Word and Spirit

The story of Pentecost read this week in Chapel is especially powerful and significant. The Scripture reading from Acts tells us about the wonder and the miracle that belongs to the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem. The images are intriguing. How does one capture the idea of things spiritual through the images of things material and physical?

The coming down of the Holy Spirit, the promised gift of the Son and the Father, is imaged by way of wind and fire, the most elusive of physical phenomenon. They point us to the things of the spirit which cannot be reduced to the physical but which can be glimpsed and known through the world. God uses the things of the created world to make known the things of the spirit.

Such is revelation, the idea of things intellectual and spiritual being mediated and made known through the material and physical world. But the greater miracle or wonder of Pentecost has in part to do with language which reveals thoughts and ideas.

Pentecost is a Greek word referring to the fiftieth day after Easter for Christians, on the one hand, and an ancient Hebrew festival, Shavuot which celebrates the giving of the Torah, the Law to Moses, on the other hand. In both cases, it has to do with what is made known or revealed. Part of the wonder of Pentecost is that it is a reprise or re-working of another ancient story, the story of the Tower of Babel.

The former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, the scholar and writer, Jonathan Sacks, comments on the story of the Flood and the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis. He notes that the first is the problem of freedom without order, in short, anarchy or chaos; the second is the problem of order without freedom, in short, tyranny. These terms suggest the interplay or lack thereof between intellect and will which need to be seen together; something which the readings in Pentecost about the Holy Spirit make clear in terms of the interrelation of Word and Spirit, a theme common to Hebrew and Christian thought and beyond.

“We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God,” Acts tells us about the Pentecostal mystery. Unity and universality are grasped through the diversity of languages and cultures. In this sense, Pentecost marks the redemption of the story of the Tower of Babel. But it is a story, as Sacks makes clear, that we often misunderstand and misconstrue and in so doing fail to do justice to Pentecost itself.

The story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) is not a just-so story about the origins of different languages and cultures. That is already established in “the generations of the sons of Noah” (Genesis 10) “in their lands, each with his own language, by their families, in their nations.” It is really the story of human presumption and tyranny.

The story of the Flood arises out of human wickedness in the absence of order and law within us. It results in God’s rescue and clean-up mission by renewing creation and establishing an explicit form of order in a Covenant symbolized by the rainbow. The story of the Tower of Babel is about the human attempt to impose one language upon all peoples. The assumption of one language for everyone is a human and utopian ideal. Yet it is a false universal at the expense of the God-given differences between peoples and cultures which Genesis 10 has already affirmed. The imposition of one language and culture denies the diversity of cultures and languages; it is tyranny. It is order without freedom that arises from human presumption and arrogance. It results in domination and the misuse of power. Such is the impulse of imperialism, the impulse to impose.

Babel confuses the things of God with human vanity and presumption. The word signifies confusion, the confusion that belongs to the diversities of indeterminate and indistinct things; ‘diversities’ are just a heap of things. Pentecost is the fullest possible redemption of the story of the Tower of Babel and reveals the interrelation of Word and Spirit, of language and thought. It speaks profoundly to the unity of the human community through the diversity of cultures and languages. One thing is understood - the wonderful works of God, not man - but only through the diversity of human tongues and languages in their distinctiveness. That is the Pentecostal mystery and miracle: “We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.”

The human community in itself has no unity apart from tyranny which is a false and destructive unity and one which has no regard for nature or creation. Truth and unity are found in and through the diversity of clear and distinct ideas. They are found in and through the things which make for our true individuality and the true forms of our communal and collective life. We are recalled to God in whom we find our truth and unity, to the Holy Spirit who guides us into all truth.

Word and Spirit go together but in what way? “The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life,” as Paul puts it. I cannot think of Pentecost without thinking about King’s-Edgehill as a School of many tongues and cultures. To appreciate the range of languages is to become aware of the priority of thought; to what is known and understood through language. Thought precedes language; not the other way around, which means we need not be imprisoned or determined by language however much language shapes our thinking. Not everything is lost in translation; some things may be found in translation. How? Through the pursuit of meaning; through the Spirit bringing understanding. Without that, we remain isolated from one another and divided in ourselves. The Spirit reveals the life and meaning of words in their truth.

This is what Pentecost shows us. The wonder of God is made known in and through the various languages and cultures of the world; something universal and transcendent is communicated through the particularities of culture and language. Pentecost recalls us to what belongs to the unity of the human community in its dignity and truth.