Sermon: Intention and Interpretation

This sermon was preached by the Rev. Jack Barden on June 12, 2012 in the Shelton Chapel at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.  Jack is the Vice President for Admissions at Austin Seminary, and we welcome this important sermon about interpretation and multiculturalism.

Genesis 11:1-9

In a moment, I’m going to read our Hebrew scripture passage, but before that, I want to ask you to recall the story for yourself.  What do you remember about the story in Genesis 11:1-9? Take a moment to recall it – how would you tell the story of the Tower of Babel?  Write it down in a couple of sentences if you can.  What are the key elements? What is the point of the story?  What happens?   

I was challenged recently to do this and this is what I jotted down:

The people wanted to reach up to the heavens, to reach up to God, so they built a tower, as high as they could.  God saw what they were doing and said, ‘They are too proud.’ So God confounded their speech, such that they all spoke in many different languages and could not understand one another. The people, in confusion, abandoned the Tower and scattered over the face of the earth – each to their own land and language group.

That’s how I remembered the story - What do you remember? 

Here’s the problem with the way most of us remember this story – we are remembering interpretations of the story, not the actual story in the biblical text.  We are so used to reading biblical stories, especially the mythic-poetic stories of the first eleven chapters of Genesis, through the lens of centuries of interpretation, that it is sometimes difficult to hear the stories afresh.  So, let me invite you to lay aside your remembered versions and the centuries of interpretation you have learned about this text and try to listen to it afresh, as I read from an original translation by Ted Hiebert, an Old Testament scholar at McCormick Seminary in Chicago:

All the earth had one language and the same words. When they traveled toward the east, they found a valley in the land of Shinar, and they settled there. They said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and let us fire them.’ The bricks were stones for them, and asphalt was mortar for them. And they said, ‘Come, let us build for ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and let us make a name for ourselves, so that we will not be dispersed over the surface of all the earth.’

Then Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower which the human race built.

And Yahweh said, ‘There is now one people and they all have one language. This is what they have begun to do, and now all that they plan to do will be possible for them. Come, let us go down and let us mix there their language, that they will not understand one another’s language.’ Then Yahweh dispersed them from there over the surface of all the earth, and they stopped building the city. Therefore, he named it Babel, for there Yahweh mixed the language of all the earth, and from there Yahweh dispersed them over the surface of all the earth.

Before we dive into that text, let’s set the story in its literary context – just remind ourselves what has happened in the preceding chapters of Genesis.  Traditionally, our summary of these early chapters is an interpretive arc of human pride and sinfulness.  It begins, of course, with the story of Creation, (and then the second story of Creation), followed quickly by the story of the apple and the Fall, and the expulsion from the Garden. Then there’s the mess between Cain and Abel, and the generation of corruption prior to the Flood. God seems so disappointed in the human race, that God decides to destroy humanity (and the rest of Creation) and start over. Noah and his family build an ark and save some animals, but Noah’s children don’t behave very well in the aftermath of the storm and the story culminates in this story of the Tower of Babel. After this episode, God looks for “one righteous person” and finds Abram to be the father of God’s chosen Covenant People.  And – voila! - we have a direct line (more or less) from Abraham to Jesus!

In this interpretive arc, the Babel story is the culmination, the zenith (or nadir, if you will) of human pride and sinfulness; Abraham is the do-over guy, the reset for what God’s intention for humanity was meant to be.  And it’s not just our fault that we read the Genesis narrative this way; theologians from Augustine to Luther to Calvin to Gerhard von Rad have read it this way. But is that really what the biblical narrative intends?  What if we set aside our centuries of theological interpretation and look at the text for a moment?  If we do, we will see that Noah is really the do-over guy. Noah is the first righteous human that God identifies - long before Abram was called out of Ur of the Chaldees, God covenanted with Noah to be the do-over guy.  And Noah is the one who releases the curse from the land; after the Flood, the earth itself is released from the curse laid upon it in Eden. And the first biblical covenant between God and humanity is made with Noah in Genesis 9, a full three chapters before God’s covenant with Abram.

So. Let’s assume that the Flood story is the pivotal mythic moment of Genesis and Noah is the do-over guy.  If that’s the case, then the Tower of Babel is not the “last straw” for God’s disgust of humanity’s pride; it is instead the first story of God’s new intention for humanity and creation.  So, let’s turn to the text and see if we can glimpse what God’s new intention really was!

The first thing we need to note is that there is nothing about pride and punishment in the actual text – this is interpretation.  There is nothing inherently prideful about building a tower with its top in the heavens.  Nowhere does the text say that the motivation for building this tower was so that humanity could become like God or occupy heaven or usurp God’s rightful place as Sovereign of All Creation.  The explicit motivation for building the tower is right there in verse 4: “so that we will not be dispersed over the surface of all the earth.”  This is not a story about human pride, trying to take the place of God.  It is a story about a people attempting to codify their cultural identity and location and homeland.  It is a story about human desire to live in a homogeneous society - to associate only with people who look like them, who speak like them, who live where they live, who worship like they worship.

God’s response to seeing the city and the tower is to “mix there their language” and disperse them over the surface of all the earth.  If we hold to the interpretation that what the people are doing at Babel is a manifestation of pride, then we interpret what God does as punishment.  But we don’t have to interpret it that way.  There is nothing in the text itself that suggests dispersion over the surface of the earth and mixing of languages is somehow a punishment or something not to be desired.  As a matter of fact, wasn’t that sort of the purpose of God’s instructions to Adam and Eve, to be fruitful and multiply, so that the whole of Creation would be cared for?  Perhaps even the expulsion from the Garden is not punishment, but merely God’s way of jump-starting God’s intention for humanity to be dispersed over the surface of all the earth.

Let’s run with this for a moment, and cross that hermeneutical bridge to our own world.  What if God’s intention for humanity is diversity?  What if God truly values multiple cultures and languages and homelands?  What if God is delighted not by a homogeneity of humanity gathered behind walls away from the world, but God is delighted instead by a plethora of people populating cities and countries and villages with a cacophony of worship and praise and proclamation?  What does that mean for our congregations?  What does that mean for our denominations?  What does that mean for the hour of 11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning?  And what does that mean for our political discourse and our immigration laws and our border walls and our detention centers?

Ok, before you think I’ve left preaching and gone to meddling, let me ask you to look at one more scripture – the Pentecost story.  Here’s another story which starts out with the phrase, “they were all together in one place.”  Sounds a bit like Genesis 11:1, doesn’t it.  And what happens” The disciples begin to speak in other languages.  In v. 6, we read that the international crowd gathered in Jerusalem was amazed “because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.”  It’s not that all the people of all the nations suddenly understand Aramaic; it’s that God’s Word is being proclaimed in a myriad of languages!  In case we missed it in v. 6, we hear again in v. 11, the gathered foreigners amazed that “in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”  There is still a diversity of languages and the Gospel is being introduced into every language so that it can be proclaimed to every culture group, so that the Gospel of Christ will be dispersed from there over the surface of all the earth!

Hmmm!  Could it be that God values many languages and cultures? Could it be that God values diversity?  Could it be that the Church is not complete until every language group and every culture is included?  Could it be that God’s intention for the Church is not that language differences and cultural uniquenesses be transcended or done away with, but that the Gospel be proclaimed in each culture in the particularity of every language?

When we gather at the Table in a moment, we will hear the call proclaim that ‘they shall come from east and from west, from north and from south, to sit at table in the kingdom of God.’ But I don’t recall ever hearing in that call to the Table, ‘they will all speak one language and have one cultural identity and look alike and think alike and believe alike, and all differences will be set aside.’

It’s just a Tuesday, and I could be completely wrong about all of this.  But, consider for a moment, that there’s something of God’s intention in this interpretation.  And consider for a moment – If this is true, how might your congregation, your ministry, your life, be faithful to God’s intention for humanity? Then come to the Table, and be fed.

(This sermon owes a debt to interpretations and reflections put forward by Ted Hiebert of McCormick Seminary.)