Not in my lifetime, including the tumultuous sixties which I lived through, have I seen such division in the country. I am certainly not alone in noticing this as it is spoken of on an almost daily basis. Have we become a Tower of Babel, fragmented into many languages and cultures by the overreach of thinking we have become gods? The tower story is a fable found in the Bible in the book of Genesis. It is at the beginning of that great book where mankind is just beginning to struggle with morality and societal justice. The rules laid down through Moses in Exodus, the Ten Commandments, are mostly a list of what we should not do. A very good beginning for humankind who had yet to embrace the singularity of good. And as much as that tower seems to resonate in the present, there is a further story in that same book that indicates that we can pull back from the brink of total chaos.
All agree that the New Testament, which heralds the arrival of Jesus, is based on the premise that God is love, a love viewed only dimly through the mists of the very human, vengeful, changeable God of the Old Testament. We are told that after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection his followers gathered together, this group of new Christians traveling the dangerous and dusty roads of their times to be together. They were a group from far flung countries that mean nothing to us today: Parthia, Cyrene, Pamphylia, Cappadocia and many more. This was a collection of many tongues, customs and beliefs and yet they all heard, as if it were in their own language, the message of the Apostles who spoke in Aramaic. Good was so powerful it was felt through the armor of each individual’s preledictions and prejudices.
Various religions have given a time and place for this Pentacost which stands for 50 days after the ascension of Jesus. However, we are not limited to 50 days or even 50 years in our desire to listen, hear and understand what our neighbors are saying. We need to find solutions to our modern problems in the harmony of one language --- the language of the desire to come as close to a mutual good as we possibly can.