Text: Acts
2:1-21, Genesis 11:1-9 Tongues of Fire Em
nome do Pai e do Filho e do Espirito Santo. Amen. Caridos no Senhor, hoje, a gente celebra o Dia de Pentecostes, em que veio
o Espirito Santo à igregia infantil. …
Como? Qual é a problema? Voces não me intendem?
Don’t you understand me? No,
probably not. And certainly if I were to
go on speaking this way, it’s doubtful that you would understand a word I’m
saying. (And some of you are probably
thinking, “Yes, and how is that different than any
other Sunday?” Fair enough. But hopefully you found the Portuguese just a
bit more difficult to comprehend than normal.)
In any case, what I said was, “In the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Beloved in the Lord, today we celebrate the
Day of Pentecost, on which the Holy Spirit came to the infant Church.” And hopefully the point is clear. If I don’t speak in a language you can understand,
I can go on preaching the Word of God to you all day, telling of the wonderful
things God has accomplished for you in Christ your Savior; but it will sound to
you like a lot of meaningless noise. No,
for me to communicate the truths of the Gospel, I need to use a language that actually
speaks to your heart. And that, as it turns out, is a
bigger problem than you might imagine; because the truth is that even though we
all speak English, we really don’t
understand each other when we speak it.
This, more than anything, is what’s being revealed in this morning’s Old
Testament lesson. It happens during a
time in human history when everyone spoke the same tongue. In fact, not only
were they using a common language, they were even saying the same thing: “Let’s
build a city and a tower that will make our name great. Let’s achieve something that will bring us
glory for ages to come.” Or, in
short, “Let’s build a monument to us.” They wanted to achieve lasting honor and a
measure of immortality on their own. They
wanted to do it with nothing but their wits and the work of their hands. And today, over five thousand years later, we’re
still saying the same thing and thinking the same thought. We’re all out to build a name for
ourselves. True, these days the sounds
of the words are different, and they’re spoken in many different tongues; but
we are all still speaking the same language of “self glorification”. But instead of uniting us, the language
of self glorification actually pushes us apart.
Because in order to achieve recognition and honor, in order to be remembered, you have to do whatever it
is you do better than the next guy. It
was certainly true for those who migrated east and decided to build themselves
a city on the plain of Shinar. They
were out to show their superiority over those folks who had stayed in the west
in their mud huts and pathetic little villages.
The purpose of their city was to put the others to shame. And what was true for them on a community
level was true for them as individuals as well, I’m sure. I expect that there were competitions for
glory among those who were working on the Tower of Babel: “Why everyone knows Ahab lays bricks the
fastest; but Omar lays them straighter.
And then there’s old Abdul, who’s not very fast or neat; but he’s been
at it so long that he’s laid more brick than anyone else, ... and so on, until
everyone has some claim of their own to immortal fame. Everyone earns a name for himself by his or
her accomplishment, whatever it might be, in the building of the tower that
reaches toward heaven. And things aren’t any different
today. It many ways we are all still
speaking the language of self glorification and attempting to make a name for
ourselves by building our own towers of Babel.
We do it individually in our personal lives, collectively in our families,
our communities, and our churches; and even on a larger scale by states and nations. And I want you to understand that I’m not
talking about the legitimate satisfaction that comes from doing a job well, or
the good natured spirit of competition that we can enjoy in sports and
games. No, I’m talking about the
loveless glee that comes from doing something or just being better than the
next guy because ... well, because I am better than he is. This is
the language we all speak. And the funny thing about the
language of self glorification is that even though we all speak it, it only
causes confusion because we can’t agree on what it means. You see, the most important words in this
whole language are “me, myself, and I”. They
are the subject of almost all the nouns, and the object of just about every
verb. They are the over-riding first consideration
in all thought. And that’s what creates
the confusion. You see, no matter who
uses the most important words in this language, one thing’s for certain, you mean
somebody else when you say them than I do when I use them. And therein lies the conflict and the
confusion. And that’s why today, even
though the world has many different languages and dialects, no matter who’s
talking, even if I don’t understand a single word you say, I can be sure that
you’re talking about building your tower, not mine. So instead of helping us cooperate
and get along together, what we find is that our common language is ultimately destructive
to harmony and stable relationships because everyone is focused on themselves,
struggling to build their own tower the highest. And because we find that building ourselves
up is a lot of hard work, we often resort to the easier and faster tactic of
having the highest tower by knocking down everyone else’s – maybe even using
some of their bricks, either to throw at them or to build our own walls
higher. This works great because our
ability to destroy what others do always outstrips our ability to build for
ourselves. Just for example: a
reputation that took a lifetime to build can be destroyed completely with a
couple well aimed accusations – true or not; it doesn’t make any difference. And this, I suspect more than anything, is
the reason God chose to intervene at Babel and slow the progress. What he slowed was not so much the rate of construction but rather the rate of destruction. He foresaw that nothing they planned to do
would be impossible to them – and he recognized the danger in that. And today we can see why. With our modern technology we can do many
wonderful things; but every effort to build Utopia, the perfect community on
earth, has failed. We can’t build
anything that lasts in that regard. Ah,
but when it comes to destroying things, that’s
where we really excel. Why now we can
vaporize civilizations with blasts hotter than the surface of the sun, create
poisons so deadly that a small drop could kill every person in this county, and
genetically engineer diseases more lethal than the black plague. You know, if the Lord hadn’t slowed our
“progress” at Babel by confusing the languages of the builders, we might have
had these capabilities thousands of years ago.
And if that had happened, I don’t suppose we’d be here to talk about it. My point is that our common language,
the language of self glorification, is the dialect of self destruction. It’s the language of dark minds and cold,
loveless hearts. And it goes all the way
back to when our first parents tried to make a name for themselves by reaching
toward heaven to become like God. They
ended up tasting bitter death. From that
time onward humanity has continued to attempt reaching higher; but every
attempt to achieve lasting glory and immortality has failed miserably. And since reaching toward heaven is so difficult,
we’ve responded by trying to knock God down.
The ancients did it by recasting him in the form of humans or various animals. And we do it today by ignoring him or
pretending that he doesn’t exist. Either
way, the result is the same. It’s given
us lives that are a Babel of confusion, “full
of sound and fury and signifying nothing”. And throughout history, as God
has tried to reestablish communication and give real meaning to our lives, we
garbled his message and we killed the messengers. Why? Because they weren’t speaking our common tongue. Instead, they were speaking God’s divine
language of calling us to repent – repent of sins that people didn’t want to admit
or confess. They were speaking of
mankind’s unworthiness to stand before the Lord with any claim to merit. Why, they even said that the wonderful towers
of glory we build in our lives – the achievements of which we are so proud – are
less than nothing in the eyes of God.
And people didn’t like hearing it.
They refused to listen. They
plugged their ears and kept on believing in their own imagined goodness. And the result is that they never really
heard or understood the rest of God’s message: about his grace and forgiveness, about his
plan to send a Savior – his own Son – to take away our sin. Nor did they get the part about how the
Lord’s Christ, through his suffering, death, and resurrection, would teach us
again to speak God’s divine language – his language of love for others, of
attaining glory through humility, sacrifice, and service, and of attaining eternal
life through dying to self. They didn’t
hear it; or if they did, it was so much nonsense to them. And so when God sent his Son into this world
with the same message, they didn’t get it; and they killed him too. And don’t imagine for a moment that if you
had lived then you would have done things any differently. That’s
because the Scriptures inform us that sinful mind is hostile to God and
everything he says. Our minds are closed
to him. They are darkened with respect
to spiritual matters, so that we cannot understand the words he speaks. It’s an entirely different language. And this is why we confess in the Catechism,
“I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come
to him”. Just as we could not save
ourselves from sin, but needed salvation to be achieved for us by the death of
God’s Son on the cross, so also we could not understand, believe in, and
therefore benefit from Christ’s work of salvation apart from the work of the
Holy Spirit. And
this is why what happened at Pentecost is so vitally important to us, for then
the Lord sent his Holy Spirit to work on his people’s hearts and minds from the
inside. That’s what we heard about in
today’s reading from Acts. And follow
what happens here: at first all they hear is the sound of a mighty rushing wind. It’s just noise. Ah, but then, as the Spirit comes upon each
one a little flame appears above his or her head – flames that the Scriptures
specifically call tongues of fire. Why,
of course: tongues. It’s because they’re being given the ability
to understand God’s language. That’s
what the flames show first: it’s their
light in the darkness. It shows that the
Spirit is allowing them to see the truths of God that they couldn’t understand
before. That’s the first idea communicated
by the tongues of flame – spiritual illumination – the ability to understand
God’s Word. But
fire does more than shed light; it also purifies and refines. It burns away what doesn’t belong. And that too is going on. Those with the Spirit are able to clearly see
their sins in light of God’s holy law, which leads them to repent, confess, and
trust in the forgiveness won for them by Jesus.
This is how our purification takes place. This is how we are cleansed of sin by the
Spirit’s work as he rests upon us and gives us faith in Christ. And
fire does still more. It also throws
heat – heat that doesn’t burn or hurt those upon whom the Spirit rests; but
that instead enables them to share the warmth of God’s love with others. It melts our hard, cold hearts and allows us
to befriend and serve others – to love them as Christ has loved us. And finally we see that the tongues
of fire show that those who have the Spirit are enabled to communicate the
wonders of what God did to save sinners in Jesus Christ in a way that can be
understood by others. This is apparent
in that the disciples begin to speak in foreign languages – in the mother
tongues of those who came running together to find out what the commotion was
all about. At first these people too
just heard noise. That’s what attracted
them. But as they listen, they are
astonished to discover that those with the Spirit are empowered to speak directly
to their hearts. That’s because the
Spirit was working through the Words the apostles spoke to bring these others
also into the light of God and the true understanding of Christ. And again, this is why Pentecost is
so important to us in the Church of Jesus Christ. No, we don’t see hovering about our heads little
flames of fire; but the same Holy Spirit that came to and rested upon the first
believers in Jesus also comes to and rests upon us as we gather in Jesus’ name
and hear his Word. And the Spirit continues
to give us the benefits shown by the tongues of fire; namely spiritual
illumination and understanding of God’s Word, purification from sin and faith
in Christ, love for others, and the ability to communicate the truths of God’s
Word in a way that can be understood. And so, one way to understand what we’re
to be about as we live and grow in Christian faith and life is to continue to
learn Jesus Christ as a second language. We need to learn to use tongues of fire we have
been given. It doesn’t come to us
naturally. By nature, we all want to
speak the comfortable, well known language of our birth – the language of self
glorification. We need to change that. Earlier I spoke to you in
Portuguese. I had to learn it before I
went to live and work in Brazil. It was
a lot of hard work. And even then, once
I was there, I found that it was a tremendous amount of work to carry on a
conversation. That’s because I did all
my thinking in English. So, when someone
said something to me, I had to first hear what they said, figure out what they
meant in English, think of a response in English, and then translate what I
wanted to say into their language. It
was exhausting. And sometimes I just had
to tune them out. But then it happened,
oh, I don’t know, after I’d been there a year or so. I was carrying on a rather complicated
conversation with a coworker, and suddenly it dawned on me that I wasn’t
translating anymore. I was actually
thinking in Portuguese. My brain
understood what was being said and I was responding without using English. That’s the point we want to get to
with the tongues of fire we have been given – when we no longer have to scratch
our heads over God’s Word trying to figure out what a certain passage means
because we’re so familiar with God’s way of speaking that we just know it; when
repentance over our sins and trust in Christ is a natural as breathing; when
love for others springs forth from our lives without having to think about it –
it just happens – and we naturally think of what’s best for others before
thinking of ourselves; and when we can speak freely, openly, boldly, and
clearly of what Jesus Christ has done for us at all times and in all
circumstances. How does that
happen? How do we get to that
point? Through total immersion. The way to learn a language is to put
yourself in a place where you have to use it all the time. So let’s do that. Let’s immerse ourselves in God’s Word and his
way of speaking. Let’s surround
ourselves by his truth, so that his Holy Spirit can continue to teach us to use
the tongues of fire he’s given us and make us proficient. Then, through his work on us, our lives will
become monuments not to ourselves, but to Jesus who saved us. In his holy name, and for his glory. Amen Soli
Deo Gloria! |