There’s an ancient story that speaks of origins of human ethnic diversity. It is a bit like our own Aboriginal people’s Dreamtime stories of origins. They are wise, very wise stories that contain deep truth and wisdom. This story speaks of people who continually succumb to the temptation and desire to be great – God-like. Individuals seek power and control over others and think they are powerful, like God. They learn violence as well and this adds to their sense of power and ‘greatness’ over others.
Then these people learn to work together. They built a city that could hold them together against the natural dispersion and scattering that was occurring in their world. They thought through the possibilities and realised that (in their world-view) the heavens, the realm of the gods, was just up in the sky. If they could build a tower and climb into the sky they would be like God (or gods)! If you dwell in the place of the gods, you will be god-like. So together they pooled their wisdom, strength, knowledge and began to create a huge tower into the sky. With each stage the excitement grew as they moved closer to their desire for power and god-likeness; a powerful group of people who were of same language, culture and united in greatness.
As the story goes, God came down and saw what these people were doing. God recognised that these people were resisting the natural diversity inherent in the world, in creation. God recognised that this group of people wanted to re-create their world in their image, their way and resist the movement of people’s across the earth in the beauty of diversity and difference. God scattered these peoples and confused their languages, thus ensuring the essence of the created realm continued. It’s a fascinating little story that has stood for thousands of years and can be read in Genesis 11.
The truth of this little story, however, continues to hold strong. Last century, Hitler determined to recreate the world in his own image – an Arian race of true humans who would achieve true greatness (god-likeness!). He sought to destroy difference and diversity, weakness and vulnerability. His megalomaniacal exploits threatened the very stability of the world and thrust us into the hell of WWII. Wherever there is the desire to constrain diversity and difference and create power, control and greatness within a particular image, form or type of human, we have the Tower of Babel story rekindled. It is seen in Apartheid in South Africa and the racial segregation of the US, Australia… In fact wherever one race is elevated above others and there is an unjust accumulation of power and control in their hands, we have a problem. We hear echoes of the story when gender, culture, faith… are asserted to be more true and pure than another. When people congregate as a uniform group that deny diversity and difference in an exclusive or ignorant manner the Babel story echoes down through history to us.
One of the truths of this story is that humanity is not God and that uniformity is counter to the reality of creation – and the essence of God! We are to be united and equal but not uniform and identical.
There is another ancient story that we will also read this week – it isn’t quite as ancient, only 2000 years old. You can read it in the New testament book of Acts – chapter 2. In this story we again hear echoes of the essential elements of the Babel story. It comes after the Easter story when the followers of Jesus are closed off from the world considering their options, awaiting the next step. Out of nowhere the Spirit of God comes to these people. In language that speaks of wind blowing, fiery tongues spreading out over the people. They then began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them.
In Jerusalem that day were Jewish people from across the earth, gathered for the holy festival of Shavuot. These were natives of Judea who had been scattered across the world throughout their history and made their home in new lands amongst diverse people. They maintained something of their own culture and faith – the dietary laws, prayer, worship of the one God… Periodically they made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem as they were able for religious festivals.
On this day they suddenly heard the followers of Jesus, Jewish Christians speaking of God’s love in their own language! This brought great confusion and the last part of the first section of the story ends with: ‘What does this mean?’
This story is an affirmation of the Divinely inspired diversity of the Babel story. God doesn’t bring the people together in uniformity. God doesn’t enable everyone to hear and understand the one language – even some Divine, heavenly language of God. God speaks in the diversity of the languages of people! God expresses Divine love into the language and culture of all people.
So, why do we try to make faith mono-cultural? My Masters supervisor, Rev Dr Don Carrington, a former missionary in the Pacific, said that the early missionary movement as about colonising, civilising and Christianising – making everyone like us! So much of the church’s life (like the rest of society) is about uniformity, about everyone agreeing on the same things, looking the same, acting the same, thinking the same, being the same. The story of Pentecost (and Babel) invite us to embrace and express our differences and to celebrate this diversity – but in love!
We are to recognise that humanity is not God and we don’t have to try to be God! When we struggle for our own greatness or to exercise power over others we deny the uniqueness of ourselves and other people. The result is the usual displays of violence, exclusion and conflict based on envy, ignorance, fear and poor self-worth.
Both stories encourage diversity and difference. When humans are willing to work together out of their diversity great things can emerge. We can do great things together but only if we respect difference and don’t seek to be all-powerful. The Spirit of God inspires love amongst us and that love lifts our vision to reach out in understanding and compassion, justice and inclusion.
When our goal is self-importance and glorification, power and might, we will ultimately fall and fail. When our goal is love and community, compassion and inclusion we can never be defeated. Elsewhere the Apostle Paul says: ‘Now these three remain: Faith hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.’
Geoff's Reflections on Life and Spirit 