May 30, 2004 - Pentecost Sunday
Acts 2:1-21
    NRSV KJV CEV
John 14:8-17, 25-27
    NRSV KJV CEV

Breaking the Code
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Pentecost Sunday – May 30, 2004
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: Acts 2:1-21/John 14:8-17, 25-27]

Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native languages?”

Codes have provided the focal point for countless books, plays and films. Two of the more controversial books are John Gray’s Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code. Gray’s book seeks to break the code that seems to be genetically programmed into men and woman. You know the one I mean, the code that allows us to speak the same language – often identical words – and still not understand what the other has said. Brown’s book offers a fictional account of an attempt to crack the supposed code surrounding the Holy Grail and thus the true message of Jesus, along with his relationship to Mary Magdalene. Both of these books have kept folks talking and sold millions of copies. And, let me be quick to add, that both of these books are based on somewhat questionable scholarship – the latter especially so. Though I will give Brown more credit for ‘facts’ than the so-called ‘Bible code’ that was popular sometime back. I mean at least Brown is correct when he says that the Vatican is in Rome and the Louvre in Paris.

Codes are popular because they fascinate, delight, intrigue, perplex and frustrate us. They are an inevitable outcome of our ability to use language because, as the rhetorical scholar Kenneth Burke once said, “Man is the language using animal.” So we can say that language is a code and, indeed, society is a code. Breaking the code, coming to understanding, is the key to success in relationships. This certainly seems to be the point that Gray wanted to make in his book. However, once we learned to communicate we had to discover a way to keep others from knowing what we knew or said; or we needed to keep what we had said just within a certain select group. In other words, once we’d broken the code we had to make a new one.

This latter use has certainly been a part of politics, diplomacy, and warfare. Memorial Day and the celebration of the dedication of the new memorial for World War II veterans reminded me of a celebrated code breaking – the Enigma machine. There are quite a few websites devoted to Enigma, even one that allows you see how it functioned. In short, this was an encryption engine developed in Germany that used a process of randomization. The code was actually broken by a group of Polish mathematicians at the University of Pozen in 1934. They shared copies of the machine and the knowledge they had with their allies, which is how the British first came into possession of it. British Intelligence working at Bletchley Park with the ‘father of computing,’ Alan Truring continued to crack the code, even as the Nazis altered it. Cracking that code made a great difference in the progress of the European theatre of war. I’m sure there are stories of the Pacific as well – like the Navajo ‘code talkers,’ who simply spoke Navajo.

The other side of encoding is the idea of ‘special’ or restricted knowledge. “Knowledge is power,” so the old saying goes and many a guild and secret society swears its members to secrecy, as do many industries. I mean, do any of us know the formula for Coca Cola? It’s this kind of knowledge that Brown alludes to in his book. To some extent we see the same sort of argument in the writings of Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrman, though with a much firmer and far more reputable scholarly basis. Both Professors Pagels and Ehrman have produced recent noteworthy books that present some fascinating scholarship on early Christianity, its composition and diversity.
I suppose some would find it odd that I would talk about code in relation to religion, especially given the rather scathing assessment I made of The DaVinci Code several months ago. Yet, when you consider that human society and language are forms of code, means of communication and understanding, one has to address what this means for religious expression.

Our Christian faith expresses itself in words, symbols, ritual actions, and even in gestures. All of these can be seen as a form of code. The Dutch theologian Johannes Vanderven even describes the various religious signs – like Word and Sacrament – and speaks about them as the church’s code. Indeed, part of becoming a church member is knowing the code, understanding the language and the practices of a particular faith community. Those of us who have come from other faith communities into the Congregational Way know that, while there are many commonalities with other Christian Churches, there is a distinctive set of codes unique to Congregationalism and to First Church in Wauwatosa. Coming to know the codes makes one a part of the group and gives a certain sense of belonging and comfort.

My recent visit to Japan, believe it or not, brought this reality home to me, at least from a language standpoint. Most everywhere I’ve been privileged to travel I have been able to work through a bit of the language; it’s especially easy in countries populated with English speakers. In Kyoto I encountered very few folks who spoke English or, who at least spoke English well enough to be comfortable in trying to speak. I managed to communicate through sign language – the restaurants with the plastic food in display cases were great – and even by pointing to the Japanese characters in my phrase book. I experienced something of Japan, but I was far from breaking the code to enter into their culture as I have been able to elsewhere. I distinctly felt I was a gaijin, an outsider, because I was.

I meander though these thoughts on code and language because one of the hallmarks of Pentecost is the reversal of the effects of Babel. Remember that story in the Hebrew scripture? Here’s the condensed version of the story: the decided they would build a tower up to God and God confused the languages of the peoples in response to their arrogance. The coming of the promised Advocate, the Holy Spirit, gathers in those of the Diaspora and solidifies that new giving of the law of love through the Christ. It is the overcoming of Babel and a new experience of Sinai all rolled into one, which is especially appropriate given the emphasis of the Jewish feast of Pentecost on the reception of the Torah.

Each of those folks in Jerusalem heard the message in the appropriate native language. I’m not sure if this is the glossalalia, the ecstatic utterance, practiced by folks in the Pentecostal Church traditions. I don’t think the effect is the point here. Rather, it is that something has happened that has brought disparate people into an experience of oneness. The real even here, as Biblical scholar Daniel Harrington points out, is not the side-effects but the empowerment of the disciples. Not many hours before, they had been cowering in a locked room. Now they stand up and declare their faith with an unheard of boldness to any and all who will take the time to listen. They opened themselves so that God’s Spirit could communicate through them – breaking the code of human separateness and alienation.

The Pentecost event is the birthday of the church and sets the stage for the spread of the Christian message. For some reason we celebrate it, but we don’t get it. In the Christ, through the Spirit, God crakes the code to self-fulfillment, to human longing, to loving relationship, and shares the information. How do we respond? We try to re-encrypt it and make sure that only the initiate have it down and we set about this early-on. One of the things the early church had was the disciplina arcana, the discipline of the secret. This was the moment when the catechumen, the one preparing for baptism, received the core teachings of the Christian faith.

You see, we have developed a whole subset of language that even varies from church to church. A basic term like ‘salvation’ or ‘grace’ means something different depending on which faith community you’re in. And what about people who have grown up without any experience of church or church language – how do they crack the code? So-called “seeker friendly churches” try to do that, but from what I can see they just develop an alternate code and I’m not sure what the point is to that. I don’t think that this kind of encryption exercise was what Jesus promised the disciples when he said that the Holy Spirit “will teach you everything.” If the work of Pagels and Ehrman and others helps us to realize and recapture the immediacy, the beauty, and the experiential nature of Christian faith they have done us a good turn.

Jesus tells the disciples of the Spirit, “You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.” This is the immediacy, the experience I’m talking about – God is with us! God is IN US! What we need to do is to realize, appreciate, marvel at and then live out of that reality: GOD WITH US! However, most of us, like Philip, end up asking to see the Father – that will be enough – and miss the point that the Divine already dwells within us. It reminds me of the story I heard about a couple who had spared no expense, and brooked no interference, to build a house with an unimpaired view of the mountains. Some friends came to visit and were enraptured by the view of a spectacular sunset. They stood, rapt, on the porch, drinking every bit of it in. Their hosts came out and asked them, “What are you doing?” They responded, “Just watching the sunset – you must just love it!” The host couple looked at each other and said, “We’ve never done that.” Why? Because they were moving on to the next big thing they needed to accomplish.

So many of us are like that couple. We’re busy about many things. We’re looking to break the code to relationship. We’re looking for the key to happiness, or self-fulfillment. We’re studying all of the codes to lead us to success, maybe even building our own version of the Enigma machine to help us along and we’re missing the point. The code is already broken and the key is within us. What we have to do is to open ourselves to the presence and live toward the peace that Jesus left for us. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” This shalom, irene, is beyond the mere absence of conflict, this is the presence of God and it is already within you.
Look within. Look around you. Jesus says to us what he said to Philip, “Have I been with you all this time and still you do not know me?” Can you imagine a fish looking for the ocean? Well, it’s like that; God is the water we swim in, but we can’t see it, so we look around, frantically, elsewhere, when God is all around us. Stop. Look within. Look around. Realize that God is with you. God is with us. Of all the messages of the church needs to proclaim, I mean all of us when I say that, it’s this: the code is broken. God is with us. God is within us. We can know peace if we open ourselves to God’s transforming power.

Several months ago I looked at The DaVinci Code and concluded that the reason why Robert Langdon, the hero, keeps the secret of the Holy Grail to himself is because it doesn’t matter. Ultimately, what he discovered would change nothing of the Christian faith. Oh, I’ll give Brown credit for writing a decent ‘pot-boiler’ and using a clever plot device, codes and conspiracies always are. But, what we’ve just heard, and sung, and prayed is more than a mere plot device. It’s an invitation to a living relationship with the living God and that, my dears, isn’t fiction.

The code is broken – the key is love. God wants us to live and to love as God does – toward others, in self-giving service and in peace. The secret is out – take it into yourself and then share it, give it away. God is with us. God is within us. Right here. Right now. Thanks be to God! Amen.