I used to teach fifth grade “Biblical Foundations” at a secular school. The idea was to teach a common culture of Bible stories so that un-churched children would understand biblical references in Western art, poetry, and music. Every year, when the story of the Tower of Babel would come up, I would try the same lesson plan. And every year, it would fail. Here’s how it would go: When the small group of 10-year-olds had read the story of the Tower of Babel, I would haul out my big bin of Legos. The students couldn’t believe their eyes. “We get to play with Legos in class?!” they would gasp in wonder.
“Yes,” I explained. “You are going to work together for 10 minutes to build the tallest, most amazing tower that you can. But here’s the catch: There will be no talking! You may make noises. You may gesture. You may even speak a language that others don’t know, but you may NOT speak one word of English. I want you to feel like those folks in Babel who have to work together while no longer understanding one another's speech.”
After some grumbling, the wide-eyed students would dig into the blocks. Invariably, they would start out working together, using gibberish and directing one another with pokes and pantomime. Invariably, half of the students would quickly give up. They would find more pleasure in pulling out interesting bits of Lego than in trying to communicate with the others. Instead of a common tower rising high in the air, several small, individual creations would start to pop up around the table.
Invariably, one or two of the students would decide that this wouldn’t do. Not allowed to talk, the self-appointed leaders would start using physical violence to convince their classmates to cooperate. They would try to smash the individual creations, or to slap away wayward hands, or to snatch all of the pieces for themselves. And then I would have to intervene.
This part of the assignment worked as expected. Lack of communication had confounded the unity of the group. I would snap a photo of their work.
Then I would move on to the counterexample. “That was hard, wasn’t it?” I would affirm. We’re going to build again, but this time you are going to be able to talk to one another,” I explained. The students would cheer and wiggle with excitement. “Let’s see what happens. Ready, set, go!”
This is the part of the lesson that would fail every time.
Invariably, they would start out working together, talking merrily and planning great things. Invariably, half of the students would get distracted, mining for cool pieces in the pile of Legos and doing their own thing. Invariably, the self-appointed leaders would get annoyed. They’d try to gain the attention and obedience of the creative-types. They’d cajole and insult in turn. When their wayward classmates wouldn’t listen, they’d abandon words and start to grab, destroy, and snatch. And then I’d have to intervene. When I would snap a photo of the second “tower,” it was never much higher or grander than the first one.
Every year, the children proved that the Tower of Babel story is not as simple as we often make it out to be. It’s about more than language.
God has told humankind after the Flood to spread out and start over with a new kind of world. “Scatter, multiply, fill the empty land with my beloved children. Create, plant, harvest, care for my land,” God cries. And instead, what do the people do? They stop in the land of Shinar and settle there. They stop exploring. They stop listening to God’s desire for them. Unity becomes an excuse for the powerful to take control. “Make those bricks, or else,” the strong ones bellow, just like the Egyptian lords to their Hebrew slaves. “More straw, more bricks, faster, faster! Babel must be Number One.” And like a teacher watching her lesson plan go awry, God has to intervene. God confuses and scatters the proud in their conceit. God sends the cautious and fearful sprawling over the face of all the earth, ready or not.
Our Christian Pentecost is often cast as the undoing of the scattering and confusion at Babel. If so, it too must be about more than language. All of those Judeans gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of Pentecost were Jews. They might have been born—or had ancestors who were born—in far-flung regions of the Mediterranean world. But they already shared a common identity—and language. Like the disciples, many of them likely understood both Aramaic and Greek. Aramaic and Greek were common languages learned throughout the region for the purpose of trade and commerce. Gathered on Pentecost in Jerusalem, the disciples could have just spoken Aramaic to the crowd, and all of those Phrygians and Cappadocians would have understood them--no big deal. If the problem that day were one of mere comprehension, there was no need for a miracle.
While they could understand Greek and Aramaic, however, these Jews would also have had “birth languages” that they spoke at home with family and friends. It’s these “birth languages” that they heard coming from the lips of the disciples. My daughter learned about the importance of “birth languages" when she spent her junior year abroad in Senegal. She went over there thinking that everyone would be speaking French, the “official language” imposed by the French colonizers and inscribed on the brochures. What she learned was that, while many people understood French, they hated speaking it. To them, French rang out in tones of oppression and fear. In order to join the conversation, my daughter had to quickly learn Wolof, the birth language of the people in her region. Only in Wolof would the people share their deepest identity and bare their souls.
When the Judeans in Jerusalem began to hear and to speak God’s word in all of their various birth languages, God was speaking to their inmost being. God didn’t act like the many Christian missionaries who went over to Africa saying, “You had better learn our language and follow our cultural patterns if you want to know God.” Instead, the Holy Spirit was bringing the Good News to each small group, celebrating and amplifying their diversity by using their birth languages. After the miracle at Pentecost, the identity of Parthians, Arabs, and Cappadocians didn’t depend on their ability to speak Greek or to share one culture; instead, it was based on the Spirit gathering them as a diverse Christian people under the Lordship of Jesus.
What matters at Pentecost then is the spiritual transformation. What matters are changed hearts and emboldened souls: hearts and souls ready to go out to spread the hope and promise of new life to all the nations of the earth. Suddenly, Jesus’ fearful disciples are no longer hiding in an upper room for fear of persecution. Suddenly, they’re empowered to shout the Good News of hope and freedom in Christ. Suddenly, the downtrodden Judeans are no longer unified only as a conquered people speaking an imposed tongue. Now they are free to hear the Good News in their God-given diversity.
An interesting fact in our lesson from Acts is that Luke’s list is not historically accurate. The Medes and Elamites no longer existed as nations in Luke’s day. They were ancient peoples of the region who had disappeared way before Jesus was even born. By including these ancient peoples, Luke shows us that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit can’t be bound by time or place. If Luke can place the long-ago past in the presence of the Spirit, couldn’t present-day Episcopalians, present-day St. Ambrosians, be there, too?
Our world, especially our nation, is in chaos these days. Just last month, there was an article in The Atlantic called “After Babel: How Social Media Dissolved the Mortar of Society and Made America Stupid.” The author compares our society with the chaos after the fall of the Tower of Babel. For us, it is a fall precipitated by the destructive power of communication through social media: by a lack of shared social capital, strong institutions, and shared stories.[1] The article makes a lot of sense. The Powers and Principalities that oppress and control seem to grow bolder every day. Our common language is interwoven with misinformation and threats. Some birth languages are ridiculed and denied. Social media continues to carve us into small groups that don’t understand one another. Community dies. Loneliness spreads. Violence surges. Even the Church shrinks and huddles, too afraid of dying truly to live.
But today, yes, today and every day, the Holy Spirit takes a giant bucket of Hope and Promise and pours it out in our huddled midst like Legos on a table. [Pour out Legos.] “Whoosh,” fall the pieces, bouncing and crashing and stirring up dust. Flames flicker and bulletins rattle and little children shout, “Hurray! Something new!”
“Build,” God says, “build my Community of Love! Carry it out into the world and scatter it among all people.” The Spirit whispers to me, to you, in our birth languages, encouraging the diversity of our gifts. “It’s OK to paw through here to find the pieces that speak to your heart,” She encourages. “Find them and hold them up for all to see. But don’t hoard them. Build with them. Join them with what others have found. Go on—I am with you. The power of Love holds you up on all sides.”
Will we build together? Or will some withdraw, while others try to maintain control? Are we ready to join together in dreaming God’s active dream of Love for the whole world? Thankfully, the Spirit is stubborn. Like my lesson plan, the Spirit’s question will just keep on coming, again and again. [Instruct people to pick up a piece of Lego at Communion. Invite them to take it to the back of the church after the service and add it to a common creation, saying, “I am called to build for X”
[1] Jonathan Haidt, “After Babel: How Social Media Dissolved the Mortar of Society and Made America Stupid.” The Atlantic, May 2022, 56-57.
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