The story of Pentecost confronts us with a God who dismantles culturally homogeneous centers of power in favor of a richly diverse community united by the power of the Holy Spirit. It tells of the pouring out of the Spirit on young and old, male and female, rich and poor, Jew and Greek, a foretaste of the wildly inclusive community of the resurrected Jesus.

Cultural Conformity and the Consolidation of Power

The story of Pentecost may be understood, in one sense, as a reversal of the story of the tower of Babel, told in Genesis 11. According to that story, which takes place in the years just after the flood of Noah, all of the people in the world still spoke a common language—presumably Hebrew in the biblical memory. There was no Akkadian or Egyptian or Aramaic. There was no English or Spanish or Arabic. Everyone spoke one language.

According to the story, this unity of language—and, with it, conformity of culture—was a dangerous thing. Because they could understand each other, the people gathered in one place and set out to build a city and a tower with its top in the heavens. Their goal was to “make a name for ourselves.”

They wanted power. They wanted to be somebody. And so they set out to build a tower.

Tellingly, when the people begin to make the bricks and mortar (Genesis 11:3), there is yet no stated plan to build a tower. Only after they have labored to make bricks is the decision made to build the tower (Genesis 11:4). One wonders what the common people thought they were making bricks for. Some of them must have thought they would be used to build houses so that everyone would have shelter. Instead, they learned that the plan was to build a tower upward toward the heavens—not outward to the people—establishing some of them as more important and more powerful than others.

It is the nature of towers to create hierarchies. Not everyone can live at the top of the tower. Not everyone can reach for the heavens. Some must remain below. Some must keep making bricks. Some must grow food to feed those at the top. Those at the bottom of the tower inevitably become the subjects of those at the top.

The story of the Tower of Babel illustrates the human inclination to build upward rather than outward. It exemplifies the propensity of some to elevate themselves at the expense of others. It lays bare the desire of those at the center to be like gods.

Scattering the Proud

God responds to the building of the tower—to the creation of the hierarchy—with anger. God comes down from heaven to see the tower the humans have built. Seeing the tower, God recognizes the limitless capacity of humankind to construct centers of domination. “This is only the beginning of what they will do,” God says. “Nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.”

As a result, God scatters the people across the face of the earth. God mixes their languages so that they can no longer communicate with one another. In the biblical telling, this is the origin of languages and the genesis of cultural difference. Variations of language and culture prevent us from locating power at the center. They defeat our compulsion to build towers toward the heavens. Humanity is better off scattering outward, not building upward.

A Church That Embraces Diversity

The story of Pentecost can be read as a reversal of the story of the Tower of Babel. As the people gather in Jerusalem from all over the world, the disciples are sequestered together, trying to decide what to do after the ascension of Jesus into heaven. Just then, the Holy Spirit rushes upon them like a violent wind and tongues of flame. Empowered by the Spirit, the disciples begin to speak in languages that they don’t know.

People from the diverse cultures of the world are drawn to them. “How is it that we hear, each of us, in our native language?” they ask. The Arabs hear in Arabic. The Romans in Latin. The Greeks in Greek. Every single person gathered in Jerusalem hears the Gospel proclaimed in their native tongue.

When the Holy Spirit wants to build a church, she begins by restoring the people’s capacity to understand each other. She enables people to speak across differences in language and custom.

Yet, importantly, the Holy Spirit doesn’t simply restore all the world to speaking the same language, as was the case before the incident at Babel. That would end in cultural homogeny. It would revert to the hegemony of the center.

Instead, the Holy Spirit empowers the community to embrace difference. She enables the disciples to speak the languages of the people. The people can hear the Gospel in their own languages, proclaimed in their own cultural idioms. The Holy Spirit creates a church that respects and embraces the cultural diversity of the people.

The Spirit upon All Flesh

Peter, emboldened by the Holy Spirit, makes the point even more strongly. Appealing to a prophecy from the Old Testament prophet Joel, written about 500 years earlier, he explains the significance of what is happening among them. He quotes the prophet, who says,

In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit and they shall prophesy. (Acts 2:17-19)

For Peter, this passage describes what is happening at the very moment of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit has inaugurated the last days. The Spirit has come “upon all flesh.”

According to Joel, the Holy Spirit doesn’t believe in hierachies. The Spirit comes upon all people— both men and women, both young and old, both slave and free, from all peoples and cultures and language groups. Everyone who has the Spirit can prophesy. Everyone can see visions. Everyone can dream dreams. The Holy Spirit energizes a diverse community to proclaim new and abundant life for all.

The Holy Spirit doesn’t build towers. She builds diverse communities of resurrection life.

Becoming the Pentecost Church

So, too, it should be with the church today. It is not our task to pull the cultures of the world toward our hegemonic center. It’s not our calling to force cultural conformity. It is not our mission to build our steeples upward toward the heavens or to garner cultural power for ourselves. When we find ourselves nuzzling up to Presidents, we have lost our way.

Rather, the mission of the church is to radiate the gospel of Jesus Christ—the resurrection power of new and abundant life for all—outward to the ends of the earth. Our mission is to catch up with the movement of Holy Spirit, which is already empowering visions among young and old, male and female, Jew and Gentile, from every language and people and culture under the sun. Our task is to embrace both our cultural diversity and our unity in the Spirit, so that we—all of us together—might proclaim the renewing love of a God who crumbles the towers of hegemonic power, empowering manifold expressions of resurrection life throughout the diverse cultures of humankind.