Children of Babel and Children of Pentecost
A Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Karen Hill
May 23, 2010
Pentecost Sunday
On this Pentecost Sunday, we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Christian church - let’s hear the story one more time. This is from Acts 2. The Coming of the Holy Spirit.
“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’”
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Let us pray.
God, who comes in the sound of rushing wind and in tongues of fire, fill us with your spirit again this day. Open our eyes and our hearts that we might see and love as you do. Move our hands and our feet that we might give as you do. We pray all of this in the power of your Holy Spirit. Amen.
Growing up, I heard the story of the tower of Babel interpreted in this way - the people thought they could build a tower high enough to reach God and thus, the sin of Babel was the human sin of pride. They were overstepping the boundary between God and humans, and God punished them by confusing their languages. Basically, a divine instance of divide and conquer. This is a very traditional interpretation of this story; many of you have probably heard this, too.
That doesn’t mean it’s a very good interpretation of this passage. The sin at the tower of Babel is not that the people overstepped their place; it’s that they “understepped” it. It’s not that they wanted to build a tower; that’s not the problem. It’s their motivation in building. In verse 4, the people said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.’
If we go back to the first chapter of Genesis, verse 28, God commanded humans to spread out and to fill the earth. At Babel, the people were trying to avoid this commandment. They wanted to stay together. They didn’t want to “scatter” or spread out. They were afraid.
Which seems a pretty natural fear – the world can be a scary place. Here’s where God and Eleanor Roosevelt have a lot in common. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face…do the thing you think you cannot do.”
God forces the people to do the very thing that they do not want to do. God confuses their language, so they cannot understand one another. They are forced to spread out & to fill the earth. After Jesus’ death, the disciples were also afraid. They went into hiding, afraid to leave one another’s company. After his resurrection, Jesus came to them and told them to wait for the gift of the Spirit and then to spread out into Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and all the ends of the world. And so they waited, fearfully.
We’re not all that different from the people of Babel or from those early disciples. We live in a time of great fear, as well. I think we’ve been afraid since 9/11. We lost 3,000 people that day, but we also lost our innocence as a nation, and we lost our confidence.
We’ve had shoe bombs and underwear bombs and bombs in Times Square. We are fighting two wars. We have suffered the greatest economic recession since the Great Depression; people are losing their jobs and their houses. Politically, we are as divided as we’ve ever been.
Realistically, there is much to fear. Last month our Synod sponsored a conference in Phoenix called “Crossing Borders: Encountering God.” The focus was on border and immigration issues. You may already know this, but the Presbyterian Church has a number of ministries right on the US/Mexico border – spread from California to Texas. There we were – a group of Presbyterian clergy and lay people from all over the United States and Mexico - in Phoenix ready to learn about the Presbyterian response to border issues, just as Arizona’s state legislature was voting on the now infamous SB1070. Sometime you have to wonder about God’s timing.
As I’ve watched the debate surrounding this particular state law, as well as the larger issue of immigration - legal and illegal. I’m struck by how much fear and anger there is to this discussion. I think a lot of the free-floating fear and anxiety, which have been so prevalent in our country since 9/11, have come to rest on the shoulders of immigrants, particularly undocumented immigrants.
This is my thesis; I acknowledge that right up front. I’m speaking to you as someone who grew up an hour away from the San Diego/Tijuana border and has heard this rhetoric all of my life. But, I’m also speaking to you as a Christian who has been reading and studying the story of Babel and the story of Pentecost and who finds a clear parallel to our modern situation.
This country has an uneasy history with immigration. We always have. We are a nation of immigrants; the only non-immigrants here are Native Americans. So as a country, we cautiously welcome new immigrants, and then when hard times hit, a depression or a war, we turn on them - we try to kick them out or we lock them up.
Remember the Chinese exclusion Act, and the Braceros program in the 30s & 40s when we welcomed Mexican laborers and then kicked them out during the Depression, and remember the Japanese internment camps.
This cycle is not unique to the United States. Europe is struggling with huge immigrant communities from Africa and South Asia and the countries of the former Soviet Union. Whenever there is economic hardship, people leave home, looking for a better life.
We know all this; this history is not new to us. Still we are afraid. We are afraid of the economic consequences of taking in so many immigrants – we are afraid of the drugs pouring across our border and the violence that comes with them. We are afraid of human trafficking and not knowing who is in our country. We are afraid of over-crowded hospitals and schools that are stretched to the max. We are afraid that there are not enough jobs to go around, and sometimes, we are afraid of people who don’t speak English.
We are afraid, just like the people of Babel and just like those early disciples. So, we call people names like “illegal” and “alien” or worse, much worse. We begin to legalize profiling based on very thin cause. We allow a lot because we are afraid.
So, let’s go back to Babel and back to Pentecost. The sin of Babel was fear, fear of change. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face…do the thing you think you cannot do.”
God’s purpose in confusing the languages at Babel is fulfilled in Jerusalem at the Pentecost. The frightened inward focus of the people was not what God desired. God wanted diversity in human culture; God wanted an outward focus. That was driven home in the founding of the church at Pentecost. God created diversity in all of creation, because it reflects the diversity contained in God’s very self. We believe in a triune God – God the creator, Jesus the Christ and the Holy Spirit. This is a community within God’s self. Human diversity absolutely reflects God. This is a gift and a blessing, not something fear.
Just as God spread the people out after Babel, so God spread them out at the Pentecost. The gift of the Holy Spirit sent the people out into the streets to speak the Gospel message in every language. There are many miracles at Pentecost, but one of the greatest, is that the people – heard one another. The passage tells us three times that the people hear each other, verse 8 says, “And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own language?”
They hear one another in the power of the Holy Spirit. Isn’t it time that we hear one another also? We need to listen to our brothers and sisters in Arizona who are tired of drug smugglers and human trafficking coyotes crossing their land and endangering their families. We need to hear our brothers and sisters in Mexico and all over Latin America who are desperately poor and who feel they have no way to support their families except by leaving home. We need to listen to our immigrant brothers and sisters from all over the world who would love to enter this country legally, but find our immigration system so outdated and so backlogged that it is almost impossible to do that. We need to hear the weariness of our law enforcement officers who struggle every day, against overwhelming odds to enforce the immigration laws of this country. We need to listen to our Latino brothers and sisters, legal citizens of this country, who are afraid to leave home without i.d. We need to listen to brothers and sisters on both sides of this discussion.
Mostly we need to stop reacting out of fear and start reacting out of faith. I John 4:18 says, “There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear.” As Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, we are immigrants, all of us. This world is not our home. We are strangers in a strange land, waiting & watching for the redemption of all of creation and the coming of the kingdom of God. Scripture instructs us over and over to look out for the stranger, to care for the foreigner, and to act justly toward the immigrant. Deacon Juan Barajas is the Director of the Office of Hispanic Ministry for the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. He said it very well in a letter he wrote, “Immigration issues are not just political; they are faith issues; they are human and moral.” End quote.
The Presbyterian Church has called for immigration reform for years. In response to the situation in Arizona, the leaders of our General Assembly have sent an open letter to the United States Congress, asking again for immigration reform. If you’d like to read that letter, copies will be out in the commons area.
Our immigration system is broken; continuing to enforce a broken system will not fix that system. It is time for people on all sides of this immigration issue to speak out and to do so in a way that is reflective of Jesus Christ – to speak as compassionately and truthfully as possible. The Christian community cannot remain silent now.
I want to close with an immigrant’s story. On Thanksgiving Day, 2007, Jesus Manuel Cordova was crossing the desert into the United States – about 12 miles into Arizona from Mexico. That same day a mother and her 9 year old son were driving out of their desert camping spot. Somehow, the mother drove her van off the side of a road – it flipped and she was badly injured. Later that night, Jesus Cordova found the boy, who had hiked out looking for help. Cordova went with back with him to the van and stayed with the boy as his mother died. He made a bonfire and gave the boy his jacket. The next morning some hunters found them and called for help. Later someone asked Jesus Cordova why he remained with the boy, when he knew that he was giving up his chance to enter the United States and risking deportation, he said that he is a father. He couldn’t leave the boy alone in those circumstances and he hoped that a stranger might do the same for his child if need be. I’m not sure that there is anything particularly special about Jesus Cordova, but I do know that he is someone who did the right thing at the right time. He acted out of faith, not fear.
We are children of Babel and children of the Pentecost. We can choose which influence will be greater – fear or faith. When the Holy Spirit unites us, we are truly one. In the Holy Spirit, I am Anglo, Latino, and Native American. I am documented and undocumented. In the Holy Spirit, I am Mexican, Salvadoran and Guatemalan. I am Israeli and Palestinian. In the Holy Spirit, I am Iraqi, Pakistani and Afghan. And so are you.
In the Holy Spirit, we are one. In the Holy Spirit, we are children of the Pentecost. Amen.
April 29, 2010
PC(USA) leaders address new Arizona immigration law in letter to Congress
Dear Members of Congress,
We write to express our conviction that you must enact comprehensive immigration reform this year. As people of faith and the leaders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), we are keenly aware of the devastating effects our broken immigration system has on the lives of individuals, immigrant and non-immigrant families, and our communities. The bigotry, trauma, and fear that will result from the recent new law enacted in Arizona, SB 1070, which criminalizes those who are found “with” undocumented persons and requires law enforcement officers to identify and detain such persons, serves to underscore the necessity of action at the federal level.
Churches are on the front lines of caring for families being ripped apart by our broken immigration system. Traumatized citizen children left behind when parents are deported are but one example of the ways the current system destroys the fabric of community life, the integrity of healthy families, and the safety of individual persons. Church workers are also at the forefront of offering relief and services to immigrants, regardless of documentation status. Arizona’s new law will put at risk those workers and others who are called simply to offer the most basic of humanitarian assistance. As Christians, we cannot stand by idly while our brothers and sisters die on our borders from exposure and thirst or languish in poorly equipped detention facilities, nor should we be required to do so by any law.
The new Arizona law also puts in jeopardy the public safety of immigrant communities, already wary of law enforcement for fear of deportation. Instead of new laws that induce fear and distrust, immigrants should be encouraged to participate with law enforcement, reporting crimes when they are victims and offering testimony when they are witnesses. Such trust and participation is impossible if local law enforcement is tasked with enforcement of federal immigration laws. SB 1070 will only foster more fear among immigrant communities, regardless of documentation status. Comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level is essential to override and counteract the damage done in Arizona by this new law.
In the Scriptures of Christians and Jews, we are commanded, “When an immigrant resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the immigrant. The immigrant who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the immigrant as yourself for you were immigrants in the land of Egypt” (Lev. 19:33-34). The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) therefore supports congressional action in 2010 on comprehensive immigration reform that creates a process for undocumented immigrants in the U.S. to earn their legal status; reduces waiting periods and upholds family unity; protects workers from exploitation; and provides efficient channels of entry for new migrant workers.
Sincerely,
Bruce Reyes-Chow Gradye Parsons
Moderator, 218th General Assembly (2008) Stated Clerk of the General Assembly
Linda Bryant Valentine
Executive Director, General Assembly Mission Council
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