Sermon for the Day of Pentecost: May 23, 2021 jj
Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝
The ancient people of Shinar seem to be so different from us. They were all descended from Noah’s family and they had already started repopulating the earth after the devastating Flood. We find it hard to imagine, especially here in a state that today has over 200 different languages currently being used, that everyone always and exclusively spoke only one language. We don’t know what that’s like, everyone understanding exactly what everyone else is saying. In the city of Babel long ago, those people had great potential to do great things, since they were united in one very real, very advantageous way.
And yet, those same people had a great many fears, just like you have today. They feared that one day they might become scattered and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. They feared that they would not make a name for themselves, that their reputation wouldn’t amount to anything at all. If the residents of Shinar didn’t act decisively and quickly, then irreversible disaster would most certainly strike. They were convinced, not by some warning from God, as if He had come down from heaven and told them—Hey, you guys, you nomads need to get your act together now and build up your city. Or, why haven’t you started on your tower yet? No, they had managed to convince themselves through their fear that they had made up in their own minds instead.
How soon they forgot that the Lord was their Shepherd, that He was the one who rescued them from the destructive waves of the Flood. That He had preserved them as His people and He gave them the gift of unity with one another and the gift of one, single, perfectly understandable language. They already had peace with God, a name and reputation that was all that they needed, but through their fear they chose instead to make a new name for themselves, a name that they created on their own with accomplishments they thought would salve their fears and give them the kind of peace they craved.
As we just read, that idea didn’t work out for the people of Shinar too well. They proceeded with their city of Babel, employing their new brickmaking technology, and they started raising up the tower that they had hoped would scrape the heavens.
The Lord came down to see, but He already knew. His people had rejected Him. God wasn’t jealous over bricks or an impressive city or even a tower. He wanted their hearts all to Himself, but they had chosen to follow their fears instead. He wanted their fear, love and trust to be centered in Him. Why? He created them, and rescued them from the waters of the Great Flood, and united them in one community and language, so He had the right to judge them for their wayward faith. The people of Babel would have to suffer the vengeance of God.
And the Lord didn’t have to do much at Babel. Very little effort would be necessary. He simply let their sin, and the chaos that it naturally produces, take over these people. They sincerely desired to proceed in their plans with God totally out of the picture. Often God answers the sinful intents of people by allowing them to feel the effects without His gracious interference. In many cases, there is no worse punishment possible! That is the frightening thing for you, isn’t it? You want something so bad, you can’t imagine life without it. You don’t think you’re going to get it, until you do, and you wish you had never even thought about it. That’s when you finally figure it out that whatever you desired actually became for you your god, just like the citizens of Babel made their own god out of building that tower. Out of their disdain for the Lord and their high praise of themselves, God mixed up their languages and scattered them—the result that they had feared the most. Their tower crumbled into the dust, and their bodies, like that of Adam their father, would soon follow suit and also turn back to dust. This is one teaching you gain from this: You inevitably see that there is always something that is missing in your hunt for things, fame, identity, power, popularity, the good life, or maybe just simply surviving one day to the next. What is missing? In a word: peace is what’s missing.
And Jesus offers you peace, not the fake peace that the world cherishes and bombards you with like annoying commercials, phone sales calls or Internet pop-up ads. Jesus is here and today giving you a Pentecost gift when He simply says: Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. The peace comes not as some light-hearted feeling that makes you tingle inside. The peace of Jesus is actually His gift of the Holy Spirit. This is something real, and truly powerful. Note what the gift of the Holy Spirit does to those frightened, bewildered apostles in the upper room on the first Pentecost Day: He fills them with joy, gives them boldness to preach in the face of certain resistance, and certainly not the least spectacular, He gives them the gift of speaking in many other languages.
Do you see now the great fulfillment that took place? The confusion and scattering due to a multiplicity of languages long ago at Babel has now at Pentecost in the city of Jerusalem been undone. Notice, though, that the reversal is not accomplished by wiping out all those diverse tongues and creating one language again. Instead, He accomplishes the reversal of Shinar’s curse by preaching the Gospel in the mouths of His first pastors in many different languages—not unrecognizable, babbling tongues—the specific languages of the very people who were visiting Jerusalem at that same time! The judgment of God handed down so long ago in Genesis 11 was finally turned on its head in Acts 2. And all of this was thanks to the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, as Jesus promised. It was just the beginning of God’s mighty work of salvation in this sin-cursed world.
God is at work also here in faraway Yucaipa, where the Word of God has since Pentecost been spread all over the world. You are not too different at all from the ancient people of Shinar. You have fears hanging on to you today. You are tempted from time to time that something else besides God your Creator and Savior needs to fulfill your life, salve your fears and give you complete peace. They were saved from the cataclysmic Great Flood of Noah; you were saved through the Great Flood of your Baptism into Christ, washed clean in the forgiveness that Jesus paid for with His blood when He died on the cross.
Out of love for you, the Lord may have allowed you for a time to feel the painful tinge of the harm that your sins can do. But He didn’t condemn you, then or now. He was always with you, even when you didn’t feel His presence, or even when you might have felt disdain for Him. He wasn’t pleased that you decided for a while on another god in search of peace, to make a name for yourself, or to save you from that one disaster you most want to avoid. Yet your Shepherd still desired to gather you in with all of His scattered sheep. He created you, He saved you, and even today on Pentecost 2021 our Lord is uniting you His dispersed people. The gift of the Holy Spirit is a gift of a new name, a refreshed reputation of being the not perfect, but forgiven children of God, gathered here in this humble place. You have received a unity and a common language, the language of faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, for the resurrection of your bodies on the Last Day, and the life that will be everlasting.
Jesus Himself had said the Holy Spirit is your Comforter, the Helper. Why would your Lord give you a comforter if He did not know that you will be needing comfort? He says let not your heart be troubled. Then that must mean He must know that you constantly face fears and uncertainties and temptations to sin. You who could never have helped yourself any day of your life, be assured that Jesus has not left you as orphans. His Holy Spirit helps you as you struggle in this time known as the Christian’s life on earth: a time of trouble, hardship, and evil, but because of your Savior Jesus Christ it is a life full of true Holy Spirit-filled joy. You have His Word and His promise that you are forgiven. The blessed eternal inheritance has been yours ever since the water of Baptism placed the Holy Spirit into your heart.
On this Day of Pentecost, your prideful, crumbling, self-centered Babel heart is rebuilt and re-centered in God your heavenly Father, thanks to the death of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. You have the heavenly peace of God that goes beyond your own understanding. His gift of the Holy Spirit comes to you only one way—from His Word. From the Word you hear and read, from the Word with which you are washed, the Word you eat, the Word you drink. And the renewal of your life, the renewal of the world, the renewal of the Church, leave that up to Him. Let not your heart be troubled.
God has indeed given us great potential, not for our own accomplishments, but for His Word to sound forth in our lives as His Church. Put your trust not in the promises or personalities of men, nor in gimmicks or sales pitches, nor any fabulous tower-building projects to preserve the Church, for those are sure to crumble sooner or later. Jesus doesn’t care about our buildings or bank accounts—He wants your heart all to Himself. So, secure your trust squarely on Jesus Christ by the help of your Comforter, the Holy Spirit. It is a promise on which your Lord always comes through; He will never fail. Come, O Holy Spirit, and lead us every day to Jesus.
In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Readings:
Gen. 11:1–9 the whole earth had one language
Psalm 143 Hear my prayer, O LORD, give ear to my supplications!
Acts 2:1–21 We hear them speaking in our own languages the wonderful works of God
John 14:23–31 My peace I give to you, not as the world gives