by Father Jean-Pierre Ruiz
I know I am not the only person — surely not the only biblical scholar — for whom this Sunday’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles recalls another biblical text, a passage from the book of Genesis. It is all but impossible for me to read about what transpired on that spectacular Pentecost in Jerusalem without thinking about the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11.
There we read about the momentous encounter between human ambition and divine design. Humankind, still in its infancy, decided to embark
on a major project: “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky.”
Fearing that “otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth,” they resolved to work together in order to preserve their unity. Their efforts did
not go unnoticed!
Seeing their city and its tower, God expressed grave concern: “If now, while they are one people and all have the same language, they have started to do this, nothing they presume to do will be out of their reach.” So, God resolved to “confuse their language, so that no one will understand the speech of another,” and God scattered humankind over all the earth.
Many readers understand this story as a matter of human arrogance and appropriate divine punishment.
God frustrates misguided human ambitions by disrupting a status quo in which “the whole world had the same language and the same words.” If that is how we understand the outcome of the tower of Babel project, we could appropriately interpret the Pentecost story as the undoing of Babel’s punitive confusion, with the crowds gathered in Jerusalem understanding the inspired proclamation in their own languages, amazed as they observed,
“Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans?”
What would happen if we were to interpret the Tower of Babel story otherwise? What if we were to regard the “confusion” of language and the
scattering of humankind over all the earth not as a punishment but as an unexpected gift in which divine initiative far outdoes anything human ambition might seek to achieve on its own? If that is the case, then Pentecost can be interpreted not as the undoing of Babel but as a confirmation of the unanticipated blessing it confers.
Our human languages in all their diversity are so many ways in which the mighty acts of God can be proclaimed all around this whole wide earth.
With this great gift comes a corresponding challenge: the God-given unity that does demand uniformity calls for us to make efforts to learn to
understand each other in our many different languages. As St. Paul reminded the Corinthians, and continues to remind us, “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.”
Made manifest in such a spectacular way in Jerusalem at Pentecost among Parthians, Medes, and Elamites and all the rest who heard about God’s mighty deeds in their own languages, the Holy Spirit’s work is hardly done yet!
The Spirit is still busy here among us in Brooklyn and Queens, accomplishing among us far more than anything we could possibly ask or imagine. Come, Holy Spirit! Fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love!
Readings for Pentecost
Acts 2:1-11
1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-
13 or Romans 8:8-17
John 20:19-23 or John
14:15-16, 23b-26
Father Jean-Pierre Ruiz, a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn, is a professor of theology at St. John’s University.