Sermon
The Tower of Babel
The Rev. Jack D. Bryant
Hope Unitarian Church
April 23, 2006
First Reading: Genesis 11:1-9
1Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4Then 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.’ 5The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. 6And 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. 7Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.’ 8So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9Therefore 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.
Second Reading: Reinhold Niebuhr. Beyond Tragedy. Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1937.
The essential truth in a great religious myth cannot
be gauged by the immediate occasion which prompted it; nor apprehended in its
more obvious intent. The story of the
Tower of Babel may have been prompted by the fact that an unfinished temple of
Marduk in Babylon excited the imagination of surrounding desert people, who
beheld its arrested majesty, to speculate on the reason for its unfinished
state. Its immediate purpose may have
been to give a mythical account of the origin of the world's multiplicity of
languages and cultures. Neither its
doubtful origin nor the fantastic character of its purported history will
obscure its essential message to those who are wise enough to discern the
permanently valid insights in primitive imagination.
The Tower of Babel myth belongs to the same category
of mythical fancies as the Promethean myth, though the two are independent and
not derived from each other. They both
picture God as being jealous of man's ambitions, achievements and
pretensions. The modern mind, which has
exchanged the wooden-headed literalism of orthodoxy for a shallow rationalism,
can find no validity in the idea of a jealous God. It either does not believe in God at all, or the God of its faith
is so very kind and fatherly as to be really grandmotherly. A jealous God expresses the primitive fear
of higher powers from which the modern man feels himself happily
emancipated. Yet the idea of a jealous
God expresses a permanently valid sense of guilt in all human striving. Religion, declares the modern man, is
consciousness of our highest social values.
Nothing could be further from the truth. True religion is a profound uneasiness about our highest social
values. Its uneasiness springs from the
knowledge that the God whom it worships transcends the limits of finite man,
while this same man is constantly tempted to forget the finiteness of his
cultures and civilization and to pretend a finality for them which they do not
have. Every civilization and every
culture is thus a Tower of Babel.
Sermon
If you believe the bible is the literal, inerrant, word of God without contradictions or conflicts, the story of the Tower of Babel is a problem. It purports to explain how different nations and languages came into being. However, if you read the chapter of Genesis that immediately precedes the story you will discover language that describes the world as already having multiple nations and languages. That preceding passage concludes with these words, “These are the descendants of Shem, by their families, their languages, their lands, and their nations.” (Genesis 10:31). It is obvious without looking outside the bible that the story of the Tower of Babel as an explanation for multiple languages and nations isn’t true. What fascinates me, however, is the way so many people insist on reducing the story to that single issue.
Biblical literalists insist the story is literally true. Rational literalists who reject the bible say the part about multiple languages is the whole point of the story, therefore it is nonsense because we know it didn’t happen. Biblical literalists want to spend their time looking for the foundations of the Tower. Rational literalists who reject the bible want to spend their time mocking the search for the foundations of the Tower. As I look at the usual debate and discussion it occurs to me that both extremes are actually united in a single purpose. They both want to make it a story about a big construction project and why people have multiple languages - one in order to believe, the other to sanctify skepticism. And I think the reason they do so is because the absolute last thing either wants to talk about is what the story actually means - a meaning painful for both.
The truth of the story is not in its factuality anymore than Gulliver’s Travels is about little people living on an island nor Voltaire’s Candide about taking a sea voyage. I believe the truth of the story is in its message about hubris and pride and arrogance. Neither biblical literalists nor rational literalists want anything to do with such a message. Both, I believe, will fight to the death to avoid having to confront what the story is actually about because it means they would have to confront their own pride, their own arrogance, their own hubris.
The modern human being, according to Reinhold Niebuhr, declares religion to be consciousness of our highest social values. I would make it stronger. Religion is often presented as absolute certainty about our highest social values. Religion, therefore, is the absolute and unquestionable certainty that there is a God and he loves us and wants us to be happy. Religion is the absolute certainty that there is no God - what we call good is only that which gives human satisfaction or pleasure. Religion is the absolute certainty that one’s moral stance is beyond question. Religion is the absolute certainty that one’s political agenda is the agenda of God. Religion is the absolute certainty that no woman should be allowed to have an abortion. Religion is the absolute certainty that every woman should always be allowed to have an abortion. Religion is the absolute certainty that Hurricane Katrina was God’s justice for American immorality. Religion is the absolute certainty that all religions are really the same, each person’s belief is true, all beliefs are equal. You don’t even have to believe in God as an external supernatural entity to hold some of these beliefs. There are always God’s in waiting and the most convenient of all such God’s in waiting is the self. But that’s not religion. Genuine religion, says Niebhur, is a profound unease about what our highest values should be, a profound unease about what is meant by God - that word we use as the catch-all to describe our highest values. And that is the lasting message of the Tower of Babel: not a message about linguistic history, but a cautionary story of human hubris, a story that tells us that genuine religion is not moral certainty, but profound humility about what is right and wrong.
Don’t get me wrong. I have my own strongly held beliefs. I believe everyone should have their own creed, their own dogmas which they should hold tightly. And I believe the wishy-washy attitudes of some people are just as problematic, just as full of arrogance and hubris as the most dogmatic of individuals. I heard an example of this on NPR’s All Things Considered last week. Laurel Snyder, raised as a practicing Jew in a mixed religious family and now in her own religiously mixed marriage, described how people frequently assume she is in favor of interfaith seders and multi-cultural events. But she isn’t. She respects both the Jewish and Christian traditions of her family. She speaks of attending her own Jewish Seder this year and then going to her mother’s Easter dinner. She has, I believe, the wisdom to know that the two religious traditions of her family are different and that to try to put them in a blender and produce a hybrid, an interfaith seder is to produce something that is watered down, to produce something that assumes there is nothing special about either. Both traditions are diminished. What is elevated is the human hubris that reduces both events to entertainment that can be mixed and matched for personal pleasure, for a personal sense of how superior one is. It is the modern day equivalent of the ancient Romans who believed that they were the most powerful nation on earth because they worshiped all the Gods. No one ever accused the Romans of humility - and we should not assume that claiming all religions are the same and mixing and matching holidays and rituals to suit our purpose is humble or respectful or that hanging the symbols of all world religions in a church makes one open minded or religiously advanced.
Niebuhr
concluded that, “Every civilization
and every culture is thus a Tower of Babel.”
I believe he is right. Every
human endeavor contains within itself a sense of pride, a sense of
accomplishment that all too easily becomes the ascendant. That leads me to suspect there may actually
have been a Tower of Babel - not a tower destroyed by God, but one that collapsed
because human pride exceeded its engineering ability. Remember the collapse of the levies in New Orleans? - the failure
of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge that fell so spectacularly? - or the sinking of
that unsinkable ship, the Titanic? It
seems a natural human trait to believe we have conquered the world, that we are
the Lords of creation, that reality must bow to our will. We see ourselves as larger than the
world. The world must bend to our will. We will not bend to it. And it’s not just in matters of
engineering. In the past decade we saw
the demand for welfare reform because the welfare system we had created was a
disaster. And right now, as I speak,
there are those who want to “fix” all our public enterprises by cutting taxes
and increasing spending - the very latest Tower of Babel in the guise of public
policy.
Now my idea of the divine is not that of a middle eastern potentate. I long ago rejected the idea of God as an entity who demands tribute. More often than not I’m not entirely sure what I mean by God - because, as a religious liberal, I take seriously the notion that God is mystery. But of this much I am certain. The idea of God - for me - represents the certainty that there is something greater than me, it represents the knowledge that I and all of humanity are finite. Who I am and who we are can only pretend to a finality of meaning. When we set ourselves up as the ultimate measure of things, we limit ourselves. Our true aspiration must be to commit ourselves to something larger, something greater than any individual or even humanity as a whole. That is why Niebuhr said the uneasiness that is the root of religion, “springs from the knowledge that the God whom it worships transcends the limits of finite [men and women]. . ..”
In a few minutes, as is our custom, we will receive the morning offering. It is an important part of our service. More than one commentator has said that it isn’t a worship service unless there is an offering. And what we do with our offering illustrates why I think that is true. We have a beautiful church and beautiful grounds. It’s expensive to maintain. There is also the expense of staff and other operating expenses. We always seem short of money for the church. There’s always something extra we need to do right here on this beautiful hill, from parking lot maintenance to plans for the replacement of air conditioning units. But this morning - as we’ve been doing for some time - we will set aside half of the cash and any checks specially designated for our outreach program. That part of the offering will help provide a meal once a month at the Day Center for the Homeless. It will help with the families we assist from time to time. It will help pay for some of the things we do for Hamilton Middle School. We do this because as important as our needs are, there is a need larger than ours, a need greater than ours. I think that’s why some of the experts on starting new churches say a new church should delay as long as possible the acquisition of property and a building. It is easy for the physical structures and property of a church - as beautiful and wonderful and even as necessary as they may be - to become a Tower of Babel. Yet - at the same time - vows of poverty and the lack of physical possessions can be a spiritual Tower of Babel, providing a phony sense of moral superiority.
I would like to think we can find a way to avoid building our own Tower of Babel. I think what we are starting to do with our offering is a good beginning. But I think more is required. I think we need to be willing to make a part of our spiritual patterns a commitment to humility. I believe that’s the best part of original sin. As a whole I don’t have much use for original sin, an idea that has been terribly abusive. But contained within that ancient idea is a sense of guilt, a sense of humility, a sense of moral finiteness that we would do well to remember. Niebuhr, speaking of the orthodox kind of religious culture, said,
A religious culture always
commits the most grievous sin of pretension precisely because it believes in a
God who transcends all human knowledge.
Such cultures use their supposed perfect understanding of that transcendent God to see themselves as transcendent, to create their own spiritual Tower of Babel. But rational religion, the liberal religious culture too often comprehends its own human consciousness, its own human obtained knowledge and wisdom as the basis for its own Tower of Babel that rises just a little higher to its own false height.
Perhaps that’s the real meaning of religious warnings about not judging others. Perhaps that the real meaning of religious warnings against determining the righteousness of others. Perhaps, just perhaps, the root of genuine religion is, as Niebuhr argues, a profound sense of unease not only of what our highest social values should be, but a profound sense of unease about our own righteousness, our own values and our own sense of pride.
Amen.