The Language of the Church

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In the beginning, the people of the world were of one set of words. In all the earth, there was one set of words. A unity, if you will, of the tongue. Genesis literally reads that the people were of one lip. Among all the children of Adam, one language encompassed the world.

And this unity of words led them to plot evil against God. Being of one lip, the people could conspire together, and this allowed them to cook up the scheme of building a great city and a tall tower to reach up into the heavens. Their unity of words bred pride in their hearts. They were proud that they could band together and accomplish anything under the sun, whatever they set their hands to.

The Breath of the Church

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today we are gathered to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, one of the oldest feasts in the calendar of the Church, even older than Christmas or Easter, in fact. The festival which we here commemorate goes back all the way to the time of Moses and the giving of the Law. And yet it has remained, handed down through successive generations even to our own time, and for untold ages yet to come.

The Feast of Pentecost was originally enacted to celebrate the harvest of the winter wheat. The word “pentecost” is Greek for “fifty”, referring to the fifty days after the Feast of Unleavened Bread, after which the Pentecost was celebrated. Traditionally, this festival also had the added significance of commemorating the Lord's giving the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai fifty days after the Exodus from Egypt.

Flowing Waters of Life

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pentecost was an event like none other. First, Jesus had told His disciples, “And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” ( Luke 24:49). So they went back to Jerusalem and waited. But for what did they wait? They had no idea. Jesus gave no indication of what the “promise of my Father” was, nor did they know what it would mean to be “clothed with power”. The whole situation was rather odd.

And it only got more odd when the day of Pentecost actually happened. Luke records that a mighty wind swept through the house, and tongues of fire came to rest upon the disciples. Then they went out and began preaching about the resurrection of Jesus in the public square. Furthermore, they were preaching in every language of their hearers, languages they had never spoken before, possibly that they had never heard before. They experienced a “reset”, if you will, of the curse inflicted at Babel thousands of years before. And then the message - “everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Salvation preached in the name of the man the Jews had murdered less than two months ago.