It was thousands of years ago that the Cushites built the Tower of Babel, but they were not alone.
It was 700 years before the birth of Christ that Great Wall of China was begun. The last construction of the 6,000-kilometer fortification was completed in the Ming dynasty by 1644. The London Tower was begun in 1078 and over the next 321 years was completed. It was on August 13th, 1961 that the Berlin Wall was built. In order to keep refugees from leaving East Berlin, the wall was to divide and separate East and West Berlin. The barrier in Jerusalem and on the West Bank was begun in 2004 and has been adapted, expanded, and reinforced since. Shadows and insinuations of a wall between America and Mexico started in the public discourse with the 2016 election cycle.
As the anxiety rises, the walls, towers, and fortress increase. From thousands of years ago toward today, bricks laid upon bricks, concrete upon concrete, piece by piece, they sought to make a name for themselves. A desire for fame and security. Their anxiety drove their decisions.
Can you imagine a time in which the known world was united in language and words? Can you imagine that the known world was familiar and even, conceited with itself? Cocky with strident uniformity. The known world imagined that all exactly the same was desirable and necessary. Differences were not tolerated, and diversity was anathema. Unity was uniformity.
In this world, the people of Cush began to fashion a tower. Why, you might ask? Verse 4 includes the great phrase that the people wanted to make a name for themselves. Midrash, which seeks to suggest possible answers where questions lie in the text, includes lots of possible understanding for that. Many have understood the building of the tower to be hubris. The people depended less on God, and more on their own selves. Some have understood that making a name for themselves, necessarily took them from God’s name. And perhaps, most humorously, the people wanted to know if God had a big toe?
With one language, the Cushites had incredible power. Language is powerful. Those of us who name things have the power to how it is understood. In choosing one language, all other languages were denied. The powerful build up towers of expectations, they lend power and prestige to their towers in order to outshine the others and bring all under their control. The people lived in a fortress mentality. Let’s see if this is familiar to anyone?
We live in a fortress mentality when:
We can only be safe when we know and understand all.
We can only be comfortable when we have full knowledge of the grounds and the people.
We need to wait behind walls to encounter others.
Our security is more important than the basic rights of others.
The fortress mentality is based on our anxiety and need for control. Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr suggests that anxiety as the true source of our sin. “[Humanity] being both free and bound, both limited and limitless is anxious. Anxiety is the inevitable concomitant of the paradox of freedom and finiteness in which [we are] involved. Anxiety is the internal precondition of sin”.1
In our anxiety, we forget ourselves as one of many. We place our needs and comforts above others. We lose track of the wider world. Our known world becomes smaller and smaller, until we are only living the in the fortress we have built, condemning all who live outside of our fortress tower.
The tower of Babel fell shortly after its construction. God’s two actions are seeing and acting. God’s actions do not oppose humanity, but rather seek to gather humanity. This is not God acting as a bully to known down the tower of an uppity little kid.
We have often interpreted this passage in the context of punishment, but the tower of Babel is about liberation and restoration. In the Global South, the Tower of Babel is read as passage of liberation.2 Those who sought to limit the people to one language, one way, one understanding, were foiled in their plans. God’s liberation is for all those who understand that there is not just one language, there is not just one communication connection with God.
Implied in the story is not a conflict of power between God and humanity, but among human beings. It is not about God as a bully and a small helpless child. But rather the passage is between parents and children, between haves and have nots, between one language and another, between oppressors and oppressed. Babel is our first world-edness, our individualism, when we place our understandings above those of others, because they are ours. Language is only the tip of how we experience and promulgate that understanding.
The antidote to Babel is Pentecost. Where is the Holy Spirit is with all of us – educated and uneducated, the articulate and daft, the committed and apathetic, the fundamentalist and open-ended. For a while after Pentecost, the early church lived out that world. The way of God spread into all of the known world, not just the Jewish world, but the Greeks and Romans, and beyond. All languages being used for God’s gory. In God’s wisdom, the hubris of humanity in Babel is language – the nearness of God in Pentecost is language. God is always a God of redemption.
But the pull of Babel is our pull. The anxiety level rises and we cling to our control. People desire uniformity and God desires diversity. This was God’s aspiration after the flood, that as we go forth and multiply, subduing the earth, that we might full reflect the diversity of God. The unity that God desires is from the Noahide covenant that all peoples are in relationship with God, not that there is focus and uniformity in homogeneity. Some days we live more as Children of Babel. We get frustrated and anxious about the world around us and want to live in uniformity. We want everyone to be like us.
But God calls us to live as Children of Pentecost. In which our diversity is not our downfall, but is the conduit through which the Spirit can reach all people. In which we hear the familiar words of John 14, often read at funerals to remind us of these eternal promises: “peace I leave you. My peace I give you.“ Peace in our anxiety. Peace in diversity. Peace in God’s creativity. Peace as we draw nearer to God, knowing that our drawing nearer to God is not exclusive of others, but instead invites others to know God more.
The Berlin Wall was torn down on November 9, 1989. During President Obama’s June 2013 visit, he noted neither he nor German Chancellor Angela Merkel looked like their predecessors. “The fact that we can stand here today, along the fault line where a city was divided, speaks to an eternal truth: No wall can stand against the yearning of justice, the yearnings for freedom, the yearnings for peace that burns in the human heart.” This eternal truth is God’s peace.
If you find yourself building towers, living in a fortress, you might have moments of feeling like a big bully is coming along and knocking down your tower and exposing you. Prayerfully consider that the God of all creation from duck-billed platypuses to engineering ants, invites you to draw nearer, not by building a tower for one higher and higher in the sky, but in drawing nearer to God by loving God’s world, diversity and all.
This is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, thanks be to God, Amen.
1Niebuhr, Reinhold, Nature and Destiny of Man, 1943.
2“Genesis 11:1-9” in Return to Babel: Global Perspectives on the Bible edited by John R. Levison and Priscilla Pope-Levison, 13-36.
Old Testament Lesson: Genesis 11: 1-9
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, ‘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.’ The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the Lord said, ‘Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.’ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.
Gospel Lesson: John 14: 8-14, 23-28
Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.
Jesus answered him, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.
‘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. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, “I am going away, and I am coming to you.” If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.
Meditations For Your Week
Sunday, July 23~ Saturday, July 30
Sunday: “And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.” Genesis 11:3. The ingenuity of humanity reflects the creativity of God. Where is God gifting you with ingenuity?
Monday: “Then they said, ‘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.’” Genesis 11:4. When we need to make a name for ourselves, when we live in fear, we forget God’s ways. Today, pause to ask God to show you where you need to be reminded of God doing the building, not you.
Tuesday: “And the Lord said, ‘Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.” Genesis 11:6. Where is God encouraging you to depend more on God today?
Wednesday: “Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.” Genesis 11:9. We, a scattered people, are diverse. Give thanks to God for the wideness of God’s creativity.
Thursday: “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.” John 14: 11. Belief is a gift. Receive the gift of faith. Seek God’s gifts.
Friday: “If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” John 14:14. You have not, because you ask not. What do you need to ask God for?
Saturday: “Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.” John 14: 28. As you seek to draw near to God, seek to keep true to the word of God and live out God’s way.