Pentecost Sunday

Genesis 11 : 1 - 9

Rev. Billy Kristanto

Our sermon today is about communication. Do we understand each other? In everyday life, we often experience disappointment when we are not understood by those around us. Even from our childhood, we might try to convince our friends, yet they often did not really understand what we meant. There is a need for human beings to be understood. In society, and even within families, people often are simply talking past each other. There is a distinctive expression in German: aneinander vorbeireden. We try to communicate, yet there is no real communication. Everybody simply insists on his or her own point, while the other party does not truly understand. It is sad, and that is basically what happened in the story of the Tower of Babel.

The interpretation that compares the Tower of Babel with the story of Pentecost is very well established in the history of theological interpretation. In the story of the Tower of Babel, there was confusion of language, and people could no longer understand one another. But at Pentecost, people were enabled to understand one another. More than that, they were able, first and foremost, to understand the work of God for humanity. Again, we have this need to be understood, yet perhaps the deeper question is whether we also have the ability to understand our neighbors. Without the Holy Spirit, there is no true communication. There is only this aneinander vorbeireden, this talking past each other.

We can compare the story of the Tower of Babel with the story of Pentecost in greater detail. At Babel, the people tried to build a very high tower, seeking to reach the heavens from below. At Pentecost, however, God himself poured out his Spirit from above. This contrast presents a paradigm for life. Do we see our life as a gift from above, or do we see it as our own achievement from below? It is indeed very difficult to humbly acknowledge that our life is given by God. We would rather insist that this is our own building, our own achievement. We built this ourselves, we say. Nobody showed mercy to us, and therefore this is our own accomplishment. But one of the beauties of the Christian religion is that we humbly confess that life is a gift from God. It is not our own self-attainment or self-achievement.

In the story of the Tower of Babel, the people tried to make a name for themselves. Is this not also the problem of our modern society? We try to affirm our own identity through our achievements. If we read the theology of creation, the name Adam was given by God himself. It was not self-created, self-imagined, or self-chosen. It was a name given by God. Therefore, we should not search for our identity as though we must create it ourselves, because our identity is given by God in Christ. Is this not also the temptation of the devil in the story of Jesus’ temptation? Jesus himself was tempted to prove his identity: “If you are the Son of God, then do this and that.” Yet Jesus avoided this trap because human life is not about self-proving. We do not need to prove ourselves.

Jesus gave us the perfect example that our identity should be grounded in God’s love and not in our achievements. This, however, was not the story of the Tower of Babel. There, the people wanted to build a very high tower to show off their achievement and to make a name for themselves. In contrast, the beauty of Christianity is that we are liberated to glorify the name of God. It is not about our own name, reputation, identity, or even national identity, but about glorifying the name of God.

In the story of the Tower of Babel, there was confusion of language. At Babel, people could no longer understand one another. At Pentecost, however, through the work of the Holy Spirit, people could be addressed in their own native language. This speaks also to a problem in our contemporary world. Here in Berlin, there is a carnival, Karneval der Kulturen, that is also celebrated during the Pentecost weekend. It celebrates diversity, and it is not a coincidence, because the story of Pentecost is also about diversity. And if we look at the history of this event, it was started in 1996 and was initiated as a response against racism and similar social problems.

I do not want to talk about politics from the pulpit, but I believe we have to courageously address this problem in society. Yet we are now living in an era in which diversity has somehow become increasingly threatening, not only in Germany, but also in other parts of Europe and the world. We try to celebrate diversity without any limit, but eventually we become confused by all the diversity. Diversity then suddenly feels like a threat that creates a lot of division. We can no longer understand one another. It becomes similar to the story of the Tower of Babel, where there was only confusion of language, and perhaps also confusion of religions and cultures.

But at Pentecost we are given the answer, because we cannot properly understand diversity apart from God. The answer lies in Jesus Christ and his redemptive work, the Holy Gospel that is preached to all nations and cultures. This is the true diversity. The church, therefore, is the one most expected to proclaim and live out this holy diversity, not a diversity that leads into division. It is not possible to have true diversity without Jesus Christ. It is simply impossible to have diversity without the Holy Spirit. We may have some kind of diversity, but it will reflect the story of Babel. It comes from below rather than being given from above.

This contrast between ‘from below’ and ‘from above’ is programmatic and paradigmatic. It can also be applied with regard to religion itself. There are religions from below, and there is religion from above. Feuerbach, an atheist philosopher, once said that the concept of God is merely a projection from below, a self-imagination of humanity. He believed that there is no God; rather, religious people try to create the concept of God for themselves. Perhaps he was not entirely wrong if he was speaking about religions from below. But in Christianity, we humbly celebrate the birth of Christ as something given from above. The incarnation is from above, not created from below.

Likewise, in the story of Pentecost, the Spirit is poured out from above. This is not a human invention. Without this belief in God, we will not find the true solution. That is why we should pray for revival in the church, so that the church may again humble herself to preach the pure Gospel and not be absorbed into political agendas, whether of the left or the right. The real answer is found in the life of Jesus Christ. Hopefully, we may truly communicate with one another, and especially come to understand not only each other, but also the Word of God revealed in the life of Jesus Christ. (T.F.L.)