Pentecost Sunday--May 15, 2016

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of each and every heart be acceptable in your sight O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

Bless the Lord, O my soul!  Hallelujah!

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.

I do not give to you as the world gives.

Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

Ever since 9/11/2001, when I read about the tower of Babel that fateful day when the twin towers of the World Trade Center fell comes to mind. 

Analogies are always limited and have their flaws.  As with any analogy, we could spend the rest of our time together or even the next three weeks—picking this analogy apart, finding similarities and differences, assigning blame, debating the best path forward, how to correct the damage and set everything right again. 

But for now, let’s just look at the broad picture—a structure that was a monument to human achievement, with tremendous promise for future development—the Tower of Babel fell and people were divided and could not communicate with each other—their opportunity, their ability to achieve greatness through working together, through cooperation and collaboration was lost.

Whether they mourned this loss or not we really do not know—that was not considered important in the telling of the story.  What is considered important is the limiting of their ability to achieve great things through working together.

“look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them”  The Lord saw the city and the tower and it fell and they were scattered and they left off building.

Now, when the twin towers of the World Trade Center fell, we know how people reacted—the whole world was stunned!!   Maybe not every individual reacted the same, but words of shock, dismay and condolence came to us from every nation in the world.   We watched as the scene was played and re-played on our TV’s and we were told over and over and over how nothing would ever be the same—that the world as we knew it had ended when those twin towers imploded in a cloud of dust. 

And in the 15 years since then we have seen our world change in ways we could never have imagined—to the point that it seems like we have been divided, or divided ourselves, into groups that are completely incapable of speaking to each other in even a civil or polite manner—we can forget about understanding anything the other group is trying to say—even when we are supposedly speaking the same language.

We had built better bricks and stronger mortar than the people back in Genesis could possible have dreamt about in their wildest dreams when they were working on their own tower of Babel.

All we have to do is look around us and we can see that we have really made some impressive progress since then.  Technology is advancing so fast today that incredible gadgets become obsolete before we even have a chance to buy them.

And remember when open heart surgery and state of the art by-pass techniques added years to your life but it took 6 months to recover from the surgery.  Now they add those same years with a roto-rooter and a couple of stints.  You are home in two days, or less, better than new in 3 or 4 days.  Knee replacement?  It can be day surgery.  And, if you can hold off a little while, it will take you longer to find a parking place than it does to have the heart surgery.

But, all of this, all of our accomplishments, no matter how fantastic, no matter how tall we can build that tower up to heaven, it has not united us with our brothers and sisters; and peace continues to elude us.

Do you realize that in just the few minutes we have been here this morning some of your phones have become hopelessly obsolete?

And forget about the roto-rooter and heart stints.  By this time next week they will probably be able to clone you a new heart.  The people who cloned the sheep, Dolly, a few years back—they have just come up with a new gene modification called CRISPR—and it is not actually gene modification, it is genome editing and makes gene modification look like Mendelsohn cross pollinating his sweet peas or Jacob with his sheep breeding program—tricking  his father in law, way back there in Exodus.  Will anything be impossible for them?  For us?

But, by this time next year, your phones will never become obsolete again.  Because we will all communicate through mental telepathy using a little implant at the base of the brain.   (Remember, you herd it first right here!) Think we will understand each other better than?  Get along better?  Or, will some things still be impossible for us?

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.

Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

I do not give to you as the world gives.

Do not let your hearts be troubled  --and do not let them be afraid.

In the past I have told the story of how a rock throwing incident in Okinawa turned into a flower exchanging incident and Pastor Gary Goodson visited out on the porch of the Christian Center and told us about his time in Mosul and the day he saw the peace of God in the midst of unusually heavy casualties. When things had quieted down a little, Pastor Gary looked into the triage room and saw a visiting Jewish Rabbi beside the bed of a young, dying Iraqi girl.  The Rabbi was reading to her in Arabic from the Koran.

There are so many more stores like that we could share it might take us 3 months to tell them and by then the political arena would have really heated up and we might all be ready to join the Marines to find a little peace and quiet.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.

I do not give to you as the world gives.

Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

On the night in which he was betrayed, our Lord, Jesus, washed his disciples’ feet, gave them the commandment to love one another, and he said to them:

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.  This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.  You know him, because he abides with you and he will be in you.”

When the Holy Spirit descended with a loud sound like the wind and rested on the heads of the disciples like tongues of fire, they spoke of God’s truth and love.  And, everyone understood.

Bless the Lord, O my soul!  Hallelujah!

It did not matter if they spoke Russian, or Spanish, or English, or French, or Swahili at home.  It did not matter if they spoke like people from New England or if they spoke like people from California.  They could understand what the disciples were saying.  They could understand the language of God’s truth and love.

Oh, there were some differences of opinion as to what was happening there that day of Pentecost.  Some people wanted to think the disciples were just drunk, that they did not know what they were saying.

And, even today, not everyone will want to hear when we speak the universal language of God’s truth, but that is not really our concern.  We just keep right on speaking it.

We will continue to have disagreements.  But remember, Luther told us to “sin boldly “  So, when the sin is loving your neighbor----HEY, eyes up there we’re not talking King David here,----- when the sin is loving your neighbor-- sin boldly and love the lord more boldly!

Differences of opinion, over goals or how to achieve goals we agree on will always come up and be potentially divisive.  That’s part of life.  Sometimes we may have to simply agree to disagree.

One Lutheran scholar suggest that disagreeing well has at least three Characteristics:  fairness, intellectual integrity and humility

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1  Fairness—being able to state the position of the other person  clearly enough that that other person recognizes their own position.

2.  intellectual integrity.  –being able to state the strongest, most compelling argument against your own position.  In other words, recognizing and acknowledging your weakest points and where the other person makes valid points.  

3.  Honest humility.   acknowledging that, no matter how well thought out your position is and how strongly you believe it is correct, it could be wrong.

As has been said  in may places, We will make mistakes, we will offend, but when we have the humility to acknowledge our actions, there is growth. 

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” - Maya Angelou.

And we know where to look for that better way---and it is not in building a new and improved tower of babel!

In the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, God united us all into one people who can speak and can understand the universal language of his love.

In our baptism, we have been united into the body of our resurrected Lord.  When we feed of God’s love and join together at the table of Holy Communion, we are strengthen in our union—To speak God’s righteousness, God’s justice, God’s love:

Whatever language the world tries to teach us, --the language of philosophy and reason, the language of science and discovery, the language of self-interest and pleasure, the language of the market place, the language of power and fear.  Whatever language the world tries to teach us—we have in us the spirit of truth.

We have within us the capacity to speak the language of God’s truth.   ….to find a way to heal and not to hurt.  Even in a post 9/11 world.  Even in a time of war.  Even in a time of great political divides.

We have within us the power, the ability, to speak the universal language of God’s love.   …to lay down the stone before we throw it.  To comfort a dying child in the words her forefathers used to describe God.

After he had washed their feet, and before he left them, Jesus said to his disciples and that is us, Jesus said…

The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you

That better way, is ours---- for the listening.

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you,

Bless the Lord, O my soul!  Hallelujah!

Let us pray, may the peace of God that passes all understanding keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.  Amen.