavens. Wanting to reach the heavens feels so so poetically similar to Adam's and Eve's desires to become like God, comprehending Good and Evil before they were ready. And so God leveled the tower and scattered the people to different lands and to different languages so that they cannot comprehend one another any longer.

Pentecost essentially tells the story of Babel in reverse. People from different tribes and nations and peoples come together and are visited by the Holy Spirit, who pours out her spirit upon them, visualized as tongues of fire that descend on them, and what do they find but that they can understand one another again, in all their different languages. They are confounded by what's happening, all of them, but what a gift for their work ahead as they embark on this mission of building the church.

It has been feeling to me more and more Tower of Babel out there in the world, even today on this celebration of the Pentecost, I don't feel as if as a people -- supposedly of one nation and one people -- we have really have retained the ability to comprehend one another, it feels as if we are coming further apart than drawing closer together. This gap between people and God, this gap between one people and another described through all these stories in Genesis feels like it is getting bigger, not smaller.

And yet, division is not the only thing that describes us and division is not God's desire for us. For all the ways that we might look around in the world and think "wow, we do not understand each other", aren't there also moments of stunning comprehension and tenderness all around us? Reconciliations and mercies and graces that we cannot entirely explain or rationalize, that have no calculated value except that they are the gifts of love freely given? There are so many moments where our holy spirited selves break through and give us a glimpse of the lives we are meant to live, a glimpse of the world that God sees and has equipped us for. We have been given the Holy Spirit by God, we have within us what we need to embody this comprehension in our lives, even as tough and bitter as it can taste these days.

For me, and maybe for you too, it has helped me keep my bearings to make just a little tiny pivot in my perspective. I kind of no longer take it for granted that we are all able to communicate with each other, and I guess what that means is that instead of being really really furious all day long about all the failures to communicate everywhere around us, I instead treat all of these occasions as funny little puzzles to solve. How can I possibly mediate between my two students who are fighting? How can I possibly hear out the person with whom I disagree majorly? How can I possibly recover from the miscommunication that was kind of my fault? Instead of expecting that these things will have solved themselves and then being mad when they aren't, kind of expecting that none of it will be automatically solved, and then bringing a pinata and a sparkler and a confetti popper for when it works out. Treating successful communication across difference not as finally achieving baseline, but as a cause for celebration, as how we treat it on the Pentecost, as a miracle. Amen.