"Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.  And at this sound the multitude
came together and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language."

Acts 2:5-6

Today is Pentecost Sunday…the day that the Spirit came upon the disciples in a powerful way.  The day Peter stood up and preached the gospel so powerfully that 3000 people are convinced to be baptized and join the church. Pentecost is the story about the birth of the Christian church.

There are different directions to go when preaching on Pentecost.  I could focus on the Spirit and its ability to transform cowardly disciples into bold proclaimers of the gospel.  We could focus on Peter’s sermon, analyze it and see what it is he said that convinced so many people to convert to the faith.  Or we could focus on the gift of tongues that the disciples received and talk about all the gifts that the Spirit endows up with.  But today I want to focus in on the crowds …all the people that were in Jerusalem that day and heard Peter preach.  They were quite a diverse bunch - Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappodocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya, Cyrene.  Citizens of Rome, Crete and Arabia.  Luke takes four verses just to list all the different cultures!  It must have been important to him.  I think he was underlining the diversity so that we would be amazed to hear how they became one community that day.  Unity amidst diversity - that’s a message we need to hear today too.

Now Luke doesn’t tell this story in a vacuum.  It’s told in such a way so as to bring to memory another story from the Old Testament – the story of the Tower of Babel from Genesis chapter 11.  In fact, Luke presumes that his listeners know and understand this story.  And fortunately we all know that story right - right?  We learned it back in Sunday school days many moons ago.  It’s a story that explains the origins of human community…how we grew from a tiny homogeneous culture of a single family after the flood (Noah’s family) into the diverse multicultural mosaic we know today.  It’s important because it reveals God’s intentions for human community.  Yet as important as it is, this is one of the most misunderstood stories in the whole Bible!  That’s because the story we remember is not the story that is told in the Bible.

Here’s how most of us remember the story of the Tower of Babel: 

The world was populated by people who all spoke the same language…descendants of Noah’s family.  They all lived together in the same land - the land of Shinar.  And they were proud and arrogant people who wanted to take control away from God.  So they decided to build a tower that stretched from the earth up to heaven.  So they started to build and the tower stretched up high up into the sky towards heaven.  (

And God looked down from heaven and saw what they were doing.  He was threatened by this attack and decided something had to be done to stop them.  So God confused their languages…gave them different languages so they couldn’t understand one another.

     ‘Vas is das?  Das ist dumcuf!’
    ‘Hey – je ne sei pas!  Qu’est que tu a dit?’
     ‘Mama mia,  whatsa matta for u?’

So tower production ground to a halt.  And God scattered the people all across the earth so they could not assemble and launch a similar attack again.  And just to be sure (according to some traditions of the story) God unleashed a huge lightning bolt upon the tower and reduced it to rubble. 

And that is how all the different cultures and languages came to be around the world.

Now what’s wrong with that telling of the story?  Two things, really.  First, if this is true it means that human diversity is not a blessing but a curse.  God inflicted us with the diversity of human language and culture because of our sinfulness.  And that is a troubling foundation upon which to build a theology of human community with all its rich diversity and differences. 

    The second big problem with this telling of the Tower of Babel is that it isn’t biblical…it has little resemblance to the Biblical account in Genesis chapter 11.  How we remember the story and what the Bible actually says are actually two very different things.  Let’s hear it again, this time sticking to the biblical text instead of our memories…

Now the earth had just one people and the same language.  And the people all travelled toward the east and settled together in the land of Shinar.  They said, “Come, let us make bricks and fire them and let us build for ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and let us make a name for ourselves so that we will not be dispersed over the surface of the earth.” 

So they began to build…

Notice it doesn’t say the people were proud and arrogant.  Notice it doesn’t say they were building a tower up to heaven.  Notice it doesn’t say they wanted to storm the gates of heaven and take control of the world from God!

What it does say is that they were building a city with a tower – a skyscraper.  What it does say is that they wanted to make a name for themselves…they wanted to create a common cultural identity.  What it says is they didn’t want to be scattered abroad - they wanted to stay put and preserve their homogeneity.  If they stayed together in one place then everyone and everything would remain the same, familiar, and safe.  And that’s not so much proud, arrogant or sinful as it is human nature!  We all want that don’t we?  It’s just human nature to stick together like birds of a feather.  We have an affinity to cultural homogeneity. 

The only problem with it is that isn’t God’s plan for human community is it?  So what does God do?  The story continues:  God comes down to see the city and the tower the humans built.  And Yahweh says, “They are now one people with just one language and now all they plan to do will be possible for them.”  So God mixed up there language so they were not able to understand one another.  And Yahweh dispersed them all over the surface of the earth and they stopped building the city.  Therefore, God named it Babel because God mixed (Hebrew b lal) the language of the earth and dispersed them over the surface of the earth.

Notice is doesn’t say God worried about the tower.  Notice it doesn’t say that God felt threatened by this attack on heaven by humans.  (Notice it doesn’t say anything about a lightning bolt destroying the tower.) Notice it doesn’t say that God punished the people or was cursing them with hardship or suffering.  What it does say is that God saw that there was cultural homogeneity: “There is now one people and they have one language.”  What it does say is that God realized that without intervention their plan to remain homogeneous would likely succeed.  So God put God’s plan into effect by introducing cultural diversity and difference – and the world became complex, rich and diverse…it didn’t stay simple, uniform and bland.  God’s plan for human community - rich diversity…not plain homogeneity.

This new understanding of the story changes everything, doesn’t it?  It means that our thinking about community needs to change.  God does not want us to build gated communities of sameness.  God wants us to build communities of rich diversity.  If we embrace diversity it will enrich us.

So this has implications for immigration policies, border control, and our sense of national identity…but today we’ll limit our scope to the church, since that’s what Luke does.

Now, you can see how Luke builds upon this story in telling the story of Pentecost.  Diversity was God’s plan for the world and diversity was God’s plan for the church.  It wasn’t the disciples’ idea to diversify…they were squirreled away in the safety of their homogeneity community.  But the spirit began to blow, and the Spirit blew open the windows and the doors in that house.  And the Spirit blew them out into public view and opened their mouths to speak in tongues.  And everyone heard in their mother tongue - Parthians, Medes, Elamites and people from Mesopotamia, Pamplia and Phygia.  The Spirit blew and Peter stood up and preached the gospel powerfully that day.  The Spirit blew and 3000 people were baptized and joined the church on Pentecost day.  That’s the story of Pentecost…God’s Spirit blew and the disciples changed from being a homogeneous clique into a diverse multicultural community of 3000.  That’s God’s plan for the church…that’s why she grew so phenomenally that first Pentecost. 

And the Spirit is still flinging open the doors and windows of this place today.  And we are to go out and preach the gospel to all races, creeds, and colors, and then invite them to come in.  God’s plan is not for us to be a clique of people who all look the same, dress the same, talk the same, think the same.  We are to be a richly diverse community from every race and nation.

    Now so often the church has not been diverse.  Why not?  Because we’re afraid that difference will bring division.  We think that sameness is necessary for peace and unity.  But today’s passage challenges that thinking.  Unity is not found in uniformity…unity is found in the Spirit.  The Spirit brings unity to the church – a diverse community of faith that believes in Jesus Christ.  We may all come from different backgrounds, from different socio-economic classes, have different political stripes, different colors of skin, even different languages - but we are one in the Spirit, one in the Lord.

And when the church starts to realize that difference is not a liability but an asset, the church will really start to grow.  Because all those differences are God’s doing and those differences help make us into the body of Christ…many gifts, one body.  (My God, wouldn’t it be boring if we were all the very same?)

Raafat Girgis, a pastor in The Presbyterian Church USA has written a booklet called Living the Vision: becoming a Multicultural Church.  He says that there are more than 350 PC(USA) congregations that identify themselves as multicultural today.  That is no accident.  It happens because those congregations are embracing difference as an asset, not a liability, and creating a culture of inclusion… challenging the norms that exclude and separate in our society today, tearing down the walls that divide us and building bridges of communication and inclusion in our church groups. 

Girgis says that the business world has already discovered the strength of difference…that is why they hire people from every race and culture.  In fact, in today’s global economy we are discovering just how small the world has become.  If you phone in with a problem with your computer, you might be talking to a person in India to get it solved.  The business world has diversified because diversity means strength….the church is still waking up to that truth.  We need to embrace difference - it is not a threat to our church, it is its newfound strength and vitality.  Diversity is God’s plan for the world and for the church.  And unity is not found in uniformity but in the Spirit that ever blows us closer and closer together… until we finally see in our brother’s eyes their true identity as children of God.  Let us proclaim the gospel, and let us open our doors and our arms and let them come in and worship as one people…God’s people.

Amen