Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information. Today, we are going to wrap up our walk through the primeval history of Genesis.

And by the way, I think this series has been a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the chance to listen to Scott and Bobby teach over the last couple of weeks. But to hear Genesis 12 compare it against each other and then compare it against an even more ancient story like the Enuma Elish, or to read Noah in the light of the Gilgamesh epic and the Atrahasis, I think this has brought new perspective and insight and a lot of you have reached out to let us know that. So thank you. But certainly, this is part of what we mean when we say intellectually Bible seriously, Allowing the text to speak for itself.

Allowing the text to choose the stories that it will critique and the stories that it will tell. Genesis is not just uncritically accepting the mythology of the ancient world. In fact, it is pushing back on it and this is where the meaning is made for us. Last week, Bobby walked us through Noah and the flood, which is, we can be honest here beyond the fun images of animals getting loaded into a giant boat, a pretty difficult story to make sense of. But I think for me, the key is in the contrast that Bobby highlighted between the Genesis narrative and 2 even older, more ancient versions of that flood story, The Gilgamesh Epic and the Atrahasis.

Because in both of those versions, the story is remarkably similar to what we read in Genesis. There's a boat and a flood and an animals. In fact, in the Gilgamesh epic, the main character of that part of the story named Utnapishtim is given the same dimensions as Noah for the boat that he is supposed to build. And that boat comes to rest on the top of a mountain, just like Noah, And when the rain stops, he releases a dove and then a swallow and then a raven, just like Noah. And when the raven doesn't return, Utnapishtim lets out all the animals and prepares a sacrifice just like Noah, except that in both the stories of Utnapishtim and Atrahasis, once the flood is gone and the world is restored, the hero is then spirited away to paradise with the gods.

It's only Noah who is tasked to stay and to rebuild, to make mistakes, and then to learn from them. And that seems to me to be the point of the Hebrew version of the story. Salvation isn't just surviving and escaping. Salvation is staying, and rebuilding, and recovering everything that has been lost, trusting that God is with us all the way through, even in our stumbles to the very end. You see, to know what a story is saying you need to know what a story is challenging.

And that is where both the brilliance and the beauty of Genesis resides for us. Now, today we have one more story to explore, and that is the Tower of Babel. But first, let's pray. God, who takes all of our stories and commits to walking them through with us, Will we open ourselves to hear both about the path that lies ahead. Everything that you imagine for us, But also about the ways that you would critique and transform the steps behind us.

In that, where we learn to trust in both your guidance and your review that there is kindness and wisdom to be found in the way back to you. As we read these ancient stories, these origin tales, myths that ground our experience of the world in you. Might we also be drawn back to this conviction that you are at work even today. Healing and repairing, teaching, and guiding, trusting that there is wisdom here to be uncovered for us. If today, we find ourselves feeling isolated and alone, may these stories welcome us back into your arms.

If today we are feeling different and outside, may these stories remind us of our place safe in you. If today we are feeling forgotten or ignored, may these stories remind us that nothing escapes your grace, and that we are always remembered well with you. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Okay.

The Tower of Babel. This is a pretty fun one. And today, we are gonna talk about embracing Technological Advances, all about Plurality and our Language Games. But let's start by reading the story together. We're going to read it.

I'm going to make a lot of comments as we go, and then we'll circle back to talk about what it all means. But, we're going to start today in Genesis 11, and this is verse 1. Now, the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. Now remember, this story is set after the flood.

So these are the descendants of Noah spreading out and repopulating the earth. What's interesting here though is that in chapter 10 of Genesis, just before this, we actually get an account of the descendants of Noah doing just that. Except in verse 5 of chapter 10, we read that the sons of Javan spread out to the maritime areas, each by their clans, with their nations, and with their own languages. In verse 20, we read that the sons of Ham spread out by their clans and languages in their territories and nations. And then in verse 31, we hear that the sons of Shem do the same with their own languages.

So what's happening now when we're told that the world had one language? Well, there's actually a few options here and all of them are pretty interesting. 1st, this could be what we call chronological dislocation and that's just a really fancy way that scholars like to say that the story has gotten mixed up and out of order. And that does make some sense. At the end of chapter 10 is a listing of all the sons of Noah and where they end up, and it concludes with Shem and his descendants and their languages.

Then we read the story of Babel, but then immediately after that story in verse 11, it returns to Shem saying, now here is the account of Shem's family line, and the story continues where it left off. So it could just be as simple as Babel was supposed to go before chapter 10, but somewhere along the line it got juxtaposed into the middle of the story of Shem and created a bit of confusion. I think that is probably, honestly, just the simplest answer for what's happening here. It's not, however, our only option. Because option 2 is bound up in the very specific language of verse 1 here.

In English we read, now the whole world had one language and a common speech. But more literally in Hebrew, what it says is, the world had one lip and one word. And some scholars think that what this language signifies is precisely what we are seeing in chapter 10. That these dialects, but there is still enough memory of a common tongue to enable communication between them. Now, it might be limited, in a sense, to one lip and one word, but the shared story is still there.

Communication is still there. Coordination is still possible. That seems pretty reasonable to me as well. There is also a third option. This one goes to the nature of these stories.

The phrase, the whole world, is literally the whole earth here in Hebrew. But, just like we saw in Noah, these types of stories, regional experiences tend to get scaled up into their universal application. So, Noah's flood covered his whole earth and Babel's communities constitute their whole world. The point isn't necessarily that the writers think that whole world actually spoke one language. They just told us that that's not the case.

The point is that this story is so important that everyone needs to read it, metabolize it, internalize it. We all need to see ourselves here in this story of Babel. And that seems pretty reasonable to me as well. These stories in Genesis are ancient. They are not primitive.

In In fact, they are often quite sophisticated in their goals and how they lead us through a narrative to accomplish them. The point of all this being that when you come across these, quote unquote, contradictions in your Bible, there can be a tendency to want to immediately try to find a way to harmonize them and explain it all away, as if somehow we just need to defend the Bible and protect the Bible from prying eyes that might ask too many questions. Now, sometimes what seems like a contradiction actually can be explained pretty easily with some context. That happens a lot. It's fine.

Other times though, like this one, taking the time to think about and reflect on the contradiction actually opens up a lot of insight into what the writer may be saying and why they wrote, what they were focused on, and what the real heart of the story is all about. And in some sense, contradictions then can actually be a real gift to us that helps us to slow down and think more deliberately as we read. Now, we're going to keep going with Genesis and Babel here in a moment, but just a note before we do. That idea of slowing down and reading more deliberately, paying attention to our contradictions, even in our own lives and reflecting on them, that can be a really powerful exercise if we internalize it. Truth is, all of us, every one of us, all of us carry contradictions with us all the time.

Right? Like if you were to ask me what I think about kids and screens and how much exposure they should have, I would say to you, like very little. But if you were to come to my house and peer in the window unannounced Please don't do that, by the way. But if you did, you would probably find at least a non zero chance of both my kids on their iPads and Rachel and I looking down at our phones lovingly. And I can feel defeated by that contradiction.

I can ignore that contradiction and pretend it doesn't exist, or I can reflect on the fact that parenting is not at all what I thought it would be when I got into this gig. And parenting is often about doing your best for those you love, despite the fact you regularly fall short of all your ideals. That kind of honest reflection on our contradictions can actually move us toward a better understanding of what we're actually aiming for in life. Where then, I can make deliberate choices about where I want to course correct, or where I want to have grace for myself, and how hard it is just to be a parent. But that kind of slow, deliberate, thoughtful reading of our contradictions and the Bible And by the way, that is exactly what we're talking about when we say Lectio Divina, if you've come across that term before, but that kind of slow, critical, but kind reading of the Bible that can sometimes open up all kinds of new questions and insights and lessons for us to make sense of.

Now, we've only read a sentence here, so we gotta keep going. Verse 3. They said to each other, come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly. They used brick instead of sewn and tar for mortar. Now, this is a fun little detail.

Right? Particularly, if you're ever thinking about building your own tower to God, now you know how to do it. But the reason this is here is because this is actually a very significant technological advancement in the human story, and it foreshadows stories to come. Stone construction is an incredibly energy intensive undertaking. Throughout human history, we've made some amazing structures out of stone, but that meant mining the stones and cutting them into shape and lugging them into place.

It was all very literally back breaking work. And so the kind of stone constructions archaeology are either usually very small scale or very religiously devoted in their nature. The invention of bricks, on the other hand, changed everything for us. No longer were we dependent on materials we could find, we could make them for ourselves. And that discovery enabled all kinds of advances in the types of projects that we could imagine.

In fact, even the most impressive stone structures, things like the pyramids, those were made possible by brick based construction to house the workforces that were needed to do all of the stone work, which by the way is exactly what the Hebrews will end up in slavery doing for the Egyptians, making bricks. In fact, the very specific phrase here, making bricks, is repeated again in the next book of the Bible, Exodus, to describe their enslavement. So this story is, at least in part, about the arrogance of technological advancement, and the way that our intoxication with what we can do can actually lead us to dehumanize each other in the pursuit of dominating creation and creator. Cheaper, faster, bigger is not always a step in the right direction, particularly when it enslaves and depresses human beings. Let's keep reading.

They said, Come, let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise, we will be scattered over the face of the earth. So they got some grand plans and at least a little of either, a, arrogance or b, slight misapprehension of how high they're going to have to go to teach heaven. Because next we read that the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that people were building. And, guys, this is a joke.

It's supposed to be funny. My son has been getting ready to visit his grandpa this week. Kids and wife got on a plane to Ontario yesterday. I'll be joining them in about a week. But he has been reading this joke book, preparing some material for grandpa.

All the jokes are awful. I feel like a solid chunk of parenting is about pretending to laugh at your kids' terrible jokes. But my son, Eaton, he asked me for some material. He said, What's your favorite joke? And I said to him, Well, a guy tried to sell me a coffin this week, but that's the last thing I need.

Now, he didn't really get it at first. But once I explained it, he loved it. He thought this was great. So look out dad dad, if you're watching today. This one's definitely coming for grandpa this week.

But verse 5 here in Genesis is a joke. The plan is to build a tower to God except God actually has to come down from heaven just to see the darn thing. That's how an ancient writer throws shade. Nice tower you got there. It'd be a shame if someone were to wreck it.

But the Lord said, if as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan will do impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language, so that they will not understand each other. Now, a couple of things here. First of all, God seems to have a pretty solid confidence in humanity here. Right?

I mean, are they going to get to the heavens? Maybe not. But they've got some gumption, so we'll give them some credit, Which brings us to another question though. Who is this us? And there's 2 options here.

Either this is something like a plural of majesty. We'll talk about that. Or this is a reference to a divine council. We'll talk about that. But if you remember, we saw something like this in Genesis 1.

Let us make humans in our image. And so the humans were created, male and female, in the image of God. That's not a reference to a bunch of gods. It's also certainly not a reference to the Christian idea of Trinity. It's one of these 2 other options.

In English, if you go to England and you were ever to meet the queen, she might say, we are very pleased to meet you. That's called a plurality of majesty. And it just means that she's fancy and important. Hebrew does not have a direct parallel to that. It doesn't really exist in Semitic languages.

But, what you do have over time is this slow transition in thinking from the gods to the God. And a lot of the language carries over. So, in a lot of Semitic languages, there's a form of the word Elohim, which is technically a plural word. But by the time the Hebrew stories come along, it is being used both for the gods and singularly for the Hebrew God. And it's almost like the God is equal to or above all the gods.

And that's sort of similar to the English idea of a plurality of majesty. Yahweh is fancy like the queen. That's the thinking. Not entirely the same, but it's a good parallel. The second option is what we call the divine council.

And again, that doesn't mean a bunch of gods. It just means God and God's audience. So the angels or whatever or whoever it is that exists with God up above the earth. Remember, this is ancient cosmology. God is up, death is down.

Either way, when we read, let us make humans or let us go down, we should not be thinking of a gaggle of gods. We really shouldn't be thinking about Trinity here. This is just how ancient people talked about God. So, God goes down, confuses their language, scatters them over the earth and the humans stop building. And this is why the city was called Babel, because the Lord confused their language, and from there the Lord scattered them over the face of the earth.

Now there's one more piece we need to talk about here. We read that the Lord confused. The word here is Baal, their language. And so the city was called Babel, which is actually the Hebrew word for Babylon. Now, does the author think that this Babel is that Babylon?

The Babylon that conquered Judah in the 6th century and took the Hebrew people into exile, an exile where most of the Hebrew bible, including the book of Genesis, was probably written down and compiled. Well, probably not. It could be that this story was written as an origin story for their enemies, but more likely what's happening here, is that the writer is poking fun at Babylon. God beleled them. And so to this day, all of the greedy and the arrogant are known as Babylon.

The writer is not saying that this city in the story is Babylon. The writer is saying that Babylon is just like this city. And one day all that opposes God will be scattered just like this. Okay. That's our story.

What does it all mean? And for that, ironically, we need to learn to think in multiple languages. The plot is pretty clear. Humans get a little arrogant. Our technology makes us think we are impervious to consequence.

There might be something there to reflect impervious to consequence. It might be something there to reflect on when it comes to our environmental record right now. But God is somewhat amused, a little annoyed, and so God decides to reset the playing field. And, traditionally, if you are a North American Christian, where theology has been done in the wake of colonial expansion, you are going to see this story as a curse. God sets back our societal ambitions, our arrogance impedes our progress forward, and because we challenged God, we are now scattered.

The thing is, that particular reading of this particular story is informed by a particular language game. A cultural narrative that assumes that the march of history is toward one dominant culture, that the purpose of culture is assimilation of all other cultures, and that the point of culture in fact is a long ongoing competition that will inevitably yield a victor, one culture and language. Ironically, it's a very Darwinian approach to human history. Thankfully, though, that is not how everyone hears this story. Because, if we go back to where we started this series 10 chapters ago in Genesis 1, when God forms a good creation from divine generosity and humanity is formed in the image of God's overflowing creativity, what does God say to those very first humans?

Do you remember? Genesis 128. God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number. Multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Guard over the fish in the sea and the birds in the air, over every living creature that moves on the ground.

In fact, that's kind of the advice that God gives to all of creation. Everything that is created is supposed to image the Creator. So there are trees that make trees, and fish that make fish, and birds, and animals, and humans that create, and procreate, and name, and expand, and fill out and diversify the earth. Except, what do we do? We pollute the earth with violence.

We dominate the earth with technology, we refuse to be fruitful and multiply, and instead we try to create one story with a central city, a hegemonic power structure through which we imagine ourselves replacing God. And at Babel God says, what if we try this again? See, the fascinating thing here is that if you read this story through the lens of indigenous or Asian or Indian theologians, you will often come across interpretations that suggest not the curse of Babel, but instead the blessing of Babel that returns us to the multiplication and diversity, the beauty of human flourishing around the earth that God had always intended. Where one cultural language sees a punishment, because their language primarily tells a story of competition and domination, Another cultural language will see blessing because their language primarily tells a story that comes from outside the centers of power. You got one story with 2 very different interpretations depending on the language that we bring with us to it.

To quote the theologian, Damiani Niles, she says, The problem with power is that it privileges the central voice over all others. And then decontextualizes that central voice and uses it to override all others, silencing those that don't have the power to overcome it. Those voices that are silenced are those at the margins, cutting us off from the liberative and therefore salvific insights they bring with them. Or to put it another way, she continues, the decision to hear the voices here unto ignored is not only a good and just thing to do. It is a necessary step to be able to receive a more full understanding of the self, the other, and the divine, one necessary for the true flourishing of human life.

Now, is one version of this story more correct, more right? Is one the proper way to read Babel? I'm not sure I'm qualified to give a definitive answer to that, but I am very fascinated by the idea that a story about the diversity of language invites us to read through different language perspectives. One of the things that theologians have picked up on with Babel is its connection to Pentecost. At Babel, our languages are scattered.

At Pentecost, all people hear the good news of Jesus through one voice, and that's often been seen as the reverse of Babel. But theologians like Niles give us a new way to think about that. See, when the Spirit arrives at Pentecost in Acts 2, Peter, one of the OG disciples gets up and gives a sermon. And the miracle of that moment is that all of the people that are present, to quote Acts here, from Parthians to Medes to Elamites, from the residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene, even visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts, Christians and Arabs, all of them hear the good news of Jesus in their own language. But what's fascinating is that if you're really paying attention here, the writer of Acts explicitly calls out the fact that each of these listeners hears in their own language.

The story is not about a return to a pre Babel world with 1 dominant culture and one language. The miracle of Spirit is one that enables communication and understanding and grace across all of those same beautiful differences that God gifted us with at Babel. And this is the profound thing about reading very ancient stories. They are so foreign to us. So disconnected from our world.

They are so ill suited for our time and place that it's almost like they force us to adopt new reading strategies. But the thing is, if we can, and we can open ourselves to new ideas and perspectives, if we can do the work of placing ourselves in ancient worlds, and we can set aside the things that we assume when we come to a story, even just for a second, what we often find is something far more inviting, far more beautiful, far more transcendent than we perhaps first imagined. Stories that speak today with as much authority as they ever did, but often it's only once we find the courage to surrender ourselves to each other, and how others read the same stories that we learned how to speak in multiple languages and extract the depth of meaning that's hidden here for us. And once we do, we are then invited to participate in that same creative experiment that started all the way back when God began to create. Let's pray.

God, for all of these ancient stories that invite us to read, not just with our own eyes, but with new eyes. Eyes that come from those around us. Eyes that come from ancient peoples. Eyes that come from different cultures and bring all of those perspectives to bear on one beautiful story. May we learn to surrender ourselves and our assumptions to each other.

To believe, to trust that there is wisdom in how another sees, and that when we are able to incorporate all of that wisdom together we get a better picture of who you are. And then God, might we participate in the ongoing construction of your kingdom around us. All of the flourishing and diversity you always intended. Languages and people groups and stories and perspectives. Sharing and understanding in the grace that comes to us through Jesus.

May this story, even one as old as this, invite us back to the path of grace and peace. Leading us to your son, transforming us into the likeness of Jesus. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen.