Whitsunday
Psalm 104; Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17
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I.
What if you couldn’t think anymore?
Not because you’re getting old, not because of Alzheimer’s or dementia, but because someone has been stealing your words.
That was exactly the premise of Newspeak in George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. The goal of Newspeak was to make thinking the wrong thing impossible.
“You don’t grasp the beauty of the destruction of words,” an architect of Newspeak said to Winston Smith, the novel’s hero. “Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?”
When words are destroyed, the ability to think is lost.
In today’s reading from Genesis 11, the story of the Tower of Babel, we read in verse 1, “Now the whole earth had one language and few words.” Most other English translations read something like “was of one language, and of one speech” or “had one language and the same words.”
But the translators of the Revised Standard Version, from which I am quoting today, chose to emphasize the lack of vocabulary in this ancient, unified language: “Now the whole earth had one language and few words.”
It seems it was a kind of Newspeak, even though it was very old.
The goal of the builders of the Tower of Babel was fourfold. “Come,” they say, in verse 4, “let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
First, they wanted to build a city. Second, they wanted to build a tower to heaven, a place of worship. Third, they wanted to make a name for themselves. Fourth, they wanted to guard their unity.
The city, tower, and name would keep them from being scattered. A language with few words might prevent them from even describing the thought of leaving.
The Revised Standard Version’s translation of the Old Testament was published in 1952, Orwell’s novel in 1949. The Red Scare, a period of intense fear of communism, was in full swing. I can’t help but wonder if the translators were trying to send a message. The total state doesn’t want you to think for yourself and will do everything it can to make sure you can’t.
II.
Today we celebrate Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples in Jerusalem.
Pentecost is sometimes called the birthday of the Church. In fact, it’s not. The Church began with the promise of the Messiah in Genesis 3:15 when God said to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
Whoever believed that promise down through the ages was already a member, by faith, of the Church.
Jesus had Genesis 3:15 in mind when He accused the unbelieving Jews in John 5:39, saying, “You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me.”
Pentecost is also sometimes called the “reversal of Babel.” This too is a mistake, though you can understand why preachers make it. The argument goes like this.
At Babel, the human race was united: “the whole earth had one language and few words,” but God frustrated that unity, because of mankind’s pride in building a tower to the heavens. Therefore, God confuses the speech of men, dividing them and scattering them “over the face of all the earth.”
At Pentecost, so the argument goes, God reversed this scattering, and reunited the human race in His newfound Church, and even restored a kind of temporary linguistic unity. “How is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?” the crowd asked.
I think this interpretation has more to do with modernist egalitarian ideas that have been popular since the French Revolution than what the biblical texts tell us.
The real point of the Pentecost story, as recorded for us by Luke in Acts, is that the Holy Spirit gives the “Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven,” power to call on the name of the Lord and be saved.
The reason I believe Pentecost is not the reversal of Babel lies in Acts 2:5: “Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews,” meaning the “devout men from every nation under heaven” were Jews from foreign countries, not non-Jewish foreigners.
Pentecost does not describe the undoing of Babel. It does not describe the regathering of the human race from “over the face of all the earth.” What it does describe is the reconstitution, the coming back together of Israel.
This makes sense. Pentecost is not a Christian holiday, the way Christmas and Easter are. Pentecost is the harvest festival commanded by Moses in Exodus 23:16:
“You shall keep the feast of harvest, of the first fruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall keep the feast of ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor.”
St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:20, “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.”
He is connecting the idea of resurrection with harvest, of Easter with Pentecost. Jesus is the “the firstfruits of them that slept,” the first to come back from the dead. Now that the Holy Spirit has come, Paul assures us, there will be many more.
Peter, quoting the prophet Joel in today’s reading from Acts, said, “And it shall be that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Saved from what? Saved from death. Saved from judgment. But not if we remain under the confusion of Babel.
Babel, after all, was a judgment upon mankind. To this day, mankind remains scattered and confused.
Pentecost is not the reversal of Babel’s judgment. Instead, it is the giving of a name that we may call on to save us—and in calling on that name—we are called out.
That is the meaning of the Greek word ekklesia, from which we get the word church. Ekklesia—church—is the assembly of those who call on and are called out.
Those who call on the name of the Lord and are separated from the judgment that still must fall on the rest of the human race.
To understand and apply this, look at verses 17, 19, and 20 in Acts.
Verse 17: “And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.” In quoting Joel, Peter declares those last days have arrived.
Verses 19-20: “And I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth beneath, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and manifest day.”
This is the language of judgment. The curse of Babel has not been reversed. Far from it. Rather, it is coming into full effect.
The good news—literally the gospel—is that there is a name you and I can call on to escape that judgment. We can call on the name of the Lord. “And it shall be that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
III.
A man will readily allow a totalizing power like the state, the media, or “the science” to limit his ability to think, but ask him once to accept a God-imposed limit and he rebels.
In today’s gospel reading from John 14:15, Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” The corollary must also be true. If you do not love Jesus, you will not keep His commandments.
Could it really be that simple, that the litmus test for everything from church membership to qualifying for public office to selecting a spouse is to ask, “Is there evidence that you love Jesus?”
The story of Babel is man’s pride in his own name and his unwillingness to humble himself and call on God’s name.
Man is willing to accept limits on what he thinks, even on his capacity to think provided he gets his city, his tower, and his peace of mind.
But God gives no peace of mind to those who clamor after their own name by setting their own rules and keeping their own commandments.
Here’s a contemporary example of mankind trying to play nature by his own rules.
Kian Sadeghi is the founder and CEO of a company called Nucleus Genomics. The company’s tagline is “Plan your family. Screen for cancer. Protect your heart health. Know your mental health. All in a single test.”
If you click through to the landing page of the company’s website, you’re greeted with a background video of parents holding healthy babies. Superimposed on the moving images is the caption, “The Choice is Yours.”
What choice? A secondary caption on the lower part of the screen reads, “Nucleus Embryo empowers couples to make thoughtful choices about their future baby.”
What father or mother doesn’t want to make “thoughtful choices” about his or her future baby? What could be wrong with that? Bringing a child into the world ought not to be left up to chance. It takes a commitment of at least 18 to 21 years.
After all, planning is a good thing, a virtuous act. Jesus says in Luke 14:28, “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?”
Swap out the word “tower” for “baby” and it reads, “For which of you, desiring to build a baby, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?”
Why, it’s almost as if Jesus wrote the marketing copy for Nucleus Genomics. Of course, Jesus wants you to count the cost before you become a parent.
You can detect the note of sarcasm in my words, but I should explain to you, carefully, the reason for it.
It is not that I think tower-building or family planning should be haphazard. It’s not that there is no place for genetic testing. It’s that you need to think things through, to understand the implications—moral and otherwise—of your actions.
You can only do that if you’ve got the vocabulary to think in the truth. The builders of Babel had lost that vocabulary. They had only a few words.
IV.
There is no quick fix to Babel’s curse, the way some preachers like to make Pentecost out to be, but Jesus is the Name you can call on when you’ve decided you’ve had enough of the lies.
John 14:15 says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” It was our failure to love God and keep His commandments that nailed Jesus to the cross.
But then Jesus immediately adds in verses 16 and 17,
“And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you.”
This is why the Christian imagination is so much richer than the world’s. This is why Christian art and architecture inspires and ennobles. Romanesque, Gothic, Belle Époque, Arts & Crafts, the Hudson River School—these evoke beauty and grace. Even Art Deco, though thoroughly modern, took its cue from Europe’s cathedrals.
Meanwhile, the world calls its architecture Brutalist. The most popular architecture today is known as the International Style. These are the interchangeable glass towers you see effacing the skylines of the world’s cities. The very name is a tell, International Style. Its goal is to impose one style, one tower on the world, the global city.
Without a hint of irony, the globalist calls his vision diverse, equitable, and inclusive when it is, in fact, uniform, elite, and exclusive. That is because the globalist neither sees nor knows Him who is the truth.
For the globalist, the disaster at Babel was only a technological setback, part of an iterative process, like one of Elon Musk’s starships blowing up. He remains confident that Babel’s curse can be overcome through progress. Meanwhile, he never thinks to call on the name of the Lord and be saved.
V.
Christians must build a truth-loving society, because only we have the vocabulary to do so.
Jesus said, “I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth.” That Spirit of truth has been enriching and enlarging the Christian’s vocabulary of truth ever since.
We have a whole vocabulary of truth for Christian government.
“Separation of Church and State” is a kind of Newspeak. It appears nowhere in our laws or in the Bible. Yet it’s often wielded to silence Christian voices rather than protect religious freedom, and it can keep pastors from preaching politics and Christians from voting their faith.
We have a whole vocabulary of truth for Christian marriage.
Fornication is the chief culprit for unplanned pregnancies. Family planning should begin before you have sex, not after, by carefully choosing when (after marriage) and with whom (your spouse) you have sex in the first place.
The problem with a technology like in-vitro fertilization (IVF) is that it can too easily encourage parents to put these choices off, allowing decisions to be made much later, and often after one or more children have been conceived.
Parents then face pressure to make a decision that is euphemistically called “selective reduction,” which is Newspeak for abortion.
Worse, many of these children are stored on ice, their fates undetermined, or determined by accident, as a recent court case in Alabama disclosed, when the cryogenic container in which these frozen children were stored was dropped on the floor.
I purposefully use the word children, rather than embryo, because morally, which is to say, truthfully, that is what they are. Embryonic merely describes their stage of development as children.
Thinking—let alone speaking—the truth is a thoughtcrime in Orwell’s novel.
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” the Newspeak technician said to Winston Smith. “In the end,” he continued, “we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
Orwell’s story isn’t original. He was only retelling the story of the Tower of Babel. Why don’t we learn? Why does every generation have to learn this painful lesson anew? This week, pick a Newspeak word you’ve internalized and stop using it. Replace it with a word from the vocabulary of Christian truth instead.
You don’t have to be a prophet to see that the tower we are building in our day has almost reached the heavens. It is a tower that celebrates perversion, takes pride in vice, and destroys the innocent. It plays God with life and presumes to make intelligence artificial. Can it be much longer before God topples it?
Christians have no need to fear that day when it comes. It will be the day of judgment. It will be the day of the Lord, to be sure. Yet Christians know the name to call on in that day and be saved. Meanwhile, the world desperately tries to make it impossible to think of that Name, let alone speak it.
Preached on June 8, 2025, at the First Congregational Church, Woodbury, Connecticut.
Reflection Questions
How are modern systems (media, technology, culture) limiting our ability to think and speak the truth?
What does it mean to you to call on the name of the Lord in your daily life?
How can you use the “vocabulary of truth” to live out your faith in your community?
How can you identify and replace a “Newspeak” term in your own speech this week?
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