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RCL YEAR C, THE FEAST OF PENTECOST
Genesis 11:1-9; Psalm 104:25-35, 37b; Acts 2:1-21; St. John 14: 8-17, 25-27
St. Edmund’s Episcopal ChurchThe Reverend George F. Woodward III
When Coca-Cola went to China they were determined to use a Chinese symbol that phonetically represented their name. It was only after a failed marketing campaign that Coke learned their new symbol translated: “Bite the wax tadpole,” which didn’t sell much Coke.
Pepsi did a similar thing with their Taiwan campaign. Their slogan in America was “Come Alive with Pepsi,” but when they tried that in Taiwan, they discovered they were telling everyone “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave!” Again, poor sales.
Parker Pen marketed their product in Flemish, unintentionally affirming that their newly created leak-proof cartridges prevented unwanted pregnancies…confusing for everyone.
Even Spanish can be difficult. Chevy introduced the NOVA to Latin America without a name change, failing to understand that “No va,” in espanol means “Won’t Go!” Frank Perdue wanted to sell chickens in Mexico and, naturally, brought his American slogan with him, “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.” Spanish stations everywhere obediently announced that “It takes a virile man to make a chicken affectionate!”
Confusion of tongues is an old problem, as our readings today also illustrate.
Many yearn, in this period of pluralism and globalization, for a common story, a shared language by which we might navigate. Such yearning is prompted by the memory of times when it could be expected that everyone along the course of our Saturday errands would speak our native tongue. In that imperfectly remembered “once upon a time” world our colleagues all shared our values, likes and dislikes and our acquaintances dressed, shopped and played pretty much as we ourselves did.
Demographic change has come quickly to California. The 2000 census revealed that Californians under the age of 18 made up 28% of the population. This quarter of the population was 35% Caucasian, 44% Hispanic, 10% Asian, 7% African American and with 7% claiming multiple racial identities. These figures were for all of California, but diversity is most concentrated along the coast, and nowhere more so than in LA, the world’s second largest Mexican city, second largest Salvadoran city, largest concentration of ethnic Chinese outside of China, and home to every one of the world’s primary religions. California will never again look like a scene out of Gidget, but rather more like a Benetton commercial, with folk of every color singing “We Are The World.” For some, this is disconcerting.
Difficulty with transition isn’t limited to those who have grown up in the U.S. I have had long talks with Asians and Latinos who have come to this country with high hopes only to experience cultural displacement and profound distress over the ways in which their own children have come to embody values which they do not share. The longing for a common story, a common cultural language, is a cross-cultural yearning.
In such an atmosphere, the story of Babel and the story of Acts may be read afresh.
The story of Babel is likely what scholars call an “explanatory myth;” a story created to explain how it was people came to have different languages and cultures. It offers us a primordial vision of a time before diversity when only one tongue and tribe existed. Migrants from the East settle on the Plain of Shinar and begin to construct a marvelous tower from adobe and bitumen. But the Lord perceives danger and hubris in this commonality, this “grand narrative” which becomes an act of idolatry. God intervenes on behalf of this unified people by confusing their tongues.
It is a disguised blessing. In “The Legends of the Jews,” Louis Ginzberg says that Judaism offers an amusing gloss on this story, portraying the workers on the tower of Babel no longer able to understand each other’s simplest instructions. They fall into a rage and take the bricks they have been mortaring into place and start throwing them at each other!
Could it be that our “grand narratives” our desire for unity and commonality and sameness, is hubris and idolatry and something that God is saving us from now as then?
Those of us with ties to Pennsylvania remember Ernie Davis, a black athlete from Uniontown who led his high school to a 52 game winning streak in basketball and went on to become a two time All American halfback at Syracuse University. Leading Syracuse to a National Title over Texas in the Cotton Bowl in 1959, Davis was elected Most Valuable Player, but bowl officials said only white players could attend the honorific dinner. His Syracuse team mates decided if Ernie couldn’t attend, they wouldn’t either, and the team went back to New York. Ernie Davis went on to become the first black player to win the Heisman Trophy, and was drafted to play NFL ball for the Washington Redskins, though he sadly died of leukemia at 23. Somebody should make an Ernie Davis movie! He is a reminder that the good ole days weren’t as good as we sometimes remember them, and that homogeneity can come at too steep a price.
The late Jerry Falwell wanted a restoration of his version of the “grand narrative,” including, in his early days, a return to racial segregation. He was alarmed by Tel-a- Tubbies, feminists, liberal sentiment, and all manner of national change and hoped a silent Moral Majority would rise up and reclaim old ways, but as his vision received further articulation, most of us realized it wasn’t an especially winsome thing.
The Book of Acts and this Feast of Pentecost show us a better way. In the Book of Acts we are shown again what we didn’t learn at Babel: that the diversification of tongues is a blessing, a manifestation of the Spirit. The world’s diversity is a check against any claim to possess entire truth, or to hold God’s own and perfect view of the world. What we are given is not a “grand narrative” of sameness, but the spiritual task of engagement and commitment that bridges all manner of cultural and social difference. Augustine, in “The City of God” (Book XVI) said that the mark of Babel was the avoidance of engagement, a “true association only with those with whom one can (already) talk.” Pentecost, in contrast, teaches that the unity of God is never found in the obliteration of difference, but by laying down the bricks we hurl at one another to find the Lord moving in the stranger.
Extending ourselves to each other is always hard work. Any parish priest can tell you that homogeneity is really not much more than a patina even in the most homogenous of communities. Every congregation is an exploration of pluralism; every human being is unique, and each is—all are—loved by God. That is the reality of the Gospel for which we strive.
We make the assumption that the experiences of other people and communities are simply variations of our own experiences, but this is never so. It is only by disciplined effort that we can overcome such assumptions, and it is in part for this work that the Advocate was given to us on this day. They were confused, at Pentecost, by the multitude of languages proclaiming the same Gospel in different tongues and voices, but they pressed on in faithful labor to forge the first community of the Church from their own perplexity.
The task of the Gospel in our day is more like it was in the Book of Acts than it has been in a long while…bridge-building more than tower raising, looking less like Gidget and more like Benetton, wind-tossed, half-perplexed, a Church built out of Parthians, Medes and Elamites, forsaking the Tower of a grand narrative for the simple truth of the other.
Father Rob has told me of the great success experienced in the recent Alpha course through the practice of Lectio Divina, the group sharing of Scriptural meditations. The power of this discipline comes through a revealing of the self to others, an increasingly rare experience in our hurried world. Gospel proclamation happens in such moments of truth-telling, vulnerability and openness, in the determination to listen to the voice of another despite the strangeness of the language spoken. Only as the Church hones that discipline can we become a bridge between cultures and peoples in this time and place of raging change.
The challenge, it seems, is to forge Pentecost from Babel, not through the obliteration of difference, but through attending to one another and attending to our swirling culture, seeking the Lord, and the fresh truths the Advocate leads us to. Your most important relationships won’t be forged up the Babel tower at the height of your ambition or worldly success, but in the chinks and weak spots, the places where you let yourself lean on another, and let them lean back on you. That’s not what we want, but it’s what we need. Don’t worry so much about the height of your tower; it doesn’t matter anyway. Listen for the Wind. Listen for God in strange tongues and places. Speak the truth that God has placed in your own heart. Watch as God builds of us a new city, a tiny part of the New Jerusalem, dwelling with us, we in Christ, and Christ in the Father, and the Spirit filling all in all. Amen. GFW+
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