Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

John 8:2-11 and Genesis 11:1-9

This week, as we continue our series on the foundational stories of Genesis, we jump ahead to the story of the Tower of Babel. This means we are jumping over the story of Noah and the flood. We will come back to that story on Ash Wednesday. If you have never attended an Ash Wednesday service I invite you to consider attending this year.

The flood story clearly teaches that God can get fed up with sin. The whole human race became so sinful that God wiped them out and started over with Noah and his family. Punishment was clearly God’s response to human sin that had gotten out of control. Is that God’s only response to sin? The Tower of Babel suggests that God has other ways to respond to sin.

Read Genesis 11:1-9.

When we lived in an Indian village in Alaska, our oldest son at two years old was constantly taking in unusual experiences. The town drunk often came by our house and babbled incoherently about God. Once when he left our house, our son asked, “What’s wrong with him?” I explained that he was drunk. A few weeks later when I called on a Tlinget elder to lead the offering prayer, the Tlinget elder began to pray in the native tongue. “D’Kee An’chow, gunak cheesh…” Our son whispered loud enough for the whole congregation to hear, “Is he drunk?!”

Do you recall when you first realized people come from different cultures? Our grandson Jack is in kindergarten this year. This fall he came home with a theological question. “How many gods do we believe in?” Now, I asked a similar question in childhood. I had grown up in church and heard the preacher talk about God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I wondered if we believed in one god or three. I assumed this was Jack’s question so we began to talk. He was obviously getting frustrated by my extended answer. “Well, Jack, we believe in one God but we meet our God in the form of three persons.” Finally, he explained the context of his question. “My best friend is Hindu and she says they have a thousand gods. How many do we have?”

We live in a new day. I did not know a Hindu until I was out of college. In today’s diverse culture, our children meet children of other faiths in elementary school. The result is a natural question. “Why are they different from us?” Hebrew children in ancient days asked this same question. “Mommy, why does that person’s words sound so strange?” The Bible answered this question for Hebrew children by telling them about the Tower of Babel.

One of the things we are learning in these Genesis stories is that we modern people tend to get hung up at the wrong part. What was wrong with building a tower? Why did God punish them? Most of us, including me, learned this as a story of God punishing people by giving them different languages and tribes. This assumes that God’s only response to sin is punishment.

This was the assumption of Jesus’ disciples in John 9. In this story the followers of Jesus saw a blind man feeling his way down the street? Knowing that he had been blind from birth they asked Jesus, “Who sinned, him or his parents?” They assumed that someone must have sinned for God to send the punishment of blindness. Jesus responded that the blindness was not God’s punishment for sin. In other words, difficulties sometimes just happen.

“Sin requires punishment” leads to some really bad theology. For instance, consider the knee jerk reaction of a popular television evangelist who said that the Haiti earthquake was God punishing the Haitian people for a pact they made with the devil generations ago. Really?!

Before we jump on the wagon to condemn a high profile Christian for embarrassing us with this simplistic theology, let’s realize how we do this to ourselves. What happens when something bad happens in our own lives? Don’t we frequently assume that we must have done something wrong to deserve punishment?

The doctor’s office is on the phone. The nurse explains that the doctor would like to retake a couple of tests. The nurse is friendly and reassuring. There were some concerns with the results and the doctor simply wants to meet and explain them. She hangs up the phone and tears come to her eyes. Even though the nurse didn’t say it, she jumps to her own conclusions. It must be cancer. Then the next thought rushes to replace the word cancer in her mind. “God is punishing me!”

Some years ago, I struggled with a serious depression. Our son had come out of a coma with some minimal brain damage. The doctor had identified a chemical imbalance of the brain and started him on a medication. It looked hopeful to get better, yet, I sank into a depression. In my depression, I made it all about me. “Lord, what did I do wrong? I know you punishing me.”

This is what happens when we assume that bad things always mean God is punishing sin. Let me suggest there are other ways God responds to sin.

Jesus responded to sin in different ways. Sometimes it was with anger. He overturned the tables and ran the moneychangers out of the temple. Sometimes Jesus responded with grace and forgiveness such as his prayer from the cross, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.”

We need to appreciate that the Tower of Babel is a transitional story. It takes us from the whole human race going back to one family to the beginning of God working with one chosen tribe of people. The first ten chapters of Genesis trace the whole human race back to Adam and Eve and then starts again with Noah and his family. All people come from the same family. Then in chapter 12 we have Abram introduced as the Father of the Hebrew people. Now we have different tribes and languages. The Hebrew child asks the question. “Why are they different from us?” Answer: God chose us to show our neighbors what God is like. We are God’s chosen people.

With this understanding of the place of the Tower of Babel story, we are ready to listen to it like a child. At its simplest, it is a children’s story of the tendency we have to play king of the mountain. Did you know that our middle school ministry has started a series on lessons we can learn from children’s bedtime stories. One of the stories I read to Jack and Katie is a Dr. Suess story titled Yertle the Turtle.

Yertle was a turtle who felt important because he ruled over a pond. He felt that he ruled over whatever he could see. One day he ordered a couple of turtles to pile on each other so he could stand on top and see further. Now he felt more important because he could see over the pond and out onto the neighboring meadow. Then he became power hungry and wanted more turtles to pile up on each other so he could see further and further. As the story progresses he keeps piling on more and more turtles so he can feel more and more important. He is king over the farm and the hills, over the animals and the birds. Finally, the story ends when a turtle at the bottom of the pile sneezes, causing the entire turtle pile to collapse and leaving Yertle in the mud.

This story is not new to modern children. The ancient Hebrews knew that whoever controls the high places feels in control of others. If my altar is on a higher hill than yours, so my god is better than yours. Psalm 121 addressed this common assumption that altars on higher hills meant better gods. “I lift my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from? (The hills were covered with ceremonial altars to other gods.) My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth!” Translation: Your god may live on top of the mountain, but our God made the mountain, so there!

Of course we modern people don’t think this way any more. Or do we?

Have you heard the news that Dubai now has built the tallest building in the world? Why would anybody compete over having the highest building? First, it was the Empire State building. Then the Sears tower. Then something else somewhere else… Now the nation of Dubai gets to claim the tallest building. We are still trying to build the Tower of Babel. Whoever gets to be on top gets to control others. No need to humble ourselves before God, it’s about control. The Bible calls this need to be on top: SIN.

How does God respond to their “Yertle the Turtle” sin? God does what any loving parent does when the children’s game gets out of control. God calls a “time out.” It is not necessarily a time out of punishment. It is a time out of redirection. “Now, Tommy you apologize to Billy. Susan, ask forgiveness from Tina. If you can’t play nice, we’ll take the toys away and send you to your separate rooms.”

It may feel like punishment, but it is intended for our benefit. The Tower of Babel was God’s “time out” and redirection.

Jesus used this Tower of Babel approach when a crowd of men brought a woman caught in the sin of adultery. They asked Jesus how he was going to punish her. They assumed the only response to sin was punishment. But Jesus redirected them. “Let him who is without sin among you throw the first stone. . .” The crowd dispersed and Jesus invited the woman into a new life. “Go and sin no more.”

Jesus’ goal wasn’t merely to disperse the crowd forever. The goal was to redirect their thinking so that they could come back together as humble, loving people.

The Tower of Babel story explains that God sometimes calls a “time out” to redirect people away from their sin. It points ahead to the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit speaks to people from different tribes each in their own language about Jesus welcoming everybody.

We finish the Tower of Babel story every time we come to the communion table. Communion points us toward the day when people from every tribe and tongue, nationality and culture gather at the feast of the Lord Jesus and serve each other.

Two years into our time in the village our oldest son developed a love for cowboy and Indian stories. At four years old he was really into cowboy and Indian movies. He loved playing cowboys and Indians, black hats for bad guys and white hats for good guys. He loved enacting heroic adventures. One day in the midst of a cowboy and Indian movie he turned to me and asked, “Dad, are there any Indians still alive?”

Here we were a white family living in a village of Indians. He was surrounded by Indian culture. But all he knew was that we all come together at the Lord’s table. Through the love of Jesus we gather as God’s children.