Preaching Paths 8 June 2025, Pentecost Sunday Yr C

Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary

Acts 2:1-21 is just one of the possible readings on Pentecost, but it is offered in all three years of the lectionary cycle. After ten, twenty, or thirty Pentecosts, a preacher may be restless for new material. It’s tempting to set Acts 2 aside; we know that routinizing a biblical text can lead to a gradual “domestication” of its message. But maybe it is precisely the tendency of churches to “tame” Pentecost that makes it so important for us to preach from Acts 2, year on year. We need to highlight Pentecost’s disruptiveness and reclaim its wild diversity.

In some churches, Sunday school children will throw a “birthday” party for the church, complete with ice cream and cake, while in the sanctuary, the preacher proclaims God’s “undoing” of Babel at Pentecost. But a close reading of today’s text raises questions about these practices. Is the community the Spirit empowers and enlarges something utterly new and discontinuous with God’s actions of the past? The answer, actually, is “no.” First, both the disciples who preach, and the culturally and linguistically diverse residents of Jerusalem who hear them and believe, are Jewish. Second, Peter appeals to his listeners precisely on the grounds of continuity between this day’s events and past divine promises, as attested in Joel 2:28-32. Epiphanic elements of wind and fire on Pentecost are OT motifs, notably present at the giving of the Mosaic Law that Pentecost, a Jewish festival, celebrates. Yes, this day is worthy of a party, but what we celebrate is old hierarchies of age, gender, and class breaking down in the Spirit’s creation of a highly diverse, egalitarian community.

If Pentecost “reverses” Babel, it is not by homogenizing language and culture. While the Babel story presents linguistic diversity as a curse, the Holy Spirit actively embraces it in Christian proclamation. We can enact this in Pentecost worship. Readers scattered through the congregation stand one by one to read Acts 2 in a variety of languages, each reader beginning about 5-6 seconds after the previous one. Languages tumble over one another throughout the congregation. A service might close with these readers standing again, all reading now at once and filing outdoors to stand along the street (reading still!) as the congregation departs. (Be sure to include any distinctive languages of the neighborhood!)

Some churches recreate a sound-and-sight experience on Pentecost. Sounds of howling wind and crackling flame pour from the audio system. Red silk fabric “flames” wave overhead. It can be a moving experience indeed. Yet, this Pentecost Sunday, our listeners need, above all, to hear that the redeeming proclamation that the Spirit inspires does not erase cultural diversities, but embraces them. When autocrats demonize ethnic, cultural and linguistic difference as grounds for suspicion and deportation, Pentecost counters with startling truth: the Holy Spirit blesses linguistic and cultural difference! Churches filled with the Spirit Jesus promised will broadcast the saving love of God in words and deeds adapted to every culture and heritage, making God’s new-creation community gloriously diverse.