Pentecost

Pentecost is the Christian celebration of the Holy Spirit. Like the Passover, Pentecost is among the holidays God required Old Testament Israel to observe every year. It was a springtime Thanksgiving festival seven weeks (fifty days) after the Passover meal. As Jesus Christ was crucified and raised during the Passover celebration, so the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the Christians in Jerusalem during the Pentecost celebration that same year. For that reason, seven weeks after celebrating the Resurrection of the Lord on Easter Day, Christians dedicate a Sunday to remember the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost.

An Old Testament lesson frequently read during the Pentecost service comes from the book of Genesis, chapter eleven. Several generations after the Flood, the descendants of Noah met on the plain of Shinar to build a city and a tower so they would be remembered and would not be scattered across the earth. Cities and towers are not sinful, but the pride behind their plan was sinful. They wanted to honor themselves, not the Lord. They defied his command to scatter and fill the earth and care for the entire planet. God responded to the sinfulness of their plan by confusing their languages. Once they began speaking different languages, they could not speak to one another or work together. Humble and loving people can overcome a language barrier, but proud and self-centered people insist that their language is correct and other languages are wrong. Because these people on the plain of Shinar were proud and self-centered, the language barrier scattered them, and the command of God was obeyed in spite of their rebellion.

More than seven thousand languages are spoken in the world today. Probably none of them was spoken when God first divided their languages. Instead, those first languages were probably the proto-languages that began the families of languages in the world today. Study of languages and the history of languages quickly becomes complicated, yet fascinating. The consequence of having many languages in the world, though, is the existence of language barriers. These make it hard for people to communicate, to understand one another, and to work together.

God understands languages and communication. According to the Bible, God created by speaking. He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. According to the Bible, God’s Son is a message of love from God to the world. He is called the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… and the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” God’s message through Moses, the Old Testament prophets, and the New Testament apostles is also identified as the Word of God: “Your Word is a light to my feet and a lamp for my path”; “Prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

For this reason, the Holy Spirit broke down language barriers on the first Christian Pentecost. One hundred fifty believers in Jesus were gathered in Jerusalem, probably in some part of the Temple complex. The Holy Spirit made his presence among them known with the sound of a mighty wind. (In Old Testament Hebrew and New Testament Greek, the same words are used for wind, breath, and spirit—“ruach” in Hebrew, and “pneuma” in Greek.) The Holy Spirit marked each Christian with a flame. He then enabled them to speak about Jesus in languages they had never studied. Hearing the news about Jesus in their own languages, many people in Jerusalem repented of their sins, believed in Jesus, and were baptized. Then they carried this message about Jesus back to their home cities, their families, and their communities.

The Bible makes it clear that the Church consists of people from every language, nation, people, and culture. On this Pentecost Day, around the world, the message of Jesus is shared in all of the seven thousand languages spoken on Earth. Prayers and hymns of praise are raised to God in all these languages. The same Jesus is Lord and Savior to people in every part of the world. When he appears in glory, he will claim people from every language and every culture as citizens of his kingdom and members of his royal family.

Christians celebrate Pentecost to rejoice over God’s victory. He has defeated sinful pride and stubbornness. He has defeated the consequences of sin. He has even defeated the language barrier, God’s response to the pride and rebellion of sinful people long ago. His Holy Spirit unites believers from every tribe and nation and culture and language, all of whom trust in Christ and believe his promises. J.

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She speaks, yet she says nothing–what’s with that?

Language is a strange and wonderful thing. Whereas Pythagoras believed that reality at its most basic level consists of numbers, the Bible reports that God spoke the universe and all that it contains into existence. Moreover, when the Son of God entered creation to redeem and rescue it from evil, one of his followers identified him as “the Word” and wrote, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

On the other hand, when a group of people defied God and sought to build a tower as a symbol of their defiance, God overturned their rebellion by causing them to speak different languages. Humble and loving people could have overcome this opposition by learning to communicate with one another, but arrogant people like the tower-builders each insisted that he or she was speaking the only proper language and that those who spoke another language were wrong. As a result, the tower was never built.

Since that time, languages have changed, mixed, spread, and in some cases disappeared. English is largely a blend of Germanic and Latin vocabulary and grammar, with some Celtic and other influences stirred into the mix as well. As a result of that mixture and of centuries of change, English contains many mysteries, such as the contradictory pronunciation of the words “tough,” “though,” “through,” and “thought.” New words regularly appear. The word “inflammable” means “likely to burst into flame.” At some point in the twentieth century, someone feared that people would misunderstand the word “inflammable” and shortened it to “flammable.” Now both words are in the dictionary, with identical meanings, even though it appears they should be antonyms rather than synonyms.

A friend of mine thought she could obtain an easy A in high school by taking classes in Spanish. After all, she spoke Spanish at home with her family every day. To her disappointment, she discovered that speaking Spanish at home was not the same as understanding Spanish. Her grammar was not up to her teacher’s standards, her spelling was incorrect, and her vocabulary was smaller than she realized. Getting a good grade in her own language turned out to be far more difficult than she had expected.

This week another blogger took me to task for referring to the meaning of the Greek prefix “anti” in the title “antichrist.” In the Greek of the New Testament, as written in the first century A.D., the prefix “anti” means “taking the place of,” not so much “in opposition to,” as it signifies in contemporary English. The blogger’s rebuttal of my comment surprised me so much that I did not respond, and now it’s water under the bridge, too late for a meaningful discussion. If I offended anyone by seeming too proud of my knowledge of Biblical Greek, I apologize. But the blogger’s suggestion that knowing Greek and Hebrew are not helpful for understanding the Bible carries things a bit too far.

On the one hand, to learn the commandments of God and to see that we have not kept those commandments does not require any knowledge of Greek or Hebrew. The English translations convey that message quite well. To recognize Jesus as the Son of God who redeems and rescues sinners through his sinless life and sacrificial death also requires no special language skills. Once again, the translated Bible conveys that message effectively. To know of his victorious resurrection, his guarantee of eternal life in a new creation, and his ongoing presence in this world also requires no Greek or Hebrew studies. In this case also, the basic message is communicated flawlessly in any translation of the Bible.

Anyone who presumes to teach others about the Bible should go beyond these basics. Even if he or she does not learn to read Hebrew and Greek fluently, he or she at least should be capable of consulting reference books on the Bible and understanding their application. Not only does the Bible need to be translated from ancient languages into contemporary languages; information about the cultures in which the Bible was written needs to be learned as well. Misunderstandings of certain verses and conflicts between different interpretations of the Bible are reduced (but, alas, in a sin-stained world, not eliminated) by consulting the Bible in its original languages and contexts rather than trusting contemporary translations to convey the full meaning and nuance of each word, each sentence, and each paragraph.

The other blogger mentioned a case in which a man from Athens corrected a preacher who referred to some Greek word or phrase from the New Testament. Because no details were included, I cannot tell whether the preacher was truly in error or if the preacher was kind and polite enough not to insist to the man from Athens that the preacher was correct in his interpretation. Consider a similar scenario: a person in France has studied Elizabethan English in order to understand the plays of Shakespeare. Now this French person is teaching a class on Shakespeare. A man from North Carolina challenges the teacher’s explanation of a certain line, insisting that he has spoken English all his life and is better qualified to explain Shakespeare than anyone who grew up in France. (By the way, Andy Griffith performed a wonderful routine about Romeo and Juliet in which, when Juliet exclaims, “Romeo, Romeo, wherefor art thou Romeo?” and Romeo responds, in a thick Carolina accent, “Why I’m right here.”)

A Cuban-born woman once asked me the rule for when the letter t should be pronounced like a d in English. Until that time I had not noticed how often Americans pronounce ts as ds. Say the sentence “I wrote a letter to my sister” with crisp ts and notice how odd it sounds. But if a rule exists about when ts sound like ds, I’ve never learned it. By the same token, Spanish speakers often distinguish “b as in burro” and “v as in vaca” because their bs and vs sound the same.

Language is a strange and wonderful thing. When we think casually about communication, we tend to think of a single message being sent from one person to another. But there are several versions of each message: the version the creator intended, the version actually produced, and the version received by the audience. To further complicate matters, there is the actual creator and the creator assumed by the audience, as well as the actual audience and the audience assumed by the creator. When carefully studying a message, all these versions and participants must be kept in mind. It’s a wonder that two of us can communicate at all in this crazy world. J.

Christ in Genesis: the Tower of Babel

Like the account of Noah, the account of the Tower of Babel seems at first glance to indicate nothing more than God’s wrath and punishment. Yet Christ is present even in this short section of the Bible. We perceive the wisdom of God’s judgment, and we also pick up a clue about the final reconciliation of the world to God through Jesus Christ from this account.

The descendants of Noah gathered on the plain of Shinar, which is now in modern Iraq. Here they decided to bake bricks and build a city which would include a tower with its top in the heavens. These actions violated no specific commands of God, nor does God frown on our modern cities with their many towers and skyscrapers. The purpose of the builders, however, contradicted the will of God. They said, “Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” God had said, “You, be fruitful and multiply, teem on the earth and multiply in it” (Genesis 9:7).

The people who wanted to make a name for themselves said, “Come, let us build.” God said, “Come, let us go down.” Father, Son, and Holy Spirit investigated the city and the tower and the hearts of the builders. God said, “Nothing they propose to do will now be impossible for them.” In my opinion, this statement of God was meant as irony. He was echoing what the builders believed, not what God knew to be true.

God’s response to their pride was to cause them to speak a variety of languages so they could no longer understand each other. Not only did each of them hear the others speaking other languages; each of them was convinced that he or she was speaking the right language while the others were speaking the wrong languages. Humble people learn how to communicate with one another in spite of language barriers. Proud people, even today, insist that they are speaking the right language; they say that other people should learn their language if they have anything to say to them. Because these people were proud, they were unable to work together. They abandoned the city and the tower and were dispersed over the face of the earth. This dispersal was exactly what God had wanted, and it was exactly what the builders had hoped to avoid.

Judgment and punishment are one answer to sin. Forgiveness and reconciliation are another answer to sin. God prefers the second answer. Therefore he sent his Son, the Word made flesh, to atone for sin and to reconcile the world to God. When the time was right, Jesus offered his body as a sacrifice. He died and was buried. On the third day he rose again from the dead. He spent time with his disciples, explaining what he had done and why. Then, forty days after his resurrection, he ascended into heaven to fill the universe in every way.

Fifty days after his resurrection, Jesus poured out the Holy Spirit on his Church. Everyone in the city heard the sound of a rushing wind—a signature event, since in the Biblical languages (Hebrew and Greek) the same word means both wind and spirit. Those who believed in Jesus were marked with tongues of fire. They began to talk about Jesus, and the various people from various parts of the world all heard the Christians sharing the good news of Jesus in different languages—each listener heard the Gospel in his or her own language.

With this miracle, God showed that sins were forgiven and reconciliation had happened. The results of sin—including the judgment which resulted in many languages—were reversed by the work of Jesus. God dispersed the many nations, but from those many nations he has assembled one Kingdom, which is the Holy Christian Church. In this Church, the work of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit continues to be accomplished all over the world. When God gathers his people, they come from every tribe and nation and language, united by one Savior and by one Holy Spirit. J.