From President Stuckwisch
This past Sunday, on the Feast of Pentecost Day, both the one-year and the three-year lectionary featured the same Scripture Readings: Genesis 11:1-9, Acts 2:1-21, and St. John 14:23-31. That Holy Gospel is particularly precious to me, as it includes my confirmation verse, St. John 14:27: “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you; not as the world gives do I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” I received those beautiful Words of our Lord from my father – who was also my pastor – forty-five years ago this past month. I was blessed to give the same verse to my eldest son, Zachary, when he was confirmed (now some 20 years ago). And I was recently blessed to see his eldest daughter receive the same verse from her pastor. The promise of such Peace is, of course, the Lord’s own answer to the prayer I wrote about last week.
However, it was actually the Reading from Genesis 11 that especially caught my attention in the Divine Service, as I listened to the pastor read that text and then focus on it in his fine preaching. Although the story has certainly been familiar to me since childhood, and I’ve heard it, read it, taught and preached it many times, it struck me in some new ways in this case. Appropriate to the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is always opening up the Holy Scriptures to reveal the Truth of God in Christ Jesus with ever new depths and increasingly profound contours.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve recognized that the arrogance and stubborn disobedience of those who were engaged in the building of the Tower of Babel have persisted through the ages in the hearts and lives of sinful men, and no less so in my own fallen flesh. There is that propensity in all of us to establish and build our own cities and towers, to make names for ourselves, rather than being content to bear the Name of the Lord in peace and to live and abide within His City, under the Tower of His Holy Cross. But what I noticed this past Sunday were details of the story that are more closely and clearly reflected in our present-day circumstances.
As the pastor also pointed out in his sermon, I noticed that having “brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar” (Genesis 11:3), and even the knack and know-how to build “a city and a tower with its top in the heavens” (Genesis 11:4), are descriptions of technology. Then, as now, technology enabled the people to attempt and accomplish many impressive things, so much so that the Lord Himself said, “Nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them” (Genesis 11:6). It occurred to me how pervasive that very sort of hubris pervades our modern society, in which the wonders of technology appear to make anything and everything possible.
As far as language is concerned, despite the plethora of tribes and tongues and dialects around the world, modern technology, the internet, Wi-Fi, and smartphones have made it possible for instantaneous global communication and interaction. Memes, reels, emojis, and the international use of English (with all its generational dialects and slang) have likewise made it relatively easy to communicate and interact with almost anyone anywhere, irrespective of either person’s native tongue. While these developments can be (and often are) used for confessing and conveying the Gospel, even to the ends of the earth, they are also used extensively for blasphemy, cursing, false witness, and all manner of perversity.
What is more, for all the communication and connectivity, the world wide web and the global village have not resulted in a more peaceful and unified humanity. Animosity, vitriol, partisan politics, and ad hominem attacks have rather become the norm, and people seem more divided than ever. As easily as we can talk or write or post or message one another from anywhere in the world, any time of the day or night, there’s an awful lot of confusion, misunderstanding, and talking past one another, as well as deliberate obfuscation, passive-aggressive stonewalling, gas lighting and/or ghosting going on. All of which, I would suggest, is an indication that the Lord in His righteous judgment has once again confused the language of rebellious sinners, “so that they may not understand one another’s speech” (Genesis 11:7). Or, to borrow the Apostle’s language in his Epistle to the Church at Rome: “Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God,” He has given them over “to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done,” to be “gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless” (Romans 1:28-31). Protect us from this judgment, heavenly Father!
Over against this modern Babel, the Lord has called and given His Church on earth to hear and confess His Holy Word, to speak as God the Father has spoken to us by His Son. Interestingly, as we also heard this past Sunday, the Church makes that common confession – with one voice, as it were – in a multiplicity of earthly languages. Here, indeed, is a great irony: In every language under heaven, the one Gospel is preached to the joy and edification of Christ’s holy people. And it is in that singular Word of the Gospel – irrespective of the many and various tongues in which it is spoken, sung, proclaimed, and prayed – that disciples from all the nations are gathered into the one Body of the one Lord, Jesus Christ, united by the one Spirit as the beloved children of one God and Father. That is the miracle of Pentecost, which continues throughout the world to this day: Not that everyone speaks the same language, but that the promises and praises of God are heard, believed, and confessed in so many different languages around the world.
I’ve long appreciated what I have understood to be the special legacy of Sts. Cyril & Methodius, Missionaries to the Slavs (commemorated in LSB on the 11th of May). They invented a written alphabet for the Slavic tongue, in order to provide the people they were sent to evangelize with the Holy Scriptures and service books for the conduct of the Liturgy. In doing so, the language itself was sanctified as a vehicle of the divine Word. In a similar way, let us not use technology to contribute to or participate in the modern Babel of this fallen and perishing world, but rather sanctify all of our communication with the confession of Christ Jesus and His Word, by which the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith!
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