BILLTESKA

It is clear that the whole point of the gift of tongues at Pentecost was communication. Not the mysticism of individual ecstasy or some angelic language of private prayer, but the Eucharistic mysticism of communion in love. The communication was intelligible to the hearers in their own languages. The Spirit does not mystify, She illuminates. The Pentecostal tongues unite all people on earth, undoing the confusion and division of Babel.

The gift of the Holy Spirit came on a relatively minor Jewish holiday, called Pentecost by the Hellenized Jews, because it was fifty days after Passover. It had three names in Hebrew: Shavuot (weeks) because 49 days is “a week of weeks” or seven weeks. At this time of year in Israel, that is just enough time to plant, nurture, and harvest the spring wheat, so it is also a harvest festival, with the name Hag ha-Bikkurim, the Feast of the First-fruits. Later, probably, it was associated with the giving of the Law on Sinai: Hag Matan Torah. So, in addition to the recapitulation of the disaster at Babel, there is a second typology here: the First Pentecost celebrating the gift of the Law, the Second celebrating the Gift of the Spirit. As if to underscore the similitude, the tongues of fire descended early in the morning, which was the time pious Jewish legend had Moses receiving the Law on Sinai, while everyone else was fast asleep. They had to “wake up” to hear the law, you see.

Both festivals are about waking up and sanctification. Law is given in order to set the people apart. A unique people, a chosen people, a holy people: different from all other peoples on earth in that it is blessed by a unique relationship with the One and Only God – a God Who commands certain observances, ethical as well as ceremonial, observances that are marks of the people’s separateness, marks of its status as the people of God. The New Pentecost is also about sanctification – about the holiness of the people of God – but here the Covenant is opened and extended to all flesh. Holiness is no longer a matter of separation from other nations; the blessing of the New Pentecost enables Israel to include all the goyim and all creation in the special relationship with God. The separateness of holiness is no longer separation from other peoples but separation of all peoples and of all creation from the dominion of Death, which Holy Scripture calls variously, the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Law and Spirit are sometimes set up as opposites, but perhaps that is a mistake. After all, Jesus said “I am come to fulfill the Law, not to destroy it.” He came to accomplish what the Law was given for in the first place: the union of God with creation, through the agency of humanity. I think this unity is the underlying meaning of righteousness or justification – the state of harmony and concord, of rightness among human beings and between creation and God, which is the purpose of both Law and Spirit. Law can take us only so far in achieving this happy state. (Like the paidagogos - Paul's image of the custodian escorting us to school, at which point it gives us up to the next level of instruction.) At a certain point (the fullness of time) the Law has to go deeper and become Spirit. Spirit is Law transfigured, the Law become Love and Light – the rod of iron now glowing in the fire of Love. The Law is not destroyed but fulfilled, become something New, its goal of holiness achieved – also in a new way – not by separation but by Communion.

All the people who heard the Apostles speak that day heard their own language. Babel undone. Unintelligibility turned into lucid understanding. That is the gift of tongues at Pentecost. But notice that is not the annihilation of diversity. All those people who hear the Apostles early in the morning do not forget their post-Babel languages and start to understand a single tongue; they hear in their own tongues. They do not return to the pre-Babel state in which language and culture are uniform. Rather, they are now awakened to a new and higher level of consciousness: the level of universal righteousness, the perfection of the Law that the Holy Spirit creates.

The ancient festival of the spring wheat is the perfect setting for this fruition of the Law. The Spirit no more destroys the Law than the harvest destroys the nurturing of the planter; both have the same end: the fruition of the grain – grain that can be united into a single, new creation by mill, leaven, and fire. Made holy by the Spirit, this pure, unspotted sacrifice will be offered to God and then given back to all humanity: the communion of the Holy Spirit, nourishing us in all our diversity and variety unto everlasting Life, the Life of the Divine Community, the life of the Community of utterly diverse and unique but at the same time inseparable Persons, the Life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.