Acts 2.1-21; Genesis 11.1-9; Romans 8.14-17; John 14.8-27

God, who as at this time taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit: grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgement in all things and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through the merits of Christ Jesus our Saviour. Amen.

THE Babel story vividly concludes the primeval myths in chapters 1-11 of Genesis. Other cultures had similar stories, including a Sumerian myth about a tower, and a Greek myth about the confusion of languages. What distinguished the Genesis story from the others was its distinctive theology, which provided a theological explanation for the different languages that the people encountered when they pushed back their geographical boundaries.

After the flood, God instructed Noah's descendants to multiply and spread across the world, which they duly did. They came to a plain, and discovered how to make bricks. Their fear of being scattered drives the story, and so they built a city with the bricks, in order to stay in one place. In doing this, they resisted God's purposes for them to fill the earth (Genesis 9.1, 10.18, 32). Then they added a tower, intending its top to be in the heavens.

In their cosmology, God lived not in but beyond the heavens, which were merely the vault over creation. So puny was the tower that God had to come down from his home to see it. Having done so, God joined in the action, and the thrice-repeated phrase "Come, let us . . ." shapes the story, as the people made bricks, built a city, and God confused their language.

It seems that God did not judge them for their hubris in building upward to the heavens. Instead, God's judgement was that they were not spreading outwards across the earth as intended. So God faced them with what they dreaded (something that happened again in Job 3.25), and scattered them over the face of the earth, confusing their language in the process. Thus God went full-cycle, back to his original purposes, when humans and animals were first told to fill the earth and care for it so that all could flourish (Genesis 1.22, 28). The story completes the cycle of stories of the beginning.

The Genesis story of people who did not listen to each other, or hear with understanding, foreshadows all human history that is controlled by the fear of people whom we do not understand: I write this as the Korean crisis is in the news, a clash of international cultures that do not understand each other.

At Pentecost, however, all that changed. The disciples, who had been hiding for fear of the Jews, were out on the streets, proclaiming the gospel. People from many nations were amazed that, despite the language barrier, which confused the people in Genesis, they understood about the powerful deeds of God which Peter proclaimed. Having heard and understood, they were converted.

Acts gives us vignettes of how these new Christians spread out across the earth, proclaiming the gospel. Visitors to Jerusalem took the gospel back home with them; persecution drove others out; and soon there were Christians in Samaria, Ethiopia, Damascus, Lydda, Sharon, Joppa, Cyprus, Phoenicia, and Antioch, and, with Paul's conversion, Europe and parts of Asia. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit achieved what the fear lying behind building the city and tower had prevented: the spread of God's blessing across God's world.

God's impulse is always for mission and blessing. The post-exilic people had not always grasped their prophets' message that they were blessed by God in order to be a blessing to the whole world. No wonder that Peter quoted the prophets: Pentecost expresses God's perpetual yearning for humans to share his world-wide mission, and it emboldened the disciples to live with diversity without fear, because God is love, and lovingly reconciles humanity.

Last week, we heard about our sharing the life of God because we are in Christ. This week, we understand more of the consequences. Jesus told his confused disciples about his gift of peace that is not as the world gives. So, whereas Babel was about people controlled by fear, Paul could write to the Romans about not falling back into fear, but receiving a spirit of adoption.

Babel and Pentecost remind us that God asks us to take risks to face our fears, so that God's world may be blessed and cared for, as God intends. The Early Church had its struggles with this (Acts 10-11), as have we today, but our confidence lies in Jesus's promise that the Spirit of truth, who empowered the early disciples, is with us for ever.