What Are We Building? - Sermon for Pentecost Sunday (June 8, 2025)

Scripture Readings: Genesis 11:1–9 | Psalm 104:27-35 | Acts 2:1–21 | John 14:8–17, 25–27

“I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” (John 14:25-26).
 
What are we trying to build?
 
This past week, our new Prime Minister, Mark Carney, met with the Premiers of Canada’s Provinces and Territories, the First Ministers, to discuss how they can best work together moving forward to build up our country’s unity and resilience… especially amid the recent tensions and turbulence rocking our world right now. Here’s a few takeaways from their meeting, from the Prime Minister’s own website:
 
“First Ministers discussed the federal government’s plan to remove trade barriers and advance major projects of national interest, including by tabling their One Canadian Economy legislation, so Canada can be stronger at home and abroad.
 
First Ministers agreed to work together to accelerate major projects in support of building a strong, resilient, and united Canada…”[1]
 
And to that end, our nations leaders see the pressing need to invest in building up Canada’s capabilities through large-scale “Nation Building” projects: “Nation-building infrastructure and corridors, such as highways, railways, ports, airports, pipelines, nuclear projects, clean and conventional energy projects, and electricity transmission systems, are crucial for driving Canadian productivity growth, energy security, and economic competitiveness.”[2]
 
Time will tell if these projects will produce the big results that many of us are hoping for. But given the challenges and uncertainty Canada is facing, it certainly seems wise to attempt to do what we can to make ourselves stronger, and more united moving forward.
 
That said, it’s also interesting that this is the same kind of story at work in our first reading today from the Book of Genesis: the story of the Tower of Babel.
 
This ancient story takes us way back to the days soon after the great Flood, where the Living God washed His world clean from the extreme violence and bloodshed that we humans had filled the earth with… while sparing one family, Noah and his relatives, so that all of humanity would not be completely wiped out.  
 
But unfortunately, after the Flood, humanity had not learned its lesson. The Scriptures tells us that people were still just as messed up as they were before: prone to pride, injustice, and violence… with so-called ‘great men’ rising themselves up and building cities as monuments for their own glory. And so, in Genesis Chapter 11, we hear that the people had gathered together to build something special: a tower that would rise up to the heavens. Ascending from the earth to the dwellings of the Divine.
 
Genesis 11:4, they said to themselves, “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.”
 
They sought to ascend together… to assert their own greatness, and to make a lasting name for themselves… in order to protect themselves from being scattered. This was humanity’s first ‘Nation Building’ project, seeking to build up their sense of unity.
 
On the surface, this might sound great. I mean, aren’t we supposed to seek unity? Isn’t it better to work together? Well, that all depends on what we are trying to build.
 
Tyrants and totalitarian regimes thrive on unity. Oppressive and unjust social systems, and abusive organizations can do what they do because they have so many people working together to prop them up.
 
And in this case, what the people in Genesis 11 were doing wasn’t good. They were not just building a tower. They were building a rebellion. Actively resisting God’s intentions for His human image-bearers.
 
After all, we humans were created with a clear purpose: to reflect God’s goodness and love out into His creation. Genesis 1:27-28 tells us,
 
“So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
 
God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
 
As God’s image-bearers, humans were to represent God’s rule by ordering God’s world God’s way. But as the story goes, we humans chose to try and rule on our own terms… and now, here they were… instead of obeying God’s will to disperse and fill the earth with God’s goodness, they were attempting to bind themselves together in one place… to make a great name for themselves… and to raise themselves from the earth up to heaven as rivals to the Living God.
 
And this all seems a bit ludicrous… doesn’t it…

That is, until we consider the rest of our human history, and think about so many of the kinds of things that we have continued to build:
 
Devastating weapons of war… planet-threatening levels of waste and pollution… political and economic systems that thrive on greed and wickedness… lifting up a few, at the great expense of so many. And think of our most recent attempts to stay connected, through things like social media, which can be used benignly, but has also played a huge role in tearing communities apart, and isolating us from one another. And think about the marvels of artificial intelligence… and how this tool promises, and has already begun to unlock all sorts of wonderful, potentially life-saving achievements… while also eroding human creativity, dignity, and integrity, and threatening to put millions of people out of work.
 
These are the kings of things that we humans keep building. They may seem so promising at times, and may even be intended to lift us up… but so often, the works of our hands can end up turning our hearts and lives away from God’s ways… unlocking the door not to abundant life, but to all sorts of destruction instead.
 
And yet, God created us to reflect His image… to be like Him, and even to be creative like Him. To bring about order, and beauty, and justice in His good world. So the question for us is not if we will create… but what are we trying to create? What are we trying to build? Or better yet, what is the Living God wanting to build in, with, and through us?
 
What does all this have to do with Pentecost?
Well, at Pentecost we get to see what the Living God has been building up to all along.
 
Turning back to the story of the Tower of Babel, we see that God doesn’t simply allow humanity’s rebellious building project to go on unanswered, and so God steps in to keep things from getting out of hand. In an act of both judgment and mercy, the LORD confuses their language… their ability to understand one another… resulting in this once-united uprising being scattered throughout the world. Regardless of our plans, this story reminds us that God’s never going to give up on His plans… which is what the rest of Scripture is all about.
 
The very next story in the Bible after the tower of Babel is about God choosing to work with and build up the family of one human couple, Abraham and Sarah… and through their descendants, God would one day bless all of the scattered families of the earth.
 
Genesis 12:1-3, “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
 
God promises to make Abraham’s family great… and to make his name great. Not just for themselves, but so that through them, all the families of the earth will be blessed. The rebels tried to make a tower. God chooses to make a blessed and blessing community.
 
Of course, the story is far from simple. Abraham’s descendants keep on making the same mistakes… trying to build their own identity, and security, and story, instead of faithfully following God’s ways. And eventually, they end up cut off from one another by civil war, and then Jerusalem, the Holy City is conquered, and its people, the Jews, were scattered… by who? By the Babylonians… an Empire built in the land of Babel! God’s people end up right back where they started, and now it seems like everything that God had been building towards had come to a tragic and terrible end.
 
But the Good News is, God was not done with His world, or with His chosen people… and so He does something no one expected… and steps into the story in a brand new way.
 
While God’s people were facing the terrible realities of Exile, they had also been offered a word of hope: the prophets of God pointed forward to a time when God would send the Chosen One, the Messiah, to restart God’s good Kingdom on earth, return God’s scattered people, and finally set the world right.  
 
And the Good News is, the Messiah has come! Not as some great military or political leader, but as Jesus of Nazareth… God’s own divine Son, who took on our human existence. Who is Himself the eternal Word of God, who was then made flesh and dwelt among us… breaking down the great barriers and rebellious towers we had built up between ourselves and God, and between one another.
 
The towers of our guilt and sin… all the self-centered and self-destructive choices we keep on making. The towers of our fear and enmity… the prejudices, and divisions we keep on creating. The towers of our pride… insisting on living our own way, no matter the cost.
 
Jesus took all these on, and He tore them down when He died on the cross, and rose again. Now, instead of building our lives around trying to handle our own sin and guilt, Jesus made the way for us to truly receive forgiveness… and to extend it to others.
 
Instead of being trapped by our fears and enmity, Jesus made the way for us to be embraced by His saving love, and to begin living in peace.

Instead of lifting ourselves up in pride, Jesus made the way for us to walk humbly with the One who loves us graciously, and created us to reflect His goodness out into His world.
 
Jesus did all this, not by lifting Himself up, but by making Himself low. As St. Paul puts in in Philippians Chapter 2:
 
“If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.
 
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
 
The Good News is that, we don’t need to build any towers to raise ourselves up… because the Living God Himself can raise us up along with Jesus. He is the way that we can ascend. He is the source of our true unity. He is the One through whom God will reconcile the whole world to Himself, and make everything new.
 
And St. Paul’s point in this passage, is that God wants to make us like Jesus! He wants us to have our minds, and our hearts, and our lives remade by Him. He wants us to embrace Christ’s way, and share in the good work of His Kingdom. But how can we possibly do all this?
 
We humans… we Christians have so often, made such a mess of things. We too have kept on making all the same mistakes as those who have come before us. How can we… how can people like you and I actually become more like Jesus, and meaningfully share in His work in the world?
 
This is where we turn to Pentecost.
 
Right before His death, our Lord Jesus promised that His Father in heaven would soon send His disciples the Holy Spirit, filling them with His own Divine presence and power, so that they could share in His life, and to take part in the New Creation that the Living God was making possible.
 
John 14:25-26, “I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.”

The Spirit was being given to help Christ’s followers continue to share in His story. To bind us together, and to our Saviour. To work within us, to make us more and more like our Lord. And to empowers us to live Christ’s way in the world… working through us to do more than we could ever imagine doing on our own… to be God’s hands and feet as He lifts up and draws His shattered world back to Himself in love.
 
What does the Spirit build? Not a tower… not even an institution… but a new community. He builds the Church! A family made up of people from every corner of creation, in order to bring the blessed Good News of Jesus Christ to everyone!
 
And this is what we see happening in Acts Chapter 2: God’s Spirit creating the Church… the community of Jesus Christ here on earth, serving His good Kingdom.
 
Now there’s so much going on in this passage from Acts that will have to wait for another day. (If you’re wanting to dig a bit deeper, check out our St. Luke’s blog entry for today with some links to some more resources).

But a big part of what is going on at Pentecost is a reversal of what happened in Genesis 11: when God’s Holy Spirit is poured out on His people at Pentecost, He is undoing the divisions brought on at Babel, and is now re-uniting those who were once scattered around what God has done for the world in His Son, Jesus Christ… turning our whole story around, so we can share in His New Life together.
 
The Holy Spirit descends upon the disciples, with a rushing wind and flames of fire… and God’s own holy presence and power dwells among them… empowering them to speaking in languages they did not understand before… and to boldly to preach the Gospel… the Good News of Jesus the Risen Lord… first of all, to Jewish pilgrims… those whose ancestors have been scattered by the Babylonian Exile… telling them all of God’s mighty works through Jesus the Messiah, who was killed, and has been raised again to New Life.
 
This Good News invites them to repent… to turn around and believe what God has done for them in Jesus… and to be baptized into the New Creation God is making because of what Christ did at the cross.

And Pentecost itself is just the beginning! Thousands respond that first day to this Good News, and begin to form a community we now call the Church… the worldwide family of believers that God is building up… a re-created people shaped by the forgiveness, generous love, and humble, self-giving service we have seen in Jesus Christ… seeking to live His way through the power of His Spirit at work among us.
 
Beginning with Jesus Christ, and then His first disciples, this family grew… embracing once-scattered peoples first from Jerusalem, then to Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the world.
 
At Pentecost, we see how God is building His Church, uniting us by the Spirit to Jesus His Son, in order to draw His whole world back together, to Himself, and to one another. And now we are bound together with our brothers and sisters from every corner of creation… and every people and nation… united by the saving love of God, given to us through Jesus Christ, God’s Son, and empowered to share in His New Life even now, through His Holy Spirit.

This doesn’t mean that we Christians haven’t returned to building our own rebellious towers at times. We certainly have. The Church is not yet perfect, and it still has a long way to go.
 
But God’s Spirit is at work in us. And He can create something truly beautiful, and blessed through us… teaching us to live faithfully to Jesus Christ, and to share His goodness and love with all those around us.
 
The question for you and I today is this: How will we here in Gondola Point respond to the Good News of what God has done for us all in Jesus Christ?
 
Will we keep on building up our own towers? Trying to create our own sense of security, and purpose, and hope based on what we can create?
 
Or, with the Holy Spirit’s help, will we draw near to Jesus, our great Saviour King, and take up our part in the New Creation that He is building to bless everyone? Amen.


[1] “First Ministers’ statement on building a strong Canadian economy and advancing major projects”, June 2, 2025, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/statements/2025/06/02/first-ministers-statement-building-strong-canadian-economy-and-advancing-major-projects

 
[2] Ibid.
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