The Spirit We Need - Pentecost

The Spirit We Need - Pentecost

Author: Pastor Carolyn Hetrick
June 08, 2025

Has there ever been a time when a parent wouldn’t let you do something that you thought was a great idea but they said, “NO?” And when you told your friends about this you were probably griping and saying,“I don’t know WHY they wouldn’t let me this!” When I was 11, my friend convinced me that we should go to a rock concert in downtown Pittsburgh at the Civic Arena at night, just two 11 year old girls- What could possibly go wrong?! Right?

Well, that plan got wrecked and I thought the problem was the adult who blocked it. Which I think gives us a little bit of insight into our reading from Genesis today.  Genesis is full of stories that were passed down one conversation at a time until they were finally written down. Stories that people told about trying to make sense of how their place in the world, their place in relationship to God and to answer questions about how things got to be way they are, like “Why can’t we all understand each other?” I feel that’s still a question today.

You see, people thought they were so intelligent, so talented, and so resourceful, they can build a tower all the way up to heaven, take over God’s turf and be in charge. Never mind that in their haste, as some translations will tell you they used bricks with no mortar. What could possibly go wrong?!

The Lord, says, “Well wait, we can’t let them do that. If they all understand each other, it means that someone has the power to convince everyone and they may not use that power for good.” Old Testament stories can seem like there’s just this angry, vengeful, jealous God who just sets about wrecking our plans. And I used to hear the story of Babel “God’s the problem in the equation” rather than this being a story about our lack of self-control, because that’s how the people in Genesis were telling it. But they weren’t grasping the whole picture. Let’s reframe Babel as a way of talking about the Holy Spirit today.

The heart and the Spirit of God is active in this story starts with God knowing our capacity and indeed our propensity to not think things through; to be easily convinced and to get so busy trying to build our own towers in this world that we don’t see each other or the big picture. God knows how susceptible we can be to someone else’s great idea. Remember that it wasn’t one or two people who built that tower, the group bought in.

God intervenes to essentially spare people from being too susceptible to voices that will mislead them. Throughout the Bible, time and again God uses dreams and visions and prophets to try to guide us often through the unnamed, but very present Holy Spirit. Things like telling the people they don’t want a king because of what will happen to their sons and daughters all the way to Pilate’s wife telling him to have nothing to do with this plot to kill Jesus because of a dream that she had.

This side of the cross, on the day of Pentecost we have in essence a reversing of the Tower of Babel. Suddenly everyone from all around the world is hearing the word of God in the disciples’ voices, yet each in their own language. Notice, it’s not that they are no longer speaking different languages, but that each hears the same message within their diversity. That’s only possible with the work of the Holy Spirit, the loving force of God.

We also see that we as followers of Jesus participate as co-creators of God’s vision because until Pentecost, what we see is the disciples were waiting and praying for 10 days. I believe that in that time they became more susceptible, more open to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit despite many other voices they could have followed including those that dismissed God’s power at work. That openness helped them be convinced of God’s possibility. To see the holy in this time and to see the worthiness of everyone. Even though no one woke up that day of Pentecost intending to witness to people they didn’t understand. But look what God did.

Friends, I think our time feels like a modern-day Tower of Babel. We have the capacity to talk past each other all the time. We can proclaim loudly that it’s pointless or even hopeless to try to understand each other anymore. We strive to rise above others. And some in government and industry are now convinced that humans are not even really necessary in the end game of the equation. Artificial intelligence is far superior to mere human frailty, much less divinity. What a precarious structure that could be our downfall if we just give in to being convinced of it.

Many will say that it’s just too hard to be community together. Too hard to have unity of mind or purpose. It’s not too hard, but it is hard work.

I believe that is a time for prayer. For us to be convinced anew of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, despite many other voices we could follow, including those who dismiss God’s power at work today. I still believe that the Holy Spirit comes to us and the work of the Holy Spirit each day to remind us that the Spirit is a Comforter and an Activator in our midst. To nurture our susceptibility, our openness, to what God is up to in the world. The God who made us and claims us sends the Spirit flowing into us each day so we too can begin to grasp what the world looks like through God’s eyes. God sees us truly, not the way the world, or even we ourselves do. The Spirit reminds us of something fundamentally comforting- God loves us and God wants abundant life for us, not just us here, or us now, but all of God’s creation and all of God’s children.

But at the same time, sometimes for all of God’s children and God’s creation to know and experience what God intends and is inspiring, it will mean the Spirit activates in ways that feel like wrecking our plans or calling us to re-set. Not because God’s jealous or just mean, but because God loves us. Just like those loving parents acted and told us something for our own sake and our own good.
Often when I preach on the Holy Spirit, I focus on power. This year I want to lift that up differently because I believe that we are called to carry into the world the power of a collective spirit that the Holy Spirit can foster among us. To be less susceptible to seeing the worst, and more so the good and the holy. This takes what we received from the Spirit in our baptism: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, and the spirit of joy in God’s presence.

These gifts will work in tension with each other to balance us. Because, you see, knowledge without the capacity for wisdom becomes a gift that is out of control. Might without counsel is reckless. Seeking joy without respect is unhealthy. When things are not in balance it’s like a giant Jenga game just waiting to topple. When we focus only on the language of power, we don’t perceive how the gifts of the Spirit create the balance in us and in our community that we need so that we all can stand and not fall.
Today I believe we’re being called to stop living a spirit of dis-integration. God created us to be integrated and mutually dependent. We’re being shown that God’s grace in the world is marred by the ways that we wound people and lands so that many experience dis-grace.

We’re experiencing the effects upon wellness of compromise for the bottom line so that many experience dis-ease amidst our discord and our babble. But the root of these problems is not our diversity, nor is it our God. It is our perspective. God doesn’t discourage our diversity, or need us to be uniform robots. Instead, God longs for us to experience as real the vision Jesus prayed for, “may they be one as you and I are one.” So the Spirit comes to inspire us to understand one another and restore the loving arrangement God’s fingertips traced through the sky as the Spirit first moved over the waters in creation. To become susceptible to the influence and power of love that show us the divine image in every body, a vision of dignity and a glorious world.  

As I leave for sabbatical, I urge you to pray daily for the Holy Spirit to enter our hearts and kindle the fire of God’s love. Inspire us to believe in what God desires- a world we really do want to live in but are sometimes too resistant to experience it or too susceptible to doubt of it. To activate us as Church to embody what we confess. We believe in the Holy Spirit.

So, let’s dare to say, “Come, Spirit, come!” and expect to be amazed.  AMEN.

Copyright Rev. Carolyn K. Hetrick, 2025 All rights reserved.  May not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.

Sermon Texts: Genesis 11:1-9
¹ Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. ² And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. ³ And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. ⁴ Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” ⁵ The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. ⁶ And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 
⁷ Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” ⁸ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. ⁹ Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

Acts 2:1-8
¹ When the day of Pentecost had come, [the apostles] were all together in one place. ² And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³ Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
⁵ Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶ And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷ Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸ And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 

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