A communion of diversity

Genesis 11: 1 – 9
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
May 15, 2016 – Pentecost 

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            It’s passages like this one that make God out to be a big meanie face, religion the antithesis of technology and ingenuity, and the Bible laughable. The story of the tower of Babel takes place in between the stories of Noah and Abram, with some genealogy for connective tissue. It begins rather innocently, it seems. The people of the earth are one people and speak a common language. What’s so bad about that, we ask? They develop a new technology, the making of bricks and mortar, which leads to the construction of walls, a city, and a tremendous tower. Sounds like progress. Even though it is God who names us (Sarai to Sarah, Jacob to Israel), they want to make a name for themselves, to settle down and live in one place rather than be scattered across the earth.

            But in this meta-narrative about human beings, these weren’t the first ones to build a city.  After Cain killed his brother Abel, he left the presence of God, that is, turned his back on God, went east of Eden, and built a city.  Because Cain had spilled his brother’s blood on the ground, the ground would no longer “yield its strength”, that is, grow food for Cain.  Cain was now separate from the life of the earth, no longer a farmer, so he built a city to fortify himself and his family.

            

         Like anything else, cities are not in and of themselves evil. After all, Jerusalem is the holy city of God and its name means “foundation of peace”. Yet in this time, a city was an emblem of empire, a means of standing against a perceived threat, a place of protection from an enemy or the ‘other’. Babel is the proto-Babylon, the empire that conquered the southern kingdom of Judah and held captive generations of Jews. 

The people who build the tower look as if they’re being proactive, constructing a city that will prevent them from being scattered.  Being scattered is something to be feared and avoided.  Being one people in one place with one language is seen as strength.  It’s humanity’s default position.  Not only that, but we believe it is solely human initiative and cunning that has the power to save.  God witnesses all of this, what appears to be unity and creativity and ambition, and brings it down like a game of Jenga.

            But wait a minute.  This is Pentecost.  Where’s the story about the disciples and crowds of others gathered for the Jewish festival of Shavuot, everyone understanding each other, hearing the disciples speak in their own language?  What about the rush of a violent wind that filled the whole house and the tongues of flame that danced above the heads of the disciples?

            The story of Pentecost is a counterpoint to the story of the tower of Babel.  Babel shows us how we confuse unity with uniformity.  Pentecost illustrates that through the power of the Holy Spirit, the power of imagination, that we can be diverse, be who we are and yet live as one.

            That’s the journey, isn’t it?  No matter who you are or where you are on your faith journey or your life journey, you are welcome here.  Even though it looks like we speak the same language, that we are one people, one church, we each experience the world in different ways.  We have different educational backgrounds, come from different states, ethnicities, socioeconomic classes, ages, genders, sexual orientations, work experiences.  We have different experiences of church, differing beliefs, different ideas of what it means to be church.  In fact, our diversity and our inclusivity are two of the core values of this church.

            For instance, if I asked you how you would define baptism to someone who had no idea what it was so they could understand it, what would you say?  It would probably take many of us to contribute what we know, what our experiences are, to arrive at some common understanding.  Even so, we also might disagree or be passionately wed to our own understanding because it’s human nature to own one’s experience of reality, sometimes to the exclusion of others.

            Once again there are people in this country who are ready to die on the hill of exclusivity in the name of a warped sense of unity.  Elect my candidate or I’m not voting at all.  Build more walls, decide who’s in and who’s out, white is right, arm every person, speak only English, police every bathroom and welfare recipient, and what it all amounts to is a really dangerous pissing contest.  Who has the most power, who gets to be in charge, all of us forced rather than covenanted under one banner, “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”, and “under God” has become more of an exclusive statement.  We’ve forgotten that all means ALL and not just most or some.  When we say all and don’t really mean all, in our actions and laws and policies, some people are not only going to be hurt, but live a lifetime of hurt and injustice and then potentially pass it on to others.

            We’re creating Babel all over again.  In Genesis, in our beginning, God saw where it was going, where we were headed, and confused us, scattered us, because we were confusing ourselves with the One who made heaven and earth.  Once again we’re confusing unity with uniformity, consensus with unanimity, solidarity with falling in lockstep.  As I read in one online commentary we have a plethora of denominations that seek unity only by throwing others out or casting them as second-class citizens.

            Pentecost is often proclaimed as the birthday of the Church, but in truth it was the birth of a movement, of a Spirit-filled passion not limited to any nation or region but something that would transcend and also embrace diversity.  Not by our own merit but by the outpouring of the Spirit, the Mother of us all, the breath that gives us life.  A Spirit that has the power to be, instead of exclusive or inclusive, expansive.  The love of God and God’s grace would now be known from within the heart and in human relationships, how we care for one another.  And so it was said of this early community called the Way, “See how they love each other”.

            We keep trying to make a monolith, an institution of this movement of a called out people of God.  We try to stay in one place.  We don’t like being scattered.  It feels better when we’re all in agreement or when we’re all in one room or one building and there’s a sense of fullness.  

The disciples were all in one place when the Spirit came but it was only a prelude to being scattered once again.  Jesus had sent them out before in twos with only a walking stick and the clothes on their backs.  He knew that the only way to teach them about hospitality and extravagant welcome was to make the disciples into strangers at the mercy of their hosts. Now after this Pentecostal wind and fire they would be strangers again, taking the Gospel message on the road, each in their own way.  It would be a few hundred years later that once again, the love of power would overwhelm the power of love; uniformity would be imposed, orthodoxy and orthopraxis would take over, and heretics would be burned for centuries after.  Every incarnation of the Church has been guilty of this, even those who sought religious freedom.

            And yet there has always been a unity available to us, a singleness of heart, one language that we all understand and that we can all learn to speak, and yes it is the language of love:  acceptance and not just tolerance, compassion, forgiveness, restorative justice.   

         Henri Nouwen once wrote, “Community is that place where the person you least want to be with always is.”   

         But he also wrote, “Did I offer peace today?  Did I bring a smile to someone’s face?  Did I say words of healing?  Did I let go of my anger and resentment?  Did I forgive?  Did I love?  These are the real questions.”   

         If we are to be a communion of diversity, our unity begins with these questions of ourselves.  It’s this kind of unity that the world needs right now.  Amen.