"Why We Babble"

Pastor Laura Guy

June 8, 2008

Here's an instant replay of what happened in worship:

We continued our summer sermon series of Old Testament stories by looking at the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) from the Brick Testament.
We looked at the story in the context of what had come before it in the Bible. From the beginning, God had created a beautiful, perfect world. Humans had chosen to be our own gods rather than follow the one God, so sin, disease, shame, death and murder had entered God's perfect world. God gave us a second chance in the Garden, and a second chance with Noah. In both cases, God told humans to multiply and fill the earth, to care for all the earth. God told us to scatter.
We noticed that the beginning of the tower story says that people decided to settle. They settled for less than God wanted for them. They settled instead of scattering across the earth to care for it as God had directed. The tower was a monument to their own glory and achievement - to their own sense of divinity.
We realized that God had already limited His own options by saying that He would never again flood the earth. He had chosen to work with us, in all our brokenness. God could have decided to simply stand back and let the humans continue to build their tower. Eventually, it would collapse under its own weight and impossible goal - reaching the heavens. But God chose to intervene in a way that spared life. The humorous thing is that God did not do anything directly to destroy the tower or to cause its completion to be impossible. God simply confused the languages so that it would now require people to learn another language in order to complete it. The people were willing to do the heavy physical labor of making bricks and building a tower, but they weren't willing to patiently learn another language.
We imagined hearing this story in God's lap, and we asked God what towers we are building in our own lives - towers that glorify us but pull us away from the places God wants us to go. We prayed for God's help to abandon our foolish towers.
We shared communion at the table of love.