"Babble On!"

A sermon preached by the Rev. Deana Frances Dudley

at Christos Metropolitan Community Church, Toronto, ON

on Sunday, September 14, 2003

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.’ God came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And God 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 God 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 God confused the language of all the earth; and from there God scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. Genesis 11:1-9

I read a lot of science fiction, and one of my favourite authors is a guy named Spider Robinson. And Spider Robinson had something to say about the nature of God. He says that "God is an Iron." See, if a person who commits a felony is a felon, and a person who commits gluttony is a glutton, then God must be an iron. And in a magnificent display of divine irony, I read a story in the news last week. It seems that the United States Army in Iraq turned over a large portion of Central Iraq to the control of a multi-national force of soldiers from more than 20 different nations, led by the Polish Army. (This is not a Polish joke.)

It includes folks from Hungary to Honduras, and from Spain to the Ukraine. More than 20 different countries, and over a dozen languages. The news story said that the Polish officers "acknowledge that communication is a potential problem." No kidding! The story says that "The ceremony gave a taste of the difficulties. The Iraqi governor of Babil province gave a speech in Arabic, which was followed by a translation -- into Polish only. U.S. troops applauded politely although they had absolutely no idea what had been said."

It gets better. In the truly ironic part, the ceremony handing over control of this area was held in an ancient amphitheatre of dusty, pale yellow brick, at the site of ancient Babylon, near the place archeologists believe to be the location of ruins that may have been regarded in ancient times as.... the tower of Babel. God is indeed an iron.

And God has given us a terrific lesson, in this story about the Tower of Babel. First of all, this is a story about technology. About the use of knowledge, and the limits of knowledge. In the time of Babel, technology had developed to the point where human beings did what human beings USUALLY do with technology. We use it to remove or ease some of the difficult aspects of living. In recent centuries, we’ve invented automobiles and airplanes to get from place to place. We’ve invented so called "labor saving devices" like vacuum cleaners and washing machines to make our households run more efficiently. At least, I’m told they do if you USE them. I still have trouble getting the vacuum cleaner and the mower started at times.

But back then, the new high technology was sun baked bricks and bitumen. See, building a building in Mesopotamia wasn’t easy. The area lacks the kind of limestone deposits the Egyptians used for their pyramids, and the people of Israel used to build their monuments and buildings. And there’s not much available wood. It’s mostly palm, not good for construction, so the people used what they had in abundance: mud and straw. They built things from crude bricks made by mixing chopped straw with clay and pouring the results into molds. And after the bricks were allowed to bake in the sun they were joined in construction by using bitumen, which is a slimey, tar-like stuff.

That was their high-tech, and they used it to ease one of the difficult aspects of THEIR lives. See, they were nomadic people. The scripture says that they had one language, but they were constantly on the move, and they had a goal. And that goal was to settle down and build a great city and a great tower with their technology.

Why? Why did they want a skyscraper? Why does anyone want a skyscraper? It wasn’t just for the view of the desert. It was to be on top of the world. They thought they could reach the heavens. The people of Babel imagined a universe where heaven was just above the sky, just out of their reach, and they thought they could get there through technology. Are we anything like them? Have we built a few skyscrapers? This week, on the anniversary of September 11, I was reminded once again, in case I had forgotten, in case I could EVER forget, that you can’t get to heaven that way. I’m not going to find heaven with technology. It’s not just above the 101^st floor. It’s not out past the moon and the stars. It’s not buried somewhere in the hard drive on my computer. I don’t have to keep pushing back the curtains of heaven with my technology to see the spiritual realm. Because it’s right here, all around me. More on that later.

Second, the story of Babel is a story about pride. The people who set out to build a city wanted to make a name. Not for their God, but for themselves. They wanted some recognition. They wanted to be the IBM or the Microsoft of their day. They wanted to leave something behind, to leave a legacy to mark their time on earth. And again, are we anything like them? Because we are dust and to dust we shall return, we often want to leave a mark on the world. I thought about using our dogs, Jake and Kitty for an analogy on making marks here, but I decided against it. But I’ll tell you that if I HAD gone there, I would have told you that the marks that the people of Babel left on the world, the legacy that our politicians want to leave, all the monuments that we leave behind to mark our presence here and make a name for ourselves.... are no more lasting than Jake and Kitty’s They don’t last.... they’re dust.

I have to tell you that I’m told that after a sermon on the idea that we are dust and to dust we shall return, a little boy went to his minister and said, "Is that really true that we come from dust and return to dust?"  The minister said, "Yes, it's true." The boy thought for a minute and said, "You know, that kind of scares me."  The minister said, "Scares you? Why?" And the little boy said, "Well, that means that somebody's either coming or going under my bed." Like I said about the newfangled vacuum cleaner technology... It only works if you work it.

And third, most of all, the story of Babel is a story about security. What the people of Babel feared most, was that they would be conquered and taken away. See, otherwise, they said, "we’ll be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." That’s what they feared. So to prevent that happening, they built a city and a wall and a tower. They could have great walls, they could gather an army inside those walls, they could insure their future against the powers that would scatter them. And being one people with one common language, they could use their unity to enhance their security. And what happened?

Well, the story tells us that the people of Babel failed to consider one thing. God....... Ooops. Now, it’s not that God was threatened by their tower. You know, and I know, and God certainly knows, that there was no real danger of their storming heaven with that tower. Just like there’s no danger that our technology, in and of itself, will necessarily bring us any closer to God. The tower of Babel was a monument to material technology and human pride. The new technology of the baked brick. And technology and materialism are STILL some of the gods of our time, and we see in this passage a reminder that the values of materialism and technology are always temporary. They fail even when the tower looks magnificent.

So what happened? Well, the story says that God confused their language, gave them the unasked-for but wonderful GIFT lots of NEW languages, and scattered them abroad. The thing they feared came to pass, in spite of all their new-fangled brick technology, and their quest for immortality. It turned out that what they most feared, was part of God’s plan for them.

I read an interesting thing on fear the other day. It was in Jim Coyle’s column in the Toronto Star on Saturday. He was writing about some of the fearmongering in the attack ads for the upcoming elections, and what he said was that fear is, one of the most powerful of human emotions. Healthy fear is also one of the most useful. It alerts us to danger, aids in our survival. In excess or wrongly aimed, however, it can be corrupting, deforming, paralyzing. And a huge waste of time and energy. Sages have long understood this. Christ himself, though you'd sometimes hardly guess, seems to have spent less time warning against sin (or even same-sex marriage) than he did warning against fear."

And what’s the first thing God’s messengers, God’s angels always say? "Fear not." ‘Cause look where it gets you in the end. What the people of Babel feared most, Was apparently part of God’s plan for them.

Why do you suppose God scattered them abroad upon the face of the whole earth? Well, I have a hunch.  And I think it had to do with the foundations of their tower. Now part of that foundation was the technology. Archeologists have found ruins in the ancient city of Babylon, of the foundations of a mud-brick tower. It’s 300 feet on a side, about the length of a soccer field. It must have been massive once. But that’s not the only foundation the people of Babel had. Remember back at the beginning of the passage that Judi read, it said that the people had one language. They had a kind of unity. They relied on their ability to communicate with one another in one language, unlike that group of soldiers in the news story that caught my eye last week.

But you know, speaking the same language doesn’t guarantee real unity. It doesn’t even guarantee real communication. Anybody who’s ever been in a relationship, I suspect can attest to that. Simply speaking the same language isn’t enough. Case in point.

When I was 17, I went to France, and when I was in Paris, I needed to get to a train station. So, I stopped a friendly looking lady on the street, and said in my very best high school French, "Ou est la Gare St. Lazare?" Where is the train station? And she was kind enough to give me detailed directions, so I promptly set off on the route she had suggested. I got about a block before I realized that, although I had asked for directions in French, for some reason she had answered me in English. Somehow she knew I didn’t really speak much French. And it’s a good thing, too, because if she had answered me in French, I wouldn’t have understood a word she said. I’d still be looking for the Gare St. Lazare.

So what the people of Babel had, in their common language, was a false sense of unity. See, authentic human existence, abundant life, real relationships, depend on real communication. You can usually measure the quality of the relationship by the communication. It's not just a language barrier. The universal language is love.

And the clear warning of this text is the danger of constructing human existence on a false foundation.  Do any of you know that poem by William Butler Yeats, called "The Second Coming"? Yeats says "Things fall apart; the centre will not hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." The people of Babel, fell into the trap, as we so often do, of constructing their buildings and their lives around a centre that will not hold, a centre that is comprised of only human ambition and effort without God. We live, especially in the Western world and in North America, in a world of individualism and consumerism and cultural pragmatism that says we can accomplish anything that needs to be accomplished. So, why bother with the purposes of God in the world, or, indeed, why bother with God at all?

Yet, this passage in Genesis text challenges that worldview. As capable as we think we are or can become, in defining our own existence, this text reminds us that human effort apart from God will finally end in confusion, alienation, and disruption. It asserts that people who neglect God as the center of unity will eventually see their grand schemes abandoned and wander off in their own paths, speaking only to themselves. The only avenue into authentic human existence, into the abundant life that God calls us to, is through the unity of human beings as we respond to a call of God to leave the barrenness of a world defined by ourselves, and enter a world of possibility that is defined by the universal language of God’s love.

The people of Babel were scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth, I think, because God was trying to tell them that their foundation was not there in Babel. Just like our foundation is not only here, but is everywhere God is. Our gospel lesson tonight affirms what our foundation is, as Christians. The life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And as God scattered the people of Babel, so we are sent out by Jesus to witness to the Good News of THAT in EVERY language, and in ONE language, the language of love.