Genesis 11:1-9 and Acts 2:1-21
May 24, 2026
A language is deemed extinct when its last native speaker dies. While the dialect might still be studied or used to unravel ancient documents, without a person who learned its words on a parent’s lap, such that the “a’s” or “ch’s” are logged as beloved sounds of home, the language does not carry on as before. It is impossible to know how many languages have disappeared over the centuries – linguists estimate several thousand. It is possible to describe the losses that accompany a language’s demise; the disappearance of a history, a culture, a people.
Take, for example, Caddo, an indigenous dialect once used by Native America tribes across east Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. Historians trace the word Texas to the Caddo word “tay-sha,” which means “friend.” Or what of the word “Hu’upu” from the Morori people who settled the Chatham Islands off New Zealand. Hu’upu translates “a nostalgic, almost aching feeling of homesickness when looking at the ocean.” Lastly, consider the word “Mamihlapinatapai” from the Yaghan language spoken by previous generations living on the southern tip of South America. Considered the most succent word every spoken, it means “the look shared by two people, each wishing the other will offer to begin something they both want but are unwilling to do.” I call it the exchange between my husband and I when evening comes and one of us needs to get off the couch and make dinner.
You get the point. When a language shrinks, our world loses a piece of richness. When a language dies, so does a piece of our understanding. When an array of languages ceases to be spoken, we lose avenues to knowing one another.
“Now the whole earth had one language and the same words,” states Genesis chapter 11. It’s a curious statement because just a chapter before, as the descendants of Noah were sent out to repopulate the earth after the flood, each family was described as having their own language. A multitude of languages existed before a monolithic group assembles in Babel to build a tower to the heavens. A reduction of language has occurred, a pressing down into one people, one word, one purpose. Here is not unity but a monopoly, a plan for domination. The desire behind building the tower heavenward is not to get close to God, but to overtake God, to rival’s God’s power. And beneath the desire lies a fear, a fear of being scattered across the earth. In faith’s language the fear might translate, “please God, don’t send us somewhere we don’t want to go.”
God, of course, has other plans. No matter how many bricks are laid or how tall the tower grows, God’s power is greater. God’s always pushes forward. The mixing of Babel’s speech is not a punishment but an act of liberation, because the scattering of the people is a push toward salvation. God breaks up the monopoly, to set them loose, freed from closed circumstances or deadened lives. How do we know this? By noticing what God does in the very next chapter. In Genesis chapter 12 God begins the great journey to creating a people
who will bless the entire creation. God says to Abram, Go from your country. Go and learn a new language.
In the fullness of time, Jesus came, another language to tell us of God. His is the language of blessing, healing, and compassion for the hungry. His speech happens through eyes that look into another’s pain. The Word made flesh demonstrates that no tall tower is needed to come close to God, because God comes close to us. From a baby’s coo in the manger among the animals to the cry from the cross, Jesus is the Word speaking right here; listening, feeding, touching, and inviting us to respond.
The disciples saw the Word made flesh. By him they were taught, fed, healed, touched. But even after they peered into the empty tomb, even after they put their fingers into his wounds and ate the bread of new tomorrow, they did not know how to speak his Word themselves. Fifty days after his resurrection, they were stuck, huddled in a hidden room, preoccupied with replacing one missing disciple, wanting assurances about tomorrow.
We know that place of indecision. The paralyzing feeling when life has not gone as planned, when reality around us feels harder than we had hoped, and more hostile than we can stomach. It takes eUort to keep faith in God’s promises, to trust God who has receded from view. It is tempting to stay huddled and silent, wanting reassurance, afraid of being sent.
God, of course, has other plans, bigger dreams, wider visions. The wind’s howl, the fire comes, and hearts are set ablaze. The disciples are pushed onto the streets by the power. But the biggest sign of Holy Spirit’s visitation is a new capacity for speech. Words the disciples had never learned spill out of their mouths. The international community dwelling in Jerusalem hears their voices, ears perk up as those with foreign accents speak languages the crowd has known since childhood. Parthians and Elamites, who previously have passed each other by, receive the same story of God’s great love, via words chosen just for them. Egyptians, Arabs, and visitors from Rome stand alongside one another, hearing about the dreams God dreams, inviting them to use their own language to see visions of tomorrow. The miracle of Pentecost is this gift of speech. A diversity of languages. A cacophony voices. But like the crowd so long ago, we can sit here, inspired by the flames around us, awed by the diUerent voices, and still ask, “what does this mean?”
What does the Pentecost gift mean? The church was born that day, a body formed by Jesus’s life. Because the speech stretched boundaries, reaching far and wide, the community is not uniform, but varied, not closed but open, not settled but ever extending its touch. And entry into this new community did not require a language exam or belonging to a select group of people. One needs only a willingness to converse, an openness to learning a new language, an excitement to belong to a diverse company of followers whose hearts all have been touched by the heart- language of God. Every time across history when the church has closed its doors or demanded the conformity of Babel, it has forgotten this Pentecost push toward diUerence, to letting God work through the diversity of who we are.
A second meaning of Pentecost speech is that we who follow Jesus have a new role, given to us in the Spirit’s power. We are translators, those constantly looking for new appearances of the Spirit, new moments to speak love to one another. Translation is diUicult work. It requires proficiency in God’s speech – that language of blessing, healing, of speaking truth and forgiveness – as well as proficiency in human longings, which, most often, cry first in despair, cynicism, disbelief and anger. Pentecost people are always alert for the Spirit’s appearing – in the stillness of a space, the melting of a heart, the risking of a truth. And Pentecost people are willing to risk being misinterpreted in their witness to the Word enfleshed. Be a translator. For Pentecost’s message is made through a life in love with the world.
What does this mean? Pentecost gives birth to a new language, and amid all that feels deathly in our world right now we need new ways of speaking to one another. We need renewed courage to name faith for what it is; not a tower-building, superior-thinking enterprise, but a solidarity with the crucified. Pentecost speaks the language of belonging to each other. Because the explosive power of that first morning turns into the hard work of living together – of prayers, meals, helping hands, as well as working through disagreements, taking missionary journeys and dangerous assignments. The work may get rougher, but the language and the vision undergirding it is always of God. “God speaks people fluently,” says Willie Jennings. With the Spirit’s help, he continues. “God wants us to speak people too.” May it be so. Amen.orking through
disagreements, taking missionary journeys and dangerous assignments. The work may get
rougher, but the language and the vision undergirding it is always of God. “God speaks
people fluently,” says Willie Jennings. With the Spirit’s help, he continues. “God wants us to
speak people too.” May it be so. Amen.