KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 17 May
Word and Spirit
The story of Pentecost read this week in Chapel is especially powerful and significant. The Scripture reading from Acts tells us about the wonder and the miracle that belongs to the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem. The images are intriguing. How does one capture the idea of things spiritual through the images of things material and physical?
The coming down of the Holy Spirit, the promised gift of the Son and the Father, is imaged by way of wind and fire; the most elusive of physical phenomenon. They point us to the things of the spirit which cannot be reduced to the physical but which can be glimpsed and known through the world. God uses the things of the created world to make known the things of the spirit.
Such is revelation, the idea of things intellectual and spiritual being mediated and made known through the material and physical world. But the greater miracle or wonder of Pentecost has in part to do with language which reveals thoughts and ideas.
Pentecost is a Greek word referring to the fiftieth day after Easter for Christians, on the one hand, and an ancient Hebrew festival, Shavuot which celebrates the giving of the Torah, the Law to Moses, on the other hand. In both cases it has to do with what is made known or revealed. Part of the wonder of Pentecost is that it is a reprise or re-working of another ancient story, the story of the Tower of Babel.
The former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, the scholar and writer, Jonathan Sacks, comments on the story of the Flood and the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis. He notes that the first is the problem of freedom without order, in short, anarchy or chaos; the second, the problem of order without freedom, in short, tyranny. These terms suggest the interplay or lack thereof between intellect and will which need to be seen together; something which the readings in Pentecost about the Holy Spirit make clear in terms of the interrelation of Word and Spirit, a theme common to Hebrew and Christian thought and beyond.
“We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God,” Acts tells us about the Pentecostal mystery. Unity and universality are grasped through the diversity of languages and cultures. In this sense, Pentecost marks the redemption of the story of the Tower of Babel. But it is a story, as Sacks makes clear, that we often misunderstand and misconstrue and in so doing fail to do justice to Pentecost itself.