Sermon: Pentecost - 2019

9 June 2019

Text: John 14:23-31 (Gen 11:1-9, Acts 2:1-21)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

In the beginning, God made a perfect world.  God made man in His image.  God gave the man and the woman dominion over all the earth.  Having been entrusted with this stewardship, they foolishly misused their dominion, by seeking dominion over God.  Of course, this was at the behest of the serpent.  

Things degenerated after Adam and Eve’s expulsion, with the first murder, with the shocking increase in violence, and with the flood.  Noah and his family started over after the flood, and God rebooted creation.  Mankind was given a second chance, and told to spread around the world and multiply.

Once again, mankind abused the Lord’s trust.  Being creatures of the creator, mankind created things from the fertile soil of his imagination.  And one day, a new technology was born: the brick.  And on the plain of Shinar, “they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks…. Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens.”  Technology could create new opportunities for mankind to obey God’s command to rule the earth.  But instead, sinful man in a sinful world used this technology sinfully, to disobey God’s commandment.  

And so God punished the people in this city of Babel by confusing their languages.  The project ended in failure.  The people disbursed, now bearing a curse of frustrated communications.  Mankind became divided and tribal, and the many tongues became a cause of hatred and warfare.

There is a powerful lesson for us today, dear friends.  For no generation has had such a blessing – and such a curse – as we have with our technology.  Technology has raised people out of poverty.  It has saved countless lives.  It has fostered communication, and has provided people around the planet with access to the greatest creations of mankind: art, texts, science, and even mastery of the languages that cursed mankind at Babel.

But the worst thing, dear brothers and sisters, is that technology makes us proud. “We can be like God,” thought Adam and Eve.  “We can disobey God and settle together in the city and build our way to heaven,” thought the Babelites.  “We do not need God, we have science and technology,” so many think today.  And even Christians are tempted to push God out of their lives because we have our technology.  

The lesson of Babel has not been learned.  The founders of the European Union even adopted the Tower of Babel as one of their proud symbols, thinking that they can outsmart God this time around, and bridge the gap of the division between nations through politics.  And how foolish can they be?  How foolish can we all be, dear friends?

The division between nations was healed by the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose death saves men and women of every tribe and tongue, uniting them into one holy Christian and apostolic church.  His resurrection delivered victory over death and the grave to all people, doing what technology could never do, even as politicians like Lenin and Stalin had their bodies preserved in hopes that one day technology would resurrect them.  The coming of the Holy Spirit ended Babel’s curse, as the apostles miraculously preached in the tongues of their hearers: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians; in the languages of Africa and Asia, and those who would follow in their train would proclaim the Gospel to the ends of the earth in languages that didn’t even exist when the Holy Spirit came.  

The solution to death is not technology, not blood transfusions from teenagers, not cloning parts from aborted babies, not microchipping our brains or trying to upload our consciousness into computers.  The solution to death is Christ, the conqueror of death and the giver of life.

Technology is a wonderful thing, but it can be used in service of our neighbors, or to enslave our neighbors.  Technology can serve life, or technology can serve up death.  Whether technology is good or evil depends upon one’s prayer.  When it is: “Thy will be done,” then technology is used for the glory of God.  But when the prayer is “My will be done,” technology becomes a tool of the devil.  And the whole of human history has been the misuse of the Lord’s gifts, our desire to “be like God” – not in His love and righteousness, but rather in His power and dominion to be lusted after and seized.

And it is all the more ironic because mankind was already given dominion “over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”  The tragedy is that we poor miserable sinners seek to steal from God what He has already given us by grace and out of love.

But nevertheless, the Lord continues to forgive, renew, and strengthen His creatures.  It is not through technology, but through the sacrifice of His Son upon the cross, that the Lord takes away the curse of sin: of Adam and Eve, of the flood, of Babel, and of every sin that we commit in thought, word, and deed to the present day and beyond.  For in Christ, by means of the Spirit, and anticipating the day of the Lord, the prophecy is fulfilled: “And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Our Lord Jesus Christ delivers what we need, dear friends: “peace.”  “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you.  Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”  

Technology has many more wonders to deliver.  The youth of today will see and experience remarkable things that we can only imagine.  Lives will be saved, and poverty will be diminished.  But they will also see the ugly underbelly.  Deaths will occur, and war and want will be unleashed using technology.  Men will continue to think that technology will make them like God, when all the while, they become more like the serpent who deceives them.  For there will be “wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below.”  

Through it all, our salvation will not be technology, but the Word.  Jesus said, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My Word, and the Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our home with him.

In the end, God will remake a perfect world.  In Christ, God has restored His image in us.  God will once more entrust the man and the woman with dominion over all the earth.  The serpent will be no more.  There will be no need for towers and technology and translators.  For heaven descends to us, dear friends, even as the Holy Spirit has descended upon us, and taught us a new and more excellent tongue: the language of the Good News of Jesus Christ.  God will once again reboot creation.  And this will truly be only the beginning of what we will do, in Christ, and unto eternity.  Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.