migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

Transcription

1 Genesis 11:1-9 1 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 burn 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. 1

2 One Giant Leap On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 mission of the United States space program successfully landed on the surface of the moon [SLIDE]. Astronaut Neil Armstrong opened the hatch of the lunar landing module and slowly descended backwards down the ladder. As his feet touched the moon s chalky surface, he uttered one of the most famous lines in recorded history: That s one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind. As someone who used to write advertising for a living, I have to say that is a great line. It was a small step for Neil Armstrong, a man in a spacesuit, to step from the bottom rung of a ladder on to the moon s surface just a meter or so. But setting foot on the surface of the moon was, yes, a giant leap forward for mankind. After all [SLIDE], it was less than seventy years earlier, in 1903, that the Wright Brothers had made the first successful flight of a powered aircraft. Their plane flew no more than three meters above the sands of the beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Three meters [SLIDE]! Michael Jordan in his prime could fly that high! Yet within seventy years, one human lifespan [SLIDE], human beings went from flying box kites with engines attached to them to rocket ships powerful enough to send a team of astronauts to the moon [SLIDE]. From three meters above the ground to 384,000 kilometers into space. Viewers not only around the United States [SLIDE] but around the world tuned in to watch the moon landing on live TV [SLIDE]. Even the pope was watching. Neil Armstrong was right. The event was as much a triumph for mankind as it was for one man or one nation. All the world tuned in to catch a glimpse of what we as human beings are capable of. 2

3 Human ambition is the focus of today s passage from Genesis. Genesis chapter 11 tells of a humanity united in common cause. They don t want to build a rocket ship to soar to the heavens but rather a tower whose top will touch the heavens. Observing this [SLIDE], God sounds a note of alarm, saying: This is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them (Gen. 11:6). That sounds strange coming from God, doesn t it? Why would God be anxious about the ambitions and capabilities of human beings? After all, God is God, and we are, well, human. Sure, we are capable of great deeds; we sent a man to the moon, but still we are limited in so many ways. Our strength, our intellect, and the number of years that we will live on this earth are all limited, whereas God knows no such limits. Therefore, when the Bible speaks of God in human terms like this, as though God were threatened by humanity, we need to treat such passages and there are many of them in the first eleven chapters of Genesis not as history but as story. The point of such stories, unlike history, is not to tell us what happened but to tell us about ourselves and also to tell us about God. This story in particular tells us about the God who takes a giant leap down from the heavens to engage with us. God comes not to destroy what we have made but rather to save us from destroying ourselves. Later, as told in the New Testament, God will come down once again for that very same purpose. God will come not only for us but also as one of us. This is the third week in a row that we are reading from Genesis. Two weeks ago we heard the story of how the first man and woman resist the grace of God and rebel against their Creator. Last week we heard how Cain was consumed with envy toward his brother Abel, an envy that transformed Abel from a brother into a rival and then finally into an enemy whom Cain could justify killing. 3

4 We skipped over the other major story in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, the flood, because we read it just last year. In the flood narrative, God is angered by the corruption and violence of human beings, so much so that God regrets having created human beings and decides to start over. God cleanses the world of sin with the waters of a great flood, sparing only Noah and his family. All three of these stories show us a humanity that is marked by resistance to God s good purposes, violence against one another even one s own brother, and a wickedness set deep within the human heart and mind. That pattern continues today with the fourth and final major story in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Chapter 10 tells of the repopulation of the earth after the flood through Noah s descendants. But as we turn the page to chapter 11 and today s reading, we find that humanity is once again falling back into its old patterns [SLIDE]. Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, the people say (11:4). What s so bad about wanting to build a great city with a great tower? The world is full of great cities and towers. If we were to walk outside right now, there is a great tower that s visible from the steps of this church. Its top reaches to the heavens. Does God hate Lotte Tower? I could understand hating the traffic congestion around the tower. I hate that too, but the tower itself is alright. Then what does God have against skyscrapers? The answer, of course, is nothing. But there is a clue in the passage that helps us know what s going on. It comes in verse 2 where we are given the location of this great city [SLIDE]... upon a plain in the land of Shinar. This is where the descendants of Noah have settled. Shinar refers to southern Mesopotamia, or modern-day Iraq. Shinar was a district in the ancient kingdom of Babylonia. Babylonia, as in the Babylonian Empire, the great imperial power of the Ancient Near East that reached its peak in the early sixth century BC. That was when the Babylonians conquered Israel and led the people into exile...the Babylonian exile. 4

5 Self-centered people that we are, when reading a Bible passage we want to know what message it has for us. We trust that even though the Bible was written long ago, it contains timeless truths that address us in our time. In that sense the Bible is a living document. But rather than just focusing on what a particular passage or verse says to us, to get a fuller picture of the Bible we need to consider its original audience. The original readers or hearers of this passage would have found obvious things that we have to dig for, like archaeologists searching the site of ancient ruins. To them, the mention of Shinar shouts Babylon! This is not the first mention of Shinar in the Bible, nor will it be the last. The name comes up again in the book of Isaiah. In the following verse, Isaiah prophesies a time when the exiles will return from all the places to which they were scattered, including Shinar [SLIDE]: On that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that is left of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Ethiopia, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea (Isa. 11:11). The Babylonians were known for building massive temples called ziggurats [SLIDE]. In their language the word ziggurat means temple tower. The noun is derived from a verb that means to build high. The Babylonians believed that at the top of the temple, which reached into the heavens, they could see their gods. In other words, the Babylonians built towers by which they ascended to the gods. Sound familiar? It sounds an awful lot like what we read here in Genesis 11 about the Tower of Babel (i.e., the Tower of Babylon). Ancient Israelites reading or hearing this text would have picked up on its not-so-subtle mockery of Babylonian pretensions. You think you can build a tower to the gods? Our God, the God of Israel, the one true God, will put a stop to that! He will come down and confuse your language so that 5

6 no one can make sense of what another person is saying. This story is not trying to tell us how there came to be so many languages spoken on the earth. That s an amusing aside to the story s main point. The main point of the story is its mockery of the mighty Babylonians, whose arrogance led them to believe that they could literally rise to God s level. You re thinking, Alright, that s interesting. Thanks for the history lesson and the linguistics lesson. But what does all that have to do with us? Didn t you say that the Bible is a living document? The Babylonians are dead and gone. So, how does this story address us? Good question! This is where we move from the realm of history into psychology. Underneath the arrogance another emotion is motivating the people to build the tower...anxiety. Anxiety often accompanies arrogance. Arrogance is a mask that hides an anxious face. We read the first half of verse 4 earlier: Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens. Now let s look at the second half [SLIDE]: and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. The people are motivated by a desire to make a name for themselves. They want to be remembered as the people who built a tower into the heavens...right to God s doorstep. Okay, so it s recognition that they seek? Not exactly. Motivating the desire for recognition is a deep-seated anxiety. The people seek to build the tower because otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. They fear that if they don t build the tower, then they will be scattered. Yet it s their building the tower that brings about the very thing that building the tower was meant to guard against! Now, that s what you call irony! 6

7 As we laugh we can hold up a mirror to our own faces, for we are also motivated by a desire to make a name for ourselves. Names carry so much weight in Korean society. High school students study relentlessly so that their towering academic achievements will enable them to reach for the SKY and gain entrance into one of the big-name schools: Seoul National University, Korea University, or Yonsei University. After graduation, job seekers compete to work for one of the big-name companies. If you can get in there, you re set for life. It s not just the school and the workplace where we seek to make a name for ourselves. It s in the church as well. We feel a certain pride for being members of a big-name church like PCL. Or we pat ourselves on the back for having a home address in the nation s capital, the most desirable city in the country. Maybe we even live in one of its more prestigious neighborhoods. I remember when I first moved to New York after spending a year and a half commuting into the City from the suburbs of Connecticut. I moved in with a friend into a decrepit building sandwiched between the Port Authority Bus Terminal and the Lincoln Tunnel. The apartment was a dump. It was small and dirty. I didn t even have my own room. I slept in the living room, next to the refrigerator, because the kitchen was too small to fit it. We had no pets, unless you count the roaches and mice who frequently shared the space with us. The bathroom...no, it s better for you that I not mention the bathroom. But all that was worth it. You know why? Because I had an address in Manhattan. I could tell people that I lived in New York. Not one of the outer boroughs Brooklyn, Queens, or the Bronx but Manhattan! I had made a name for myself. We long to make a name for ourselves through our school, our job, our church, our home address. Korean society puts an enormous value on achievement. This is a society full of achievers. We are achievers, yes, but we are anxious achievers. Much of our achievement is born of anxiety. We fear that if we don t make a name for 7

8 ourselves, then we will be left behind, left out, or forgotten. If we don t prove ourselves worthy of recognition, respect, and love, then what have we achieved? We desire to make a name for ourselves because we forget that we have already been given a name. God has given us a name. God calls us beloved, redeemed, sought-out. In today s passage, the people build a great tower because they fear being scattered across the earth. Many years later, when the people of Israel had been scattered, exiled across the sands of Babylon, the feared that they had been forgotten by their God. They feared that the name Israel had been lost to history, scattered to the wind. But it is into that anxiety that the prophet Isaiah speaks the word of God. And in that word God gives the people a new name [SLIDE]: They shall be called, The Holy People, The Redeemed of the LORD ; and you shall be called, Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken. (Isa. 62:12) We are a people called Sought Out because that s what Jesus Christ has done. We were trying to seek God, not knowing that God was determined to seek us. While we were anxiously trying to ascend to God through our achievements, God, through his Son Jesus Christ, took one giant leap down to us. 8