Text: Genesis 11: 1-9

We are at the end of our series of messages called “Beach Reads 2.” The Bible has many wonderful, big stories which engage the reader in truth, like the books we read on the beach or summer vacations.  We looked at some last summer, which is why this summer it is “Beach Reads 2.”  While sand and water figured into last year’s reads, our focus is on four stories found in the first 11 chapters of Genesis. Only one of them is around water.  These are foundational stories that predate recorded history and as such are archetypal, answering some of the deepest questions human beings ask. If you’ve been present or reading on line, you know the questions are “Who are we?” Why am I here” and if there is a God, “What is God like?” The answers build story to story and lay a foundation for understanding scripture.

Our first story was Adam and Eve, then Cain and Abel, and last week, Noah and The Ark.  Let’s review the answers to those questions discovered in the previous stories.

From those three stories we’ve learned that we are created in God’s image, given the ability to choose and each of us is special and unique.  Question two is “Why am I here?”  We are here to be in relationship with a partner, to be our brother and sisters’ keeper, and live in righteousness. I gave a quick, simple explanation of righteousness being “doing the right things at the right time for the right reasons.” The last question is “What is God like?”  God is the God of consequences and the God of grace who agonizes over poor decisions and God grieves humanity’s flaws, but despite it all, God is in covenant with humanity. God remembers. 

It’s a lot but we aren’t done laying the foundation for scripture. We have one more story, one more beach read. Before we jump into it, we need to reread the ending of last week’s story when Noah and his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, leave the Ark.  They build an altar, make a sacrifice and the odor is pleasing to God.  The story ends with God establishing His covenant, promising never again to destroy humanity or creation. The sign of the covenant is a rainbow.  But before God makes this promise, “God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth’” (Genesis 9:1). It is a blessing but it is also a divine commandment that God expects them to fulfill. Just in case they don’t get it, God gives it to them one more time just before He makes the covenant.   “And you, be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and multiply in it. Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ‘As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you.’”  (Genesis 9:7-9a).  A covenant is a contract, a reciprocal relationship, a partnership.  God is saying, “Look, this is your job.  Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, abound on it. My job is to remember you, to never destroy you again. It’s our covenant.  Deal? We’ll seal it with a rainbow and God does.” He sets a bow in the heavens.   God’s job is to remember His promise. Humanity’s job, or specifically Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth’s job is to get busy, procreating---a tough assignment but somebody’s got to do it---and fill the earth, to spread out, to abound on the earth. They definitely liked the procreating assignment but they had a problem with abounding, with filling the earth.

This is the background of our fourth prehistory story, commonly known as “The Tower of Babel.”  It’s not a good title even though everyone calls it by that name. I chose the title “madness and mayhem” because a lot of your summer reading is about madness and mayhem.  But the tower is only a small part of the story even if most people try to make it the biggest part of the story.  Listen to the beginning of the story in light of the command to Noah and his sons.  “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 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’” (Genesis 11: 1-3a,4).

Now you see the problem.  God says, “Make babies and spread out, take the whole world.” It’s a big place, plenty of room for everyone. They make babies and said, “Let’s build a big city and stay together otherwise we’ll lose touch with each other and family reunions will simply be impossible.”  God says: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1b).  Humankind says, “let us build ourselves a city… otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11:3a,4b).

If you were here a couple of weeks ago, I talked about the pattern that is in each of these stories, a three step sequence of choice, consequences, grace. Adam and Eve choose poorly; there are consequences for their sin and there is grace.  Cain chooses poorly; there are consequences for his sin and there is grace. Last week, humanity chose poorly. There was a consequence, The Flood, and there was grace.  Noah and his sons are to repopulate the earth, to spread out, to fill the earth, to abound.  This week, again there is a choice. Humanity can be obedient, choosing to follow God’s command or they can choose to have it their own way. They take the Burger King approach, deciding that they know better and somehow think that God will overlook the fact that they are building a big city instead of spreading out and filling the world.  What were they thinking?

The traditional interpretation is they were mad, crazy, full of themselves with pride.  They wanted to make a name for themselves by becoming like God, by building a tower with its top in the heavens so that could hang out with God, be like God. It’s madness.

One of more historically and biblically astute members of our congregation pulled me aside before this weekend and wanted to offer a differing opinion about The Tower of Babel. “ I thought,” he offered  “that the tower was one of the ziggurats that dotted the Mesopotamia. If this is the case, this story has historical reference points, so “it’s not really prehistory.”  Ziggurats are the archeological equivalent of pyramids found in ancient Mesopotamia, what is modern day Iran.  They were built around 2200 BC. There are lots of commentaries that offer this theory. The problem is this timeline completely ignores the first verse which says “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.” (Genesis 11:1). It is clear that by the time the ziggurats were being constructed, distinct ethnic groups and different languages were in use for over 1000 years. The ziggurats were built far too late to be a time of one language. When the world was one language and one community, there wasn’t written word which is the definition of prehistory.  If you can’t write it down, you can’t record it.         

There is good archeological evidence to show a development of small groups of people in the 5th millennium after the Black Sea Deluge in Northern Mesopotamia. Over the next 1,000 years, people migrated south to the Sumerian Plain and formed a city, named Uruk at least 4,500 years before the birth of Jesus.  Uruk is considered one of the largest pre-classical cities Come, let us build ourselves a city, and had architectural structures of monumental proportion. and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; “Within a short time of its origins, this Uruk urban culture collapsed and integrated without explanation.”[1] Now I offer that explanation for those of you who think that facts are important.  But too often when we get caught up with the when and where and how, we lose sight of the why, we miss the message of the story.  The message of this story is madness and mayhem. It’s madness to think you can disobey God and make a name for yourself. That’s what this story is about. 

There is humor in this beach read.  Despite the height of this tower that is being built to reach up into the heaven, “The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built.” (Genesis 11:5).  It is the first reference to God being in the heavens above us and it makes fun of the idea that the tower being built was anywhere near God.  Our achievements are always that way, aren’t they? With pride we think, “This is the biggest and the best” only to discover that it isn’t the biggest that best. For some reasons, human beings are particularly prideful about towers.  I grew up thinking that the Empire State building was the tallest structure and would always be the biggest and best. It held the title for forty years. Then came along the Sears Tower in Chicago. Three years ago, the Taipei 101 Skyscraper in Taiwan standing 101 stories and 1,667 feet high was built but this year in Dubai skyscraper open up and Burj Khalifa is 1,000 feet taller.[2]  “My tower is taller than your tower.  How big is your tower?  I can build one bigger.” We know this story too well.

That’s madness but of course, that’s human. That’s who we are.   We struggle with our autonomy, misusing the greatness we have as the only creatures created God’s image. We want to be in charge even though God is in charge. It is why we choose poorly and  why God says, “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.” (Genesis 11:6).  Again, this is a verse that gets misinterpreted all of the time. Reading on its own, without the context, it sounds as if God is somehow afraid of humanity’s power in relationship to His power. Such an interpretation misses the context and frankly, is read through the arrogance of human power. How arrogant to think that God would worry about us being too powerful. But God is worried about us, about the mischief we might get into, the owner was just “the beginning of what they will do, what they will propose.”  Like a mother worn out at the end of a day with unruly children, God exclaims that we are “impossible.”

“Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”  So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 

There is God again, offering consequences for disobedience. He scatters humanity, forces them to leave behind their reputation, their ambitious building project and their heavenly tower. God creates mayhem and makes them do what God commanded Noah and his sons to do. But there is also grace. God offers them humanity the world and the richness of diversity, diverse populations, diverse languages, diverse ecosystem. Out of this diversity has come the richness of human discovery and achievement. It is why the apostle, speaking to one of those scattered communities in Athens, describes the grace of this story as God’s plan. “From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live.” Acts 17: 26

Their story ends with more humor. Sitting around the campfire thousands of years ago, the storyteller would have a good laugh because there is a play on words.  You may remember El is an ancient prehistory word for God.  Bav-El meant the “gate of God” but God chose to baffle their language, turned Bav-El in to Babel, meaning Babble Town. So the story telling ends saying, “Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth;”  (Genesis 11:9a)  God can use confusion to complete God’s plan.  Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, abound.  Mayhem is God’s gift of grace, encouraging diversity.

It’s a great story, filled with truth but also filled with humor. It’s short and to the point and it completes the foundation which we built.  Running throughout the rest of the Bible, these questions and answers play a pivotal role in every story. 

Who are we?

            We are created in God’s image,

            given the ability to choose;

            each is special and unique

struggling with the gift of our autonomy and our power.

Why am I here? 

            We are here to be in relationship with a partner,

            to be our brother and sisters’ keeper,

            to  live in righteousness and

to be obedient to God’s desire for creation.

What is God like? 

            God is the God of consequences and the God of grace

            who agonizes over poor decisions and grieves humanity’s flaws,

            in covenant with humanity

blessing us with diversity

The richness that I find in these stories is found in the simplicity of language. That’s the mark of a good beach read. You can always take it away in a word or too.  Take, eat. Am I my brother’s keeper? God remembers.  This one is the same, Come let us. Come, let us make bricks; Come, let us build ourselves a city; Come let us make a name for ourselves. Selfish “come let us.” Then God’s gracious “come let us:   “Come, let us go down, and confuse their language” and with it, the gift of diversity.   

We too have the capacity to use these words positively.  The Psalmist says “Come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!” (Psalm 95: 6)  Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths” (Isaiah 2:3)  Isaiah says.  Come let us, used in adoration and praise.  But then you know how to use them that way too, don’t know.  Come let us….O come let us…O come let us, adore him, Christ the Lord.  Do that and you will have no problem with these questions and answers.