God Loves Infinite Variety
Reflections on Pentecost
RCL Pentecost C
15 May 2016
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
In what is
otherwise an unforgettable re-telling of the Robin Hood legend, Kevin Costner’s
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, there is
one unforgettable scene. A young girl
approaches a Moorish warrior, played by Morgan Freeman, who has followed Robin
back to England to discharge a debt of honour.
She has never seen a dark-skinned person, let alone a Muslim with facial
tattoos.
She reaches out
and touches his face. ‘Did God paint you
this way,’ she asks. ‘Truly,’ he
replies, ‘for Allah loves infinite variety.’
On this day
almost two thousand years ago Jews from throughout the Roman empire gathered in
Jerusalem for the festival of Shavuot.
This festival takes place fifty days after Passover and celebrates the
giving of the Law by God to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai.
The streets of
the city were filled with the sounds of languages from north and south, east
and west. Then, as the Acts of the
Apostles tells us, a remarkable thing happened.
A group of predominately illiterate Palestinian Jews stood on a balcony
and began to speak in the languages of the street. It was strange enough that they were speaking
in the various tongues of the peoples below, but their message was even more
strange.
Peter, the
leader of this strange company of men, proclaimed to the crowd that the
prophecy of Joel had come true. All the
peoples of the world were now to hear the good news of God, good news found in
the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Many in the street thought that Peter and his
friends were drunk, but others were drawn to the message. God’s message was not to be limited to one
group of people in one geographical region; it was a message for the whole
world.
The story of
the first Pentecost reflects back on the familiar story of the tower of
Babel. Often the story of Babel is told
as a cautionary tale about human beings striving to be God and God’s
predictable reaction to put the annoying humans back in their place. God puts an end to their disturbing but
ambitious project by confusing their speech, the story goes, so be wary of
reaching too far.
But there is
another way of understanding the tower of Babel. This story follows on the heels of the
re-population of the world by the family of Noah. Through his sons and daughters-in-law, a new
humanity and diverse humanity arises:
rural and urban, agricultural and industrial, nomadic and settled. At some point between this story of different
peoples with differing languages and customs, there comes a new
development. Humanity now shares a
common language and a united purpose. We
might want to think that this isn’t such a bad thing, but God sees it as an
assault on God’s original intentions in the creation of the world.
God knows that
the beating heart of creation is its diversity, whether human or
non-human. This variety, especially the
diversity of humanity, offers a range of perspectives on the mystery of
existence and the mystery of God. No one
way of speaking about God is sufficient; God is more than any single vocabulary
can describe.
As God looks
down from heaven, God sees humanity abandoning its rich diversity. Its new-found common language and common
project have the potential to lead to the suppression, even the persecution, of
those who do not share the common perspective that has laid the foundation for
the tower that rises from the city. When
God ‘confuses’ their speech, God is not punishing them so much as giving the
people back what is truly theirs: the
many and varied ways of proclaiming their experience of the living God, the
Creator of all things, visible and invisible.
Truly God loves
infinite variety. A tree farm, however
useful it is to us, is not a forest with its complex relationships between
flora and fauna. Aquaculture, however
useful it is in combatting human hunger, is not the same as the marine
eco-system with its wonders still emerging.
Esperanto, however admirable an experiment it is in enabling human
communication, is not the same as learning the language of another culture and
people.
Pentecost,
fifty days after Easter, celebrates the diversity of the human encounter with
the God who raised Jesus from the dead and at whose side in honour Christ
sits. Our vocation throughout the ages
has been to express the good news in all the ways used by the human societies
among whom we have lived, worked and loved.
All Christians are called to be multi-lingual and multi-cultural, able
to share the good news with those who do not necessarily speak, I mean speech
in its broadest possible meaning, the same language as we.
There is
nothing new in what I am saying. The
moment that Peter, whose native language was probably Aramaic, began to preach
to non-Palestinian Jews, he had to translate his experience of Jesus of
Nazareth into words and ideas that would help Gentiles meet the risen Christ.
This is the
gift of the Spirit we celebrate today.
Through God’s Spirit we are inspired and empowered to tell others about
the Jesus who has given meaning to our lives.
We can find new ways to tell others about the God who fills the universe
with the gifts of life and love. Through
the Spirit we are en-couraged, given a hope that dwells within the core of our
being, a hope that overcomes our fears of those who are different from
ourselves.
Hope is, I
think, the best gift of the Spirit. Hope
enables us to rejoice in our distinct gifts because we know where God is taking
us. Living in hope means trusting in
God’s ‘yes’ to us as the beloved of the Creator.
Today we live
in a world where many people fear difference.
Our consumer society is built on the premise that we want to be like
someone else who is more athletic, more attractive, more wealthy, more whatever,
than we are. The immigrant and refugee
crisis we see in Europe and elsewhere in the world leads some otherwise
reasonable people into an unreasonable fear of the ‘other’. We know all too well the fear of ‘otherness’
that cause some radical religious groups to attempt to eradicate, not only
believers in other faiths, but believers in their own traditions who do not
share their particular interpretations of the faith. Each one is trying to build a tower of Babel
built on a foundation of denial, a denial that God loves infinite variety.
But we shall
not build such a tower. We shall give
thanks to God for the many and varied ways human beings speak of the mystery of
God. As Vincent Donovan, a Roman
Catholic theologian of mission, once said, ‘We will not know the Gospel until
we have heard it proclaimed in all the world’s languages and cultures.’ Each one reveals a facet of the diamond of
faith.
For truly, God
loves infinite variety.
No comments:
Post a Comment