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BABEL AND PENTECOST
I would guess by now that most folks here at Westminster know that Pat and I have two sons, Timothy, who with his wife and two sons live in Seattle, and James, who with his wife and a son and daughter live in Poissy, just outside of Paris, France. Jim's son Ben, who is now 12, speaks English, which is spoken at home, German, because they lived in Munich for five years, Bavarian, because Munich is in the Bavarian lower half of Germany, and is quite a separate dialect than high German, and now fluent French. I mention this because Bennie, when he was about 8 and told the family was moving to France, said to his parents in a kind of a delightful childlike blackmail, "OK, I'll go with you to France, but only on the condition that after 6 years we are not going to move to Spain, and I have to learn one more language."
The book of Genesis has an etiological story, (a nice high sounding word for a story which attempts to explain the cause or origin of something) which purports to tell how and why our Babel of modern languages began. Almost every commentator on the Tower of Babel story strongly suggests that the Hebrew story had been conflated with a Babylonian story for the word "Babel" is a shortened form of the word "Babylon," which represents the human community's pride in our own exploits. "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves…" So, pride is proposed as the direct cause of humankind's confusion of tongues. "But this is not the case," says the student of languages. Perhaps not. But pride can cause a far worse Babel and a more gigantic confusion.
Let me here just quickly say that I have long since given up worrying whether this is story, myth, narrative, or some kind of history. This kind of thinking tyrannized me in my first year of seminary. Our scientific age takes for granted that truth is best found and shared by argument and proposition, and by logical analysis. But restricting truth to such a mind set is not the whole story. While an equation may be just what the chemical engineer needs, it can leave the artist cold. While a syllogism may be what a mathematician needs, it can leave the poet unmoved. All these cannot stir into their formulas an awareness of God, for God is not a theorem to be proved or an object to be analyzed. But story is a universal language. It conveys truth where logical propositions may fail. Jesus spoke in parables, and conveyed truth. Most scholars call this narrative the last of Israel's "pre-history" myth. That used to send me into orbit. But we should not dismiss myths as "primitive" for they may be both universal, true, and profound.
So what is this Tower of Babel narrative all about. People knew that God was "up there" above "that inverted bowl they call the sky," and that we humans are "down here" in a very finite earth. But people were not content with their low estate. They wished to be like God. That's the dominant fugue in Genesis. You see this fruit. You can eat it, the serpent said, "for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God." So 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." This virus called pride, the people's resolve to build their own paradise, was aided and abetted by another virus, or are the two different types of one bug, fear? They instinctively feared the hazards of their earthborn lot; "lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." They did not want to be defenseless against ravening beasts and the lonely dark, against storm and death. Thus, they sought fame and security. They trusted their own god-like ambition and self confident skill. They began to build a tower that would reach to the top of the sky, so that they could climb over the edge of heaven and seize God's throne.
Here I get a kick out of the way the narrator portrays God who kind of hears this racket, puts on his spectacles, peers over the rim of heaven, and has to descend from his heavenly dwelling even to catch a glimpse of this product of human arrogance. The Lord said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language, so they will not understand each other." So God pushed aside their tower with scarcely a move of God's hand, demolished their city, and for punishment he laid on them the confusion of many languages.
What happens to us when we hear this story. We pooh-pooh this "outmoded three story world of the Bible." We say, it's all just a myth. But then we sell out to the really ridiculous myth of "humankind's inevitable progress," and the invincible mind of humankind. And, we may or may not realize that our myths are written in Babel-type pride. And we ask, have out towers fallen; the government of Myanmar refusing foreign aid while about 100,000 of their citizens waist away; the genocide of Darfur; America trying to make the whole Middle East in its own image; Palestinian and Israeli talking peace one day and firing off rockets across the walls the next; children killing children at VA tech and elsewhere? And we wonder at the story when God looks at the saga of human history and says, "Nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them." Will we never learn what Babel-like chaos comes from playing God, rather than placing ourselves under the Word of God?
So let's look at another history-narrative, this one at the NT end of the Bible. Yes, Pentecost has myth elements in it, as well as history. And again we will find the story better than a syllogism or an equation and is far more true than our myths which suggest that all we need is a little more enlightenment and we will be saved. At Pentecost, the followers of Jesus were huddled in an upper room after tragic Calvary. They were there to await His word, the story tells us, they being now strangely persuaded that He was not dead but beyond death. Suddenly, a terror and a rapture. There swept down on them a sound like the rush of a violent wind. The wind! It is a favorite Biblical metaphor for the inrush of God's creative and re-creative spirit. Tongues as of fire. Fire is a favorite Biblical metaphor for God's wonderful cleansing, purging, purity producing, leading love that cleanses us of, what, our pride! And they began to speak to each other in other languages, as the spirit gave them utterance. And they understood each other. Babel was canceled! Each one heard another speaking in the native language of the other. The usual point made here concerns "speaking in tongues." But, as Walter Brueggemann points out, the accent here is not on speaking but on HEARING:
Each one HEARD them speaking in his own language; how is it that we HEAR, each one of us in his own language? We HEAR them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God; give EAR to my words. Perhaps the miracle of Pentecost concerns a new gift of speech. But we should not miss the hint of the text. The newness concerns a FRESH CAPACITY TO LISTEN because the Word of God blows over the chaos one more time. Calvin at this point says, "Although their language may differ in sound, they all speak the same thing, when they cry, "Abba Father."
This myth, this story, holds incredible truth. What truth? The truth regarding the gift which cancels the confusions of Babel. The people's self-centeredness, which builds a tower of pride and thus invites division and destruction, is melted as by fire in the gift of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
We say we need a new Pentecost. And I have come to this conviction. A new Pentecost will come only with prayer. Honest prayer usually begins with an acknowledgment of our own blundering, with an acknowledgment of our own pride, with a tiredness that we are sorry for our own tower building that has not reached anywhere. And honest prayer usually issues in the realization that we need to live by God's light, and power, and fresh winds blowing upon us, and fire cleansing us.
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. We must ask directions for the One Place, where once people prayed and then knew the rush of violent winds which breathed into them the breath of new life, and the fire which gave them a much need purification. Where is the One Place? It could be your home, if you pray there. It could be in a small group, if you pray there. It could be at the beach, or in the mountains. It could be right here in a church like Westminster, which knows the fresh winds of reaching out beyond ourselves, and knows the refinement as of tongues of fire, which gets out of ourselves into the lives of those around us. It could be here and now. Pray for the wind. Pray for the fire. And let the spirit happen! Happy Pentecost!