Reflections on "Speaking the Same Language" Genesis 11: 1-9; Acts 15: 1-11

Another sermon I enjoyed preparing and preaching.  I think I'm going to like this preaching series on OT stories (since I picked it, I guess I should!).

I confess that I began the sermon preparation headed toward the idea that God gave multiple languages and scattered the people so that they would not build the tower and get to heaven -- sort of a "the people want to be god" approach.  That, I think, is often the interpretation that we hear.  I was convinced in my study that the approach I used in the sermon is more accurate to the text.  At one point, I admit to thinking, "Richard, why is it that you always seem to find the 'alternate' interpretation that goes against the mainstream thought?"  But, then I ran across some study notes from John Wesley (founder of Methodism) from several hundred years ago, and he was noting the emphasis on "scatter" in the text as well (I use www.textweek.com for different study tools, including historic interpretations of a text).  Apparently, the insights I borught to the sermon are not that recent!

An interesting area that I did not get to in the text.  Some scholars look at this story as an etiology -- that is, a story that is told to explain what the people recognize in the world around them.  In other words, as God's people try to explain the world around them -- in this case, multiple languages and people all over the world in light of things starting out with Adam and Eve -- they tell the story that shows how God caused it to happen.  I find that an interesting approach because many of the stories about God seem to answer the great questions that people might have asked such as how did the world come into being? who is God? how are there so many different cultures?  That approach assumes that the biblical story is more story than literal description of what happened.  

Just this morning I read an article that discussed the need for the church to provide an alternative script to the script the world gives us.  I found the story fo the Tower of Babel to be very counter-cultural because it challenges the very core values that we seem to have as a society -- that is, the desire to build our own thing, control our own world around us, and see our task as creating a permanent place in the world that will last for generations.  The God who "scatters" seems to defy that script.  As I considered my own life and the things I have and way I approach life, I decided that I probably do not want to dwell to much on how the God who "scatters" might be calling me to live my life.  It's hard to give up the "towers" in my life. 

“Speaking the Same Language” January 10, 2014; Genesis 11: 1-9; Acts 15: 1-11; OT Stories series; FPC, Troy;

Introduction: The story of the Tower of Babel is the first of several Old Testament stories we are going to be reflecting on between now and the beginning of Lent. 

Obviously, there are more OT stories than weeks, so I am picking a few of the somewhat well-known stories, or at least stories that should be well-known to us, that also offer important insights about God (or truth be told, stories that I find interesting and want to share – if you have any OT stories you would like to hear, let me know!).

Move 1:  The story of the Tower of Babel is rather straight-forward, or at least at first glance.

a.      The flood and the near annihilation of the God’s people along with all the earth is a distant memory.

1.      In fact, things are going really well with God’s people.

2.      God’s people are united as signified by their speaking one language.

3.      They are satisfied with where they are as signified by their wanting to build something permanent like a tower.

4.      They are working well together as signified by their joining together to build a tower.

b.      We recognize this instinct to build and to go higher.

1.      Give kids some building blocks or Legos, and what do they do? 

2.      They stack them.

3.      See how high they can build the structure before it falls over or is knocked over by someone else, probably an older sibling.

c.       God’s people do not just build any tower, but a great tower that will climb up to the clouds and beyond. 

1.      a tower that will reach to the heavens.

2.      A tower that signifies their capabilities and their permanence.

3.      A testimony to all that they can do in that place.

d.      Easy story to comprehend until we discover God’s response.

1.      God does not want them to build the tower.

2.      In fact, God puts impediments in their way keep them from building the tower.

3.      God gives them multiple languages so that cannot understand each other to work together.

4.      And God scatters them

5.       Why?  Well, that’s when the story gets a little more complicated.

Move 2:  Clash between the human desire to stay in one place and the human fear of extending themselves and God’s desire to “scatter” God’s people over all the earth.

a.      We recognize this collision of human desire and God’s desire when we look at how the text is laid out for us.

1.      Passage is very symmetrical.

2.      First four verses describe what humans want to do – they want to build a tower.

3.      Fifth verse is a connecting verse that brings God into the story.

4.      Last four verses describe what God desires to happen – scatter the people and end the building of the tower.

5.      Bottom line – God’s desire carries the day.  The tower will not be built.

b.  Let’s look a bit closer at the human desire to build a tower.

1.       Some English translations of the story suggest that God does not want them to build the tower because God sees it as a prideful attempt to reach the heavens.

2.       But I believe, along with other scholars,  that careful attention to the text suggests another reason for building the temple – humans want to stay put.

3.      They are satisfied with where they are and do not want to change.

4.      they would prefer to ignore the God who might send them to other places or expect them to change.

                                    5. We hear this desire in vs. 4 (As Eugene Peterson translates the story in The Messenger, the text tells us that the people say “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower that reaches Heaven. Let’s make ourselves famous so we won’t be scattered here and there across the Earth.”

6.  If they build a great tower, if they really put down their roots really deep, maybe they will be immune to what God desires.

6.      The tower was their security.  Their statement that they are satisfied and settled.

7.      Maybe you recognize yourself in the desire of God’s people.

8.      We collect things and build our homes.

9.      WE cling to what we know and crave permanence and structure of our choosing.

10. As if we can somehow control the world around us.

c.  But the human desire comes in conflict with God’s desire for them to scatter.

 

            1. Notice the repetition of the word “scatter,” in the story.

2.  First, the people think that if they build a tower it will keep them from being scattered.

3. then if vss. 9-9 we are told again that God scatters them.

b.  Not a new idea.

1.  when God makes a covenant with Noah after the flood in the previous story in Genesis, we are told that God’s covenant is with all flesh.  Not just the ones who will gather to build a tower.

2.      Nor does this desire of God’s go away.

3. Christ’s actions continually push his followers to new places and expands the audience to new people.

                        3.  We remember that just before Jesus ascends he gathers his disciples and gives them the great commission –“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…”

4. Pentecost story – another story that plays on the gift of languages;  as the story goes the followers of Christ are equipped with all the languages of the world so that they can go and share the good news with everyone.

5.  When we sing the Christmas carol "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" after the sermon, listen for how it describes the message of the angels that overcomes the "sounds of Babel."  In other words, the good news of Christ's birth that the angels proclaim transcends the many languages on earth.

c. Reveals God's desire to be in relationship with all the people of the world.

1.      the human tendency is to close ranks, to be easily satisfied with where we are, to keep things to ourselves.

2.      this tendency that is highlighted by the desire to build a great tower, is challenged by the God who pushes us into the world.

3.      This tendency leads us away from the God who sends us into the world to share God’s love with all the world. In other words, the God who scatters.

                       

Move 3:  What does it mean to be people whom God “scatters?”

a.      In part, it means we are faced with the difficult challenge of sharing God’s love.

1.              Marj Carpenter:  A Jr. High Sunday School teacher in Oregon asked, “Does going to Sunday School and church make it easier for you to love all people?”  One student answered, “Not particularly.  You want us to love everybody in the world. There are only five in our family, and I have a real hard time even loving that many.”

2. Expanding beyond Babel means extending ourselves and finding the capacity to share God’s love beyond our own little niches in the world that we have created.

b.      There has been quite a bit shared about about Nelson Mandela recently in response to this death.

1.              Christian Century, January 8, 2014 (10-11) Peter Storey, former president of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa and of the South African Council of Churches; obit of Nelson Mandela;

2.               described Mandela as the master of “ubuntu – the awareness that his life was inextricably bound up with the lives of all his fellow man beings, including his enemies…. nothing was too much if we could cajole or charm an opponent into a friendship.”

“this was a man who would not bend an inch in his determination to win freedom for his people, nor bow to the cruelty of his prison guards, yet who said to his comrades as soon as they arrived on the island, ‘Chaps, these Afrikaners may be brutal, but they are human beings.  We need to understand them and touch the human being inside them, and win them.”

3.              He called Mandela  “The Great Includer”

4. Passage from Acts describes the early church's debate over what rules would be required to be followed by new Christians who did not come out of the Jewish tradition.  Ultimately they decided that the desire to spread the Gospel was more important than the enforcing of rules.

4.              Our calling by God is to include, not build towers for ourselves.

Conclusion: The Gospel of John opens with this description of God:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

We are on notice – language is a lens through which we can see and understand God.

Even as we tell the story of the Tower of Babel and the infusion of multiple languages, we proclaim the God who calls the same language – not English, or German, or Mandarin, or Farsi;

But the language of sharing God’s love in all the world.

*** As I always do when I preach on a text from Genesis, I have consulted Walter Brueggemann's commentary on Genesis (Genesis, from the Interpretation commentary series, pp. 97-104).  This is the best work on Genesis that I have found.