Restoring the Centre

Texts: Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, 25-27

Today we come to the finale of the Easter Season, the Day of Pentecost. Tomorrow we begin that long period of so-called Ordinary Time that continues through until Advent Sunday, when we start all over again. But, of course, even during Ordinary Time, some days are more special than others. They’re called Sundays. Why are Sundays so special? Well, the answer is to be found on page 7 of the Prayer Book. There we are told, “All Sundays are feasts of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

All Sundays are feast days, days of celebration; they are, we might say, mini-Easter Days, because every Sunday is a celebration of the Lord’s resurrection. For that reason, no Sundays form part of the Season of Lent. We have Sundays in Lent, but never Sundays of Lent. When the Church says we should have no flowers in the sanctuary in Lent, it’s for purely practical rather than theological reasons. There is no reason why we shouldn’t have flowers on the Sundays in Lent; it’s just that they shouldn’t be there on the preceding Saturday or the succeeding Monday, so it’s just too much bother.

So all Sundays are feasts of our Lord Jesus Christ. That should be enough; but increasingly there are those in the Church who obviously don’t think it is. So we are being given an increasing number of designated Sundays - that is, Sundays on which we are invited (and, in one or two cases, directed) to focus on a particular anniversary or type of ministry. So we have Sea Sunday, Refugee Sunday, Youth Sunday, and National Bible Sunday all coming later this year, and soon we will mark Te Pouhere Sunday when we are to congratulate ourselves on our three-tikanga constitution.

And just recently a new idea has been circulated; it is now suggested that we should designate this Sunday, the Day of Pentecost, as All Faiths Day, and use it to promote the virtues of religious pluralism and inter-faith tolerance. There was a time when I would have thundered against this idea, but now in my sixties I am aware of the need to conserve my breath, so today I shall just quietly whimper about it.

Let me start by saying that I am all for inter-faith dialogue and mutual respect, so long as that is not code for the great pretence that all religions are basically saying the same thing. They are most definitely not. All religions might be fundamentally wrong, including our own; but at the most only one of them can be fundamentally true. I believe that that is Christianity, but I respect the views of those who profess a different faith.

What I object to is designating a Sunday for inter-faith celebrations, for the very reason that I have already referred to. For us Christians, all Sundays are feasts of our Lord Jesus Christ. Other faiths have other special days. If we are to designate a day each year for reflecting on the plurality of religious belief, let us have a day that is neutral, not specially holy to any particular faith.

And if I don’t win that argument, my fall-back position is a stout defence of the Day of Pentecost. I can see why, superficially, it has suggested itself to the proponents of this idea. It seems to have something to do with mutual understanding, with multilingualism and therefore, perhaps, multiculturalism. So maybe it’s not too big a stretch to take it to multi-faith dialogue. Or is it? Well, let’s look at what Pentecost means within the Christian understanding. And to do that, says the Church, we need to start with the ancient story of the Tower of Babel. Why start there? Well, because in some sense it is thought that what happened on the Day of Pentecost was a reversal of what happened at Babel. The confusion of language at Babel was replaced at Pentecost by mutual understanding. So let’s see if that analysis stands up.

It’s a fascinating if rather mysterious story. It starts with the statement that the whole world had one language and a common speech. Then we’re told that people were on the move, a migration eastward was underway, but when the people found a plain in Shinar (better known to us as Babylon, modern-day Iraq) they stopped their migration and settled there. We’ll come back to the possible significance of that in a moment.

The next thing we’re told is that, for building material they used bricks instead of stone. Now why is that significant? Well, there are two possibilities here. First, stone is part of creation; we might gather it, shape it, and do various other things to it, but we can’t make it. It’s either there or it isn’t. We might say, either God has provided it, or we have to do without. But bricks are man-made, manufactured as we say. If we go back far enough in the production chain, we will find that there are certain materials that we need to find, but bricks only exist if we make them. So perhaps this is about becoming more self-sufficient, and less dependent on God. We now create our own building material.

The second possibility is that this is about a cultural clash. Perhaps hidden in this story is a clash between an indigenous culture that used stone and the migrant incomers who introduced this new-fangled idea of making bricks. This, of course, ties in with the idea of an eastward migration. Then we hear their grand proposal to build a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, to make a name for themselves and avoid being scattered over all the earth. Here we have a bundle of at least four things tied into one.

First of all we have the idea of building a city, and again we may be seeing a clash of cultures here. Cities lay claim to an area, and are defended from all comers. Cites do not produce their own food, which has to be acquired from somewhere. Local farmers do not usually warm to the idea of a city being built on their land or in their neighbourhood. So, again, this may be a clash between a town-based culture and a rural culture. Then there’s the tower, the well-known edifice complex. Today the ultimate status symbol, as many countries seek to build the tallest building in the world.

But in this story the stress is on reaching the heavens, so it is about human hubris, finding our own way to God, rather than waiting for God to come to us. And tied in with this is their desire to make a name for themselves. No longer content to bear the name of God, or a name given by God, they want to choose a name for themselves. Again, indicative, it seems, of a desire for more autonomy, less dependence on God.

But then comes the strange bit. One of the reasons they give for building the city is to avoid being “scattered over the face of the whole earth”. What’s that about? That is, of course, what God does to them, but there is no indication here that they foresee divine intervention. It may be that they fear enemies, and intend to build a fortified city for defensive purposes. Or it may be that they are recognising the need for a common interest to keep them together.

Modern experience of major building programmes in certain parishes come to mind here. A friend of mine was appointed Vicar of a large, once wealthy parish, then very much in decline. He diagnosed a chronic lack of unity in the parish. One day as he got to know his new surroundings, he came across a scaled model of the church, not as it was at that time, but as somebody had once envisaged it could be. An idea came to my friend. He would launch the parish on this very building project. It took five years, and while it was going on, the place came alive. The whole town, it seemed, suddenly became interested in all the fundraising events, and took a great interest in watching the extensive building operations take shape. Attendance shot up, money poured in.

After the whole project was completed, it took about two years for the parish to return to the state it was in when the project began. A similar story could be told about one of our cathedrals. While the building projects were underway, people had something in common, enough to keep them together. But when the projects were finished, they lost that centre of interest, and they soon scattered to the four winds.

What happened on the Day of Pentecost was the coming of a new centre, a new common interest, binding the people together. But we misunderstand the miracle of Pentecost if we think of it in terms of instantaneous translation. Through the Holy Spirit all those different ethnic groups were enabled to hear in their own languages the Galileans speaking to them. But hear what? They were enabled to hear the one Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s what brought them together. That’s what overcame their ethnic and linguistic differences.

And that’s what holds the Church together today. As St Paul says (Ephesians 4:5-6): There is one body and one Spirit - just as you were called to one hope when you were called - one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. That is the gift the Spirit brought us at Pentecost. That is what we celebrate and give thanks for, on this day especially. It’s not St Barnabas built of wood, or Holy Trinity built of stone, that binds us together. It is our shared faith and only our shared faith that keeps us bound together in peace.

That’s why, in my quiet whimpering way, I really don’t think today is the right one for thinking about other faiths.