The story of the Tower of Babel continues the theology of sin that is found in Genesis 2 and 3, in the story of the Fall. Eve and Adam’s desire to seize for themselves a knowledge that properly belongs to God alone is at the heart of their fractured relationship with God. Similarly, here in Genesis 11, the people begin to build their tower so that they can get as near to heaven as possible, and grab a bit of fame and glory for themselves. ‘Let us make a name for ourselves,’ they decide.

But with this impulse to power also goes a nameless and ill-expressed fear. The people persuade themselves that without their tower, they will be ‘scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth’. As far as we, the readers, can see, there is absolutely no justification for this fear. Who is threatening them? What force will dissipate them? But their instinct is to build high and huddle together.

And, of course, as a result of their actions, the very thing that they had feared actually happens. They are indeed forced apart and scattered over the whole earth, because they can no longer understand each other or work together. The Lord, we are told, ‘confused their language’. Perhaps that way they might start to make a little more sense. Their earlier statements and actions might have had a kind of mad logic to them, but they were without any basis in truth. After Babel, they can at least no longer pretend that their system makes sense.

The Acts story of the day of Pentecost is a richly satisfying reversal of Babel. The scattered people of God come together; they had been used to being separated by language, but now God’s own words unite them. The messengers of God are people who know they are dependent upon God. The Holy Spirit comes upon Peter and the other apostles in a powerful and supernatural way, and they cannot even begin to pretend that this is their own doing. If the builders of the Tower of Babel are guilty of trying to be like God, the disciples are only too aware that they are nothing without God’s power.

Peter’s Pentecost speech sets out the great paradox of God’s power. Here are the apostles – simple men, not trained linguists – making themselves heard and understood to the great polyglot crowd. Peter reminds his hearers of the great Old Testament promises of the coming of God’s Spirit in power, and claims that this is what they are now witnessing. And in the verses that follow today’s reading, the paradox becomes even more pointed, as Peter goes on to connect the power of God with the crucified Jesus.

So today’s reading from Acts picks up a theme that is dear to St Paul’s heart, as well as much of the Gospels. Over and over again, God chooses as his messengers those who seem inadequate and wholly unsuited for their great task. That’s why the story of the Tower of Babel is so illuminating in this context, because it suggests that nothing divides people more quickly from God than a desire for power, and an arrogant determination to rely on themselves. Those who have no illusions about their own gifts might actually be the only ones who are prepared to turn to God and ask for help.

Perhaps that’s why Jesus tells his disciples in John’s Gospel that the world cannot receive the Spirit of truth (John 14:17). Perhaps the world is too obsessed with its own truth, its own crazily self-authenticating systems, to receive the Spirit whose job it is to unite us with the Father and the Son, to return us to our true dependence upon God.

Jesus does promise his followers a kind of power. Starting from Pentecost, Acts shows us the kind of great works that the disciples are able to do in the name of Jesus. But the point of this power from the Spirit is to point to the Son and, through the Son, to the Father. The Babel-builders wanted power for the sake of self-glorification and self-protection, and it cost them their unity and their ability to relate to each other. The power of God has nothing to do with self-protection and everything to do with restoring unity and communication, which is why the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost is so characteristic. It enables Peter and the apostles to communicate; it enables them to make connections, to see the common threads running throughout the history of God’s dealings with his people; and it makes them missionaries, longing to share a common life in God, the common life of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

--Williams, J. Lectionary Reflections: Year C.