Sermon: The Upstream waters of Pentecost

This is only the beginning of what they will do, and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Please be seated.

If for no other reason than to capture the attention of my nine-year-old son, and at the risk of losing the respect of the more dignified in our midst, I want to share some advice for you all who might plan to go backpacking or canoeing near a river any time in the years to come.

This is especially poignant advice if your aim is to remain friends with your camping companions after the trip.

When you pee in a river while camping, not if, but when, always do so downstream from your group.

Good?

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Rivers are incredible natural features.

They can grow shallow, they can dry up, but in their prime, they are nothing short of incredible to behold.

They have captured the minds and the hearts of many throughout the ages, from philosophers and adventurers to mathematicians and naturalists.

They wind and they carve, they babble, they form rapids, and they are filled with life.

You never step in the same river twice, claimed the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, and he’s right, because rivers, by nature, flow.

Most often from north to south, usually from a higher elevation to a lower, but they always flow without fail from a source.

Could be melted snow, it might be a natural spring, but the source of every river can be found upstream.

That is where you find the river in its purest form.

Everything that you see, and everything that you cannot see in the created order, reveals something about God.

As St.

Paul wrote to the church in Rome, God’s invisible nature, namely His eternal power and divine essence, has been clearly perceived in the things He has made.

Christians have spoken throughout the ages of God’s two books to humanity, the book of His word, the scriptures, and the book of His world.

Both of these books exist, though in different ways, to reveal to us who God is and what He is up to in the world.

There’s a way of life, Jesus calls it the abundant life, that is marked by stability in the midst of change, joy that permeates regardless of circumstance, and perseverance in the midst of suffering.

As I say these words, you’re thinking of people you know.

You recognize this way of life in someone when you see it.

In ages past, we called these sort of people, the ones marked by this way of life, saints.

They all have a secret.

They have a same pathway towards obtaining this life, whether they were 15th century French soldiers or 3rd century desert hermits.

Their lives were spent traveling upstream.

They lived in pursuit of the source of the river of life.

They recognized that the further downstream you get from the fountainhead, the further away you get from the source of the river, the murkier the waters get.

And saints are those who simply are not content with the murky waters.

They’re willing to abandon the downstream life in order to attempt to travel upstream.

I find the story of the Tower of Babel to be the most intriguing 10 sentences in the entire book of Genesis.

The opening 11 chapters of Genesis all seek to explain why the world is the way it is, and though these stories were first told thousands of years ago, they offer a surprisingly accurate vision of our world even today.

The final story of this section of the scriptures is none other than the Tower of Babel, a capstone story of sorts told in a single paragraph.

Genesis tells us that the whole world had one language but few words.

Though they did not say much, communication was seemingly easy.

But what they did choose to say to one another speaks volumes.

Twice in this very short passage, the words of this ancient civilization are recorded, both of these books, both times the same phrase is used by those who are seeking to build the tower.

Let us make.

If you’re reading the first 11 chapters of Genesis, you know that the phrase, let us make, is not neutral language in that text.

It is God himself who first says, let us make, in Genesis 1, when he makes the first humans in his image.

And in Genesis 11, we see humanity taking the creative reins.

We see humanity attempting to remake themselves.

The Tower of Babel is an ancient story of a group of humans who realized that by harnessing God’s world for their own purposes, they could become like gods.

It warns us of the all-too-familiar temptation to take God’s world by the horns and turn it inward on ourselves, to hone in on something downstream from the true source of life, the technology of bricks in this case, and to make this downstream feature the center of your life, your one obsession, the thing you can use to become whatever it is you wish to become.

This is the ever-present temptation of technology, isn’t it?

Taking a tool, something that is meant to make some part of your life easier, something that does a really great job of making some part of your life easier, and grasping a hold of it, making it the center of who you are.

And when we do that, this is part of the message of the Tower of Babel, when we do that, when we grasp hold of something we find in the murky downstream waters and center our life around it, it does not go well.

It doesn’t go well for us, and it especially does not go well for those whose lives are linked closely to ours.

In the Tower of Babel, we simply catch a glimpse of what happens to a human community when the fountainhead of the river of life is abandoned for something found downstream.

Today, we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, and in doing that, we celebrate both the reversal and the redemption of the Tower of Babel.

This is why this specific Genesis reading is always paired with the Feast of Pentecost.

In the Book of Acts, we read that the disciples were gathered together following the ascension of Jesus.

They had been with Jesus before the resurrection.

They had been with Jesus after the resurrection.

They heard with their own ears his promise that he would never leave them nor forsake them, and then they watched with their own eyes as he vanished, as he returned to the realm of heaven.

With Jesus, they had tasted those upstream waters.

They were no longer content with the downstream life.

They had been changed, and they had been changed enough to know that this abundant life was not the sort of thing they could create on their own.

It was not the sort of thing they could grasp on their own.

And so, in the Book of Acts, we find the disciples waiting, waiting for God to do what only God to do.

And in the blink of an eye, we’re told with the rush of wind and with the descending of a fire that didn’t consume anything, God appeared.

The disciples were indwelled with the Holy Spirit.

This fountainhead of the river of life was now living within them and in their midst.

The results were shocking.

People from all over the world who spoke countless languages were able to see and hear and understand in their own tongue who God is and what it is that he’s inviting them into.

In Babel, human beings saw their own ingenuity as their source of power.

In Pentecost, humans are given eyes to see it is God who sustains life.

In Babel, humanity attempted to reach up to God.

In Pentecost, God himself came down to humanity.

In Babel, the result of this human power grab was the confusion of language and the division of cultures.

In Pentecost, the receiving of this power as a gift from on high resulted in different cultures understanding and appreciating and embodying the good news of God in Christ without giving up what it is that made them who they are.

Pentecost comes with unity, not conformity.

The moment of Pentecost is God coming down, not humanity climbing up, to give us access here and now to the upstream life.

And this season of Pentecost is here year after year to remind us to turn our focus up the river.

So with that, Pentecost comes with a decision.

It comes with a series of daily decisions, in fact.

You can continue to chase things downstream.

You can live a life that seeks to find meaning and purpose and pleasure in what you stumble upon in the murkiest of waters.

Or you can turn again and again and continue the difficult but refreshing journey of traveling upstream.

It’s entirely appropriate that on the Feast of Pentecost we have baptisms.

Our youngest was baptized on Pentecost in 2020, so it’s a special day to do what you’re doing.

And these baptismal waters, let me just say before we go there, are as close to the fountainhead of the river of life that we get in this life.

These waters, God willing, will in some ways ruin these baptismal candidates for anything less than a God-filled life.

And as long as Christians have baptized other Christians, this ceremony has been considered an opportunity for every baptized Christian present to be renewed, to commit again to the pursuit of the more abundant life, to reject again the various downstream pursuits that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.

So let us join with those being baptized today in renewing our own baptismal covenant.

Amen.