Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. 4 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.” 5 The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. 6 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. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 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 11:1-9
My sermon from Pentecost (June 8, 2025) on Genesis 11:1-9.
******
So instead of focusing today’s sermon on the story of Pentecost itself – one of the primary Jewish religious festivals that is a little bit different here in the church – I wonder if the story of the so-called “tower of Babel” might reveal something about all those tongues of fire. Now I’ve heard Pentecost described as God fixing Babel – bringing together, in Christ, people who are often divided by culture and language. The community who once had the audacity to build a tower to challenge heaven itself is, through the Holy Spirit, united and given a different purpose. This unity, though, isn’t complete since talking to each other can still be difficult and hard. Diversity, then, is a problem to be solved but that phrase “the same words” might reveal how this interpretation actually misses the mark. Rabbi Shai Held, who is the president and dean of the Hadar Institute which helps people connect deeper with the Bible and their God, wrote a series of essays a few years ago about the different biblical stories that appear in the lectionary used by our Jewish friends and neighbors. He traced God’s story through the first five books of the Bible, inviting us to ask deeper questions about texts we assume we already know. It isn’t always easy giving the Bible permission to point out something we haven’t seen before. But when we focus more on the text itself rather than the tower overshadowing our imagination, what we assumed to be humanity’s punishment might actually be God’s plan all along.
And to see that, we begin by noticing how this reading from Genesis began with movement. A group of people – all people – went on a journey before stumbling onto an uninhabited plain. Who those people were, though, isn’t entirely clear. If we jump back a few pages, we run into a long genealogy of Noah’s family after they left the ark. This long list points to a world full of people – who built cities along the Mediterranean Sea and even created Egypt and the Assyrian empire itself. Yet when we get to Genesis 11, that distinctiveness is no longer there. What we get instead is a mass of humanity who are completely nameless. We don’t know who they’re related to. We’re not told who their ancestors were. All we get is a people who all speak the same language and only use the same words. That vagueness is a little difficult to sit with and we might assume any group speaking the same language already speaks the same words. Yet the Bible goes out of its way to say that this is what sets the people apart. A community who can easily communicate with one another feels like a united people. But I’ve watched enough Star Trek to know how the sameness of voice can lead to an environment where only one set of thoughts and one set of opinions is claimed to be holy and true. On one level, this sameness leads to an environment that feels extremely safe and completely comfortable since everyone looks and sounds like them. Scripture, though, tells us that these people felt anything but secure. We focus, I think, on the tower since it’s big and mighty, reminding us of the skyscrapers just across the Hudson River. But what they’re really doing is building a city. They speak with one voice and one set of words to create something that will give them a sense of purpose, identity, and maybe even a name. They are, however, the only people in this world. And there’s no one else but God who could marvel at what they were up to. So the people keep building; the people keep marking bricks; and the people keep trying to earn something they cannot seem to give themselves. This building, though, isn’t only to make them feel more important than they felt like before. We’re told they did this because they’re primarily afraid. These nameless people who build and work and stick together – are terrified of being scattered across the earth. They erect not only a tower high enough to possibly keep watch at all who are stirring below; they also give this city walls not to keep people out but to keep themselves in. The city gives them a sense of safety, comfort, and control. Yet it comes with an immense price. Their sameness strips away any uniqueness they could possibly have. And we know, based on our own experience of social media and our world, being anonymous and losing our identity does not always bring us peace. When we assume we can’t be known or that no one deserves to stand out, we fall into the trap of enforcing this anonymity through insults, bullying, and all kinds of physical harm. The nameless people chose to build a nameless city while staying away from a world they were too afraid to actually live in. And it wasn’t long before the only one who could notice them gave them all the attention they sought. But rather than marvel or celebrate or comfort give them a giant thumbs up, God scattered them – far and wide.
At first glance, God’s response does feel like a kind of punishment. Humanity was all together – until God pushed them apart. It’s important, however, to insert this text back into scripture to really see what God is up to. And when we do that, we discover the promise God gave them over and over again that they refused to live out. Way back in chapter 1, after God sang the world and the universe into being, God blessed the people – telling them “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” As time went on and God witnessed how wonderful – and awful – we can be to one another, God hit a reset button through the flood. When the waters receded, and the dove returned with an olive branch before finding a new home to build a nest, God blessed Noah and his descendants by telling him, once again, to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” But when humanity was given the opportunity to do exactly that – the people hunkered down, built a city, and refused to let themselves, or anyone else, go out. What the people feared was one of the things God wanted for them the most. And so when humanity refused to move, God stepped in to show what our future is meant to be about. The fact humanity is full of all different kinds of people speaking all kinds of languages is not, I think, a punishment from God. It is, instead, a vision of what God’s kingdom should be about. God knows that our diversity will always be a strength since it forces us to do the hard work of living into the fullness of a name we’ve already been. And that’s because when God’s imagination stirred us into being, the name we were given was deeply connected to God’s own since we were made in the image of God. It’s an image known not for its sameness but for the ways it is like a kaleidoscope – reflecting the holy light at the heart of it all. The beauty of our world; the complicated and rich variety of what it means to be a human being; and the opportunity to live with our God in the entirety of what God has made isn’t something we’re supposed to wall ourselves away from. Rather we get to do the hard work of learning who we are and, through the relationships we intentionally built, discover how our neighbors are too. And while this work can be difficult since it requires us to admit that our story isn’t the only story that matters or has value – it’s through this God given diversity where we realize how much God loves you. And that’s because when the disciples generations later, after bearing witness to the length God was willing to go through to reveal the future God was already building for you and for the world; this God gathered people in a different kind of city full of pilgrims and visitors, migrants and strangers, those who had lived there their entire lives and those who were at the very start of making that named city – that city of Jerusalem – their home; the gift God gave them wasn’t one language that everyone could suddenly speak and understand. Instead, the words they heard proclaiming they matter, they belong, and how Jesus lived, died, and rose for them – were in the multitude of words their parents and their loved ones uttered over them when they were first named; when they were first held in someone’s arms; and when they finally knew what being loved was all about.
Amen.