How I wish it were already blazing.

Of all the church holidays, Pentecost is by far my favorite, as my choir friends all know. Something about my 9 year old mildly autistic brain and the multiplicity of language presented in the stories of the Tower of Babel and the first appearance of the Advocate had such a profound effect on me and my understanding of art and aesthetics. Reflecting on this today is especially painful, since we're still not able to convene as a community, and I'm not able to perform some of my favorite music with my favorite people. While the current madness going on around the country makes it even worse, it's given me an opportunity to reflect on what those stories are trying to tell us, beyond the simple beauty and power of the Holy Spirit.

I used to see the Pentecost as a reversal of the Tower of Babel, at least on a surface level. While in the Babel story the languages of the world are split into fragments, making it impossible for the people of the world to communicate with each other, the characters of the Pentecost story speak "in tongues," mysteriously communicating to the public in all of their home languages simultaneously. But after thinking about it, the message of the Tower of Babel still remains. The different languages in the first story were to stop the people from meeting God physically:

And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. - Genesis 11:6-7

Learning to speak another person's language, after the Tower story, is not impossible just very, very difficult. When I watch the news tonight, I can see that nothing has changed. The Pentecost story did not reverse Babel. It's still very hard for us to understand each other, but not impossible if we try.

The Pentecost story, I've come to believe, is not about uniting the languages of the world once separated by at Babel. The language barrier is only broken on one end, and only in order to convey the glory of God.

Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? ...we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?” -Acts 2:7-9, 11,12

It means that God can speak to us- and through us- in any language at any time. If we want to work to understand one another truly, to convey our thoughts and feelings without confusion and misunderstanding, then it takes real work. For we do not all speak the same language. But a good deed, a godly deed, needs no translation. When we speak that way, through our acts and our holy thoughts, we transcend any confusion in communication.

The world is on fire. There's no doubt. But it will eventually be consumed. It will smolder for a while, and we'll all move on to different, if not worse problems. We'll have another Pentecost next year, a better one and we'll appreciate it. I have to believe.