Acts 2:1-21/Genesis 11:1-9 Commentary

The people of the earth have just been through it. The whole of their lives drowned in a flood. Because of their wickedness. And because God is a Holy God, God is not afraid to punish wickedness. But now that God has set the people on dry ground, they are still a little shook. So when God tells them, just like he did in the Garden of Eden, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.”

The consensus of the whole population of planet earth at the time was, “No thanks. We’ll just stay here where we are safe and together and, for the love of everything holy, DRY. And, since we don’t want what *that* to *ever* happen to us, let’s build something solid. Something dependable. Something that can withstand any flood that might come our way again (because, even though God promised He would never send a flood again, well, just hedge our bets.) So they build a Tower.

Note the building materials for this tower: sun-baked mud bricks held together, not with common mortar, but tar or pitch. That’s a strange choice of materials. It shows up somewhere else in Hebrew Scripture. Moses’ mother lined a basket with pitch before putting her son inside and setting it loose to float along the Nile. Pitch is water-proof.

As we’ve seen, the context of the story of the Tower of Babel is crucial. Moving from an ark tossed by waves, its passengers green with seasickness to the steady, sturdy promise of a tower – a water-proof tower no less – gives us a glimpse that, beneath the arrogance, there was also fear. The people of the earth were uncertain of God, uncertain of a world that floods, uncertain of themselves and how their wickedness factors into the problem. In their fear, they find their own solution – a tower of certainty. But human towers of certainty do not please God. At the Tower of Babel, God says, “this is not the way.”

And then, in the very next chapter, God replaces certainty with covenant. This is the way. In Genesis, chapter 12 God makes covenant with Abram. The chapter begins with God speaking to Abram, saying, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s house. Go to the land I will show you.” Go. And you don’t get to know ahead of time where. But I will be with you and I will show you.

And although circumstances were rarely certain for the people following God, God’s covenant was sure. God was with them and God showed them the way. That much was certain. Out of slavery, into the promised land, through the priests and the prophets, even in exile. But, over the years, God’s people had defaulted back into their towers of certainty. The religious leaders kept a rigorous set of rules by which to judge who was in and who was out.

So that, when Christ entered the world, God was truly, fully, certainly with us. God was no longer showing the way. God – in Christ – was the way and the truth and the life. But, people being people, opted for systems of certainty over the mystery of a God made flesh, over the invitation to come, follow and see. But Jesus’ disciples, like God’s people of old, took a chance, they risked it big by following Jesus with his inscrutable stories and his unpredictable timing, doing awesome wonders and then being like, “shhh, don’t tell anyone” and then raising the dead but talking about his own death. The Gospels certainly don’t give us the story of a predictable Savior. And, nearly always, when the disciples were confident and certain they knew what was going on … they were wrong. Jesus died. But wait there’s more. He rose! But then he ascended, with promises of a helper, an advocate, a power that would fuel their witness. But they didn’t have it yet. They had to wait for it.

And so we find ourselves in the Pentecost story. Another Sunday School favorite. The disciples are gathered in one place when wind and tongues of flame descend and “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”

It isn’t liquid. But it isn’t solid either. It is wind and flame – unpredictable elements. Each disciple filled with the Holy Spirit and able to speak the gospel “as the Spirit enabled them.” They take it to the streets and discover something beautiful, true, powerful …. But far from safe. Far from certain. The very point of a building is that it may shield you from a flood of chaos but it also insulates you from the wind, which is exactly what the Spirit is and how the Spirit works.

God supports and guides the people of Israel – not in a flood or a in tower but in a covenant relationship. So too today, God supports and guides the church – not in liquid chaos or solid certainty but the breath of the Spirit. The “ruach”, the wind. The Holy Spirit lives in that space between liquid and solid, between chaos and certainty, where we find ourselves asking, “What is even happening right now?”

Illustration:

Like the survivors of the ark building a waterproof tower, when we feel unsteady, it makes all the sense in the world that we would double-down on certainty and security. Think about how we do this on the individual level. A young adult who goes through a bad break-up and spends the next decade with very strict rules for who to date, and how to date and how the people she was dating should behave in every situation. The result being a decades-worth of failed relationships. Because that’s not how people work.

How our human reaction to chaos, uncertainty, even the noble desire to avoid God’s judgment on our lives can lead to rigidity, an overconfidence in our own certainty, which is all – if you think about it – a kind of works-righteousness. If I can just know that I know that I know. If I just follow the rules (even the ones I made up)…

Looking at broader trends in society, like the 60s and 70s when so much was in flux in our country surrounding civil rights, the sexual revolution, gender equity, is it any wonder that large portions of the church doubled-down and in some cases reversed course toward segregation, toward gender hierarchy, and then with purity culture. When the world and all that we’d thought was solid seems to be liquifying, isn’t it just the perfect example of human reactivity, that we’re out here painting pitch on our homes and our church steeples? Even though God promises to bless and keep his people … well, let’s just hedge our bets.