Noise, Language and Truth
A Pentecost Sermon by Brent J. Eelman
Abington Presbyterian Church
May 27, 2007

Genesis 11: 1-9
    Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. ²And as they migrated from the east,^* they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. ³And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. ⁴Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.’ ⁵The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. ⁶And the Lord said, ‘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. ⁷Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.’ ⁸So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. ⁹Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused^* the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

Acts 2: 1-2
    When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ²And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
    5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ ¹²All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ ¹³But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’
    14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: ‘Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. ¹⁶No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
¹⁷    “In the last days it will be, God declares,
    that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
       and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
    and your young men shall see visions,
       and your old men shall dream dreams.
¹⁸    Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
       in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
         and they shall prophesy.
¹⁹    And I will show portents in the heaven above
       and signs on the earth below,
         blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
²⁰    The sun shall be turned to darkness
       and the moon to blood,
         before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
²¹    Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” *
 

This is not a sermon that I could have preached 10 or 15 years ago. During the last decade a host of things have happened that have changed our lives. We have seen an unbelievable development of electronic and digital devises that have been heralded with a great deal of promise of making our lives easier and more relaxing. I am sure that you know what I am talking about, but let me list some:

The first was the popularization of the internet and email. 11 years ago I was introduced to the internet and email communication. Around that same time, cell phones became a bit less expensive and readily available. We got our cell phone around that time. A few years later DVD movies became the rage. Then electronics developed the super portable amplifiers that made it possible to listen to music in the automobile at deafening volumes. Cell phones soon developed the ability to send messages to each other, and so instant text messaging became part of our daily culture. Then the phones developed digital cameras that were able to not only take pictures but send them with a text message. Then in the last four or five years, Ipods and portable mp3 players have become readily available and popular with most ages, (yes, I have one!) I will stop there, but you have the picture. None of these things were available or popular as recently as a decade ago.

All of these things are exciting, compelling and hold some promise of making our lives a bit easier, a bit more interesting, or a bit safer. That is why we purchase them. But they have also changed our lives in ways that we could not anticipate. In short, modern life is filled with all types of new noise. Let me share some examples.

About 7 or 8 years ago, I was performing a wedding. It was a very fancy wedding that was the result of a great deal of planning. No expense was spared by the bride’s family. The church was lovely, the bride was radiant, the groom was handsome, the music was gorgeous, it was a perfect wedding ceremony. I got to the point in the wedding where I say, “that the couple has made their vows to each other and now I declare before God and this congregation that they are” ……. Before I could say “husband and wife” a sound was heard throughout the sanctuary. It was a tune. I think it was the trumpet charge played in a digital way that pierced everything. It was cell phone ringing. The bride was aghast, the father who had probably written the last check the day before, looked as though he would throttle the person who left his phone on. A solemn and sacred moment was interrupted (indeed invaded!) by noise.

But these noises, beeps and jingles are with us all the time. Every time I hear certain tones played, I find myself reaching for my cell phone, only to realize that it is the digital oven timer going off.

Of course, all of us have been at the stop light when we hear that low rumbling that sounds like the beginning of an earthquake, only to realize that it is young man’s stereo in the car next to you. (These people are so kind to share their music with us…. Not!)

I was fishing on an idyllic stream a year ago. There was a person about one hundred yards up stream from me but other than that it was the perfect day; a time to get away from it all: (the office, the pressure, the demands) and commune with the healing presence of nature…. Beep beep! His cell phone rang…

My wife and I were in a restaurant, eating a meal on Friday evening. It was a long hard week for her and she was looking forward to this time together. This time it wasn’t interrupted by the beeping of cell phones. No, the person at table next to us was making the phone call. She had on one of those devises that fit on the ear so that the person can keep the conversation going and do other things. At first I thought she was having an hallucination, and was talking to some invisible ghost. Then I realized it was a phone conversation and she proceeded to talk with a friend about her problems with her boyfriend. Quite frankly, I did not want to hear the intimate details of her life. More noise. Our ears are daily invaded with words we don’t need to hear and each one of those wasted words demeans every other word we hear.

It is no wonder that Ipods are so popular. You put those earphones in, turn up the music, and you don’t have to listen to other people’s phone conversations.

We live in a world of noise! Digitized, amplified noise. Our world is full of beeps and buzzes and sounds and words… Noise interrupts our lives… and the result is that we start to develop a tolerance for it. Not only do we develop a tolerance for noise, it has become an addiction. We begin to have a great deal of trouble with silence. Recently I was in Connecticut with a group of a dozen pastor/theologians. We have been funded by the Lilly foundation and we meet four times a year to study a topic in depth and produce papers on it. Each day we begin with worship and on that particular day, I was in charge of the worship. I used the Presbyterian order for Morning Prayer. I printed out bulletins and I had marked about ½ dozen indicating that those who received those bulletins were to read the underlined part. Presbyterian Morning Prayer is marked with periods of extended silent meditation. It is the responsibility of the next reader to break the silence and continue the prayers.

As it happened, we were in one of those extended periods of silent reflection that just seemed to go on, and on, and on. I began to worry that I never gave the next part to anyone. After about five or ten minutes, (which seemed like an hour) 12 pastor/theologians, with their heads bowed in prayer, started to wiggle uncomfortably with the silence wondering who was supposed to go next. Papers started to rustle and throats were cleared. Finally, someone broke the silence and we were relieved. What a gift that extended silence was, and yet it was the source of discomfort for most of us.

What does all this have to do with Pentecost? Pentecost is God’s “no” to meaningless noise and words. The biblical story about noise and meaningless words is, of course the story of the tower of Babel. The people of Babel, believe3 that they were great and could do all kinds of things, and so they built a tower to the heavens. They would be near God. But the result of this was confusion, and they were scattered throughout the world with different languages. When they spoke to each other, it sounded like noise. We get the word babble from this story. The people did not speak understandable words. They babbled. We of course have not built a tower to the heavens, we have built cell towers, but the result is pretty much the same: noise and babbling everywhere. Yet we still don’t communicate! With cell phones, with email, with text messaging, and with teleconferencing, the primary problem in human relationships is the lack of communication! We live in a modern Babel.

When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, the disciples of Jesus were gathered in a room. The moment was dramatic… fiery tongues appeared and touched the disciples. Then they began to speak. This is when the miracle of Pentecost became apparent. There were Jews in Jerusalem who were from all over the ancient world. They represented different countries, languages and experiences, and yet as they stood there, the words that they heard were in their own language…. They could understand. This was not noise. This was not unintelligible sound. Pentecost was the gift of clear communication. They heard what they formerly did not hear. The words made sense. They heard, from the mouths of the disciples, the truth. And on that day, the church was begun. The church by its very nature is Pentecostal. Not that we speak in tongues. No, we speak words: words that are readily understood by all, words that hold the truth.

The message to us this Pentecost Sunday is three fold.

1. We live in a world that is filled with noise and meaningless gibberish. Most of our day is spent in a modern Babel. Often we will talk about this world as one that is filled with stress, pressure, interruptions and the like. This is not God’s intention for human life. This is a challenge to us. It is a challenge that has the promise of making our lives better, healthier, more joyful. The challenge for us as the church is to discover how to live in this world of noise, without being consumed by it. I don’t think that we can turn the clock backward and I don’t believe that we should throw our cell phones off the bridge. But we should begin to rediscover the Sabbath. There needs to be a day in our lives without cell phones, interruptions, email, text messages and all the beeps and buzzes that inundate our existence. God gave us the Sabbath… not as a day to catch up on what we didn’t get done, but as a day to appreciate creation, life, and our relationships with God and others. We need to recover the Sabbath as a break from the noise… It will change your life… (Your blood pressure too!)

2. Pentecost celebrates the gift of language, words and communication. But first and foremost, Pentecost is about clear communication. The message of the Acts of the Apostles is that clear communication occurred. People from all over the world, from different cultures and countries, heard in words that they understood. The message of Pentecost is that God communicates clearly with human beings, and calls us to clear communication with each other. It also calls us to understand and communicate in the languages of others.

3. Finally, Pentecost is about communicating a message of truth and hope. Peter quoted the prophet Joel and said:

Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
   and your old men shall dream dreams.

This world, as I have often said is hungry for truth and hope. Our lives are filled with the noise of meaningless words and sounds. Pentecost is the life changing hope that infects humanity that gives us a hopeful vision of the future that allows even the most jaded and cynical of us to dare to dream. Pentecost is a gift of hope in a world of noise.

This is not a sermon that I could have preached a decade ago, but it is a sermon that is as old as humanity. Ten, fifteen years ago we did not have Ipods or email, text messaging or phone cameras but there was still noise: the noise of human confusion, the noise of miscommunication and misunderstanding, the noise of empty words, and other bellicose babbling….

Pentecost is a moment in history that is filled with promise and hope: an old promise that is new and life changing each day. Jesus Christ, the Word of God, the Living Word is God’s gift of hope and salvation to this world. This is the good news. Amen.

*The New Revised Standard Version Bible, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers) 1989.

Abington Presbyterian Church, Abington, Pennsylvania,  www.apcusa.org