The Skyscraper And The Spirit
May 23, 2010
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.
Genesis 11:1-9
Some of you may have heard in the news recently about the Burj Khalifa. The Burj Khalifa is a skyscraper which opened this year in Dubai of the United Arab Emirates. But this is not just another skyscraper. Upon its completion in January, the Burj Khalifa officially became the tallest building in the world. It stands at 2,717 feet, almost twice as high as the Empire State Building in New York City. The Burj Khalifa has over 200 floors; it has 24,348 windows; it has elevators that travel at over 40 miles an hour; and the entire project cost more than one and a half billion dollars. By almost any standard of measurement, the Burj Khalifa is a colossal achievement. And it is a testament to the ingenuity and the imagination of humanity.
But it is not the first time that we have built a tower. For that story, we look in the book of Genesis, Chapter 11. And there we find another colossal construction project. In verse 4, the people say, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens.” So, it seems that the desire to build huge buildings is an impulse that we humans have had since almost the very beginning.
Based on that evidence, I could go the route of many of my fellow scholars and preachers who conclude that this story from Genesis is a warning about humans who try to pretend that they are God. And that is the traditional understanding of this text, the notion that we humans tried to build a tower up to the sky so that we could take over heaven and install ourselves as the rulers of the universe.
It’s an interesting theory. But it’s one that just doesn’t seem to be supported by the actual text. Because in the story, the motivation given for the people building the tower is not so that they can become like God; on the contrary, the motivation for building the tower is so that the people might distinguish themselves from God. That’s what they say in verse 4—Let us make a name for ourselves. The people don’t want to be God; they want to human without God.
And my friends, I think the lesson of the story this morning is that trying to be human without God is a far graver error that trying to pretend we are God. Because the sin that the people commit here in Genesis, Chapter 11 is not the fact that they build a tower. That’s why the old understanding of this story never made much sense--Why would God punish his creation for using the very skills and ingenuity he had given them? Wouldn’t you think that after the disasters of Eden and the flood that God would be happy the humans are finally doing something constructive?
Sure. Because you and I were made to create. That’s why God tells us in the first chapter of Genesis to be fruitful and to multiply, and why in the very next chapter we are given the responsibility of naming and ordering God’s creation. Because humans are natural builders. It’s a part of our DNA. It’s the way that God designed us. We are made in God’s image to create.
So, the issue here in Genesis, Chapter 11 is not that the people build a tower. The issue is why the people build a tower. And the text says they do it in order to make a name for themselves. “Come, let us make a name for ourselves.”
It seems that this group on the plain of Shinar has forgotten what many of us forget, and that is that we humans have already been given a name. We are the children of God, created in God’s image, and called to God’s work. But these people here in Genesis, Chapter 11 are no longer satisfied with that title. They no longer want to go by their God-given name.
It’s important for us to remember that up until now, the biblical story has been written from a universal perspective. In other words, Genesis Chapters 1-11 addresses all of us. And the Jewish writers did that intentionally to make the theological point that God is the God of all people. They wanted us to know that in the beginning, all of us shared the same name.
But at Babel, something changes. God comes down with the heavenly cohort and says, “All right, you’re trying to make a name for yourselves. So, if you want a new name, I’ll give you a new name." And then God scatters the people around the world and confuses their speech. And the unity that existed before becomes split into a million different cultures. And to this day, we remain a diverse and multi-ethnic world, with many different languages and customs.
That is the consequence of Babel. And it should stand as a reminder to us of the danger in trying to make a name for ourselves. Because the sin of Babel is not a sin of pride so much as it is a sin of forgetfulness. The problem for the people in Genesis Chapter 11 was not that they wanted to be like God; the problem was they didn’t realize they already were like God.
And I believe that many of make the same mistake today. In our tireless quest to make a name for ourselves, we forget that we have already been given a name. Because isn’t that what our tower building is all about? Almost without exception, our tower building is not an effort to demonstrate our God-given creativity as much as it is a need to prove something to ourselves. Why do you think that all of the tallest buildings in the world today are being built in places like China and Taiwan and Korea and Dubai? It’s because those places have something to prove. They want to make a name for themselves.
Why do you think the terrorists chose the target that they did on September the 11th? Surely they have killed more people if they had plunged the airplanes into a baseball stadium. They could have caused more damage by taking out the fleet in Norfolk. But the terrorists went for the Twin Towers. Because those towers represented our American ideals, the ideals of prosperity and achievement. In a very real sense, those towers were the name we had made for ourselves.
You know, it’s interesting to me that the Empire State Building, which was the tallest building in the world for many years, was constructed immediately following the stock market crash of 1929. And it’s a little known historical detail that upon its completion in 1931, most of the office space in the Empire State Building went unrented. In fact, it took over 20 years for the building to become fully occupied and profitable. So, it’s obvious the Empire State Building wasn’t built because there was a great need for office space. It was the middle of the Great Depression for crying out loud; there was less demand for office space in 1931 than there had been in the previous 30 years.
So, there must have been some different reason the Empire State Building was constructed. And I think it was almost as if the American people were saying, “Look, we’ve been devastated by this depression and we’ve lost our sense of purpose and our identity. And so, we’re gonna build this tower. And by building this tower, the tallest building in the world, that will give us a purpose and an identity. The things we used to trust, the money and the financial stability that we took for granted, all those things have come into question now and so we need something new to define us. We need a new image. The old name doesn’t seem to be working anymore; we need a new name.”
I believe we humans have a pathological need to convince ourselves that we are worth something, especially when we’re down on our luck. And so, we take our natural God-given impulses that we have to build and to create, but instead of building and creating something out of the sheer delight of being God’s people, we build because we want to make a name for ourselves. We forget that in God’s eyes we are already worth something, and so we undertake the next construction project to convince ourselves of a truth we should already know.
I mean, isn’t that life for many of us in this room? We have lives that are so carefully constructed, lives that are planned and achievement oriented. We scratch and we save and we work hard and we play by the rules and all we do is wind up being exhausted. We’re told from a very early age the things that we are supposed to do in life and so we do those things, but we wind up feeling dissatisfied. We’re not sure why we do them.
Because we have forgotten, just like the people in this story, that we don’t have to spend our lives doing something to make a name for ourselves. We already have a name. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could just remember it? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you and I could stop trying so hard to make a life for ourselves and instead claim the life that God has already given us?
I think that’s what Pentecost is all about. It is a day to remember that we have already been given a name. In the story Sharon read just a moment ago from the book of Acts, we heard about the Holy Spirit coming among the people, about a violent wind and tongues of fire. And even though the people gathered in Jerusalem were from all over and spoke many different languages, it was as if all of a sudden they remembered again who they really were. They weren’t just Jews, and Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and Arabs. They were the people of God.
Oftentimes when we talk about Pentecost, we talk about it as if it’s the start of something new. Which maybe in a way it is. But I think in celebrating Pentecost, we are also returning to something very old. It is the Spirit’s reminder that somewhere way back a long time ago, way back before we started trying to make a name for ourselves, all of us shared the same name. Way back before the confusion of Babel, we were united, and not because we had made a name for ourselves building a tower, but because God had named us. And at Pentecost, we are given a tangible way to remember our name for all eternity, and that way is the church.
The church is where we come to remember who we are. That is why we gather here week after week, and Sunday after Sunday. We do it not to build up a name for ourselves, but to build in the name that we’ve already been given. Remember that there’s nothing wrong with building. You and I were created to build. But we must remember why we are doing it. Because if you and I are doing the right thing for the wrong reason, it won’t matter. If you and I are united around a project but it’s not God’s project, then it will not succeed. If you and I speak the same language and we understand one another perfectly but we are not speaking about God, then we’re right back at the tower of Babel.
Because trying too hard to be like God is not the problem. If we were trying to be like God, we’d be on the right track. Our problem is, you and I are trying to be the church without God. It’s what I talked about a few weeks ago, being Christian without Christ. And we do it with the best of intentions. I’m not questioning that in many cases the people of our church are working hard and doing our best and giving 110%.
But we’ve got to remember why we’re doing it. We’ve got to remember that our job as the church is not to make a name for ourselves, but to remember the name we have already been given. And that’s enough. That’s enough. It is enough for us to be the people of God. We don’t need anything else to make us better or more worthwhile. There’s nothing that you and I can do to improve upon the name we’ve already been given. But we’re stubborn. And it’s hard for us to accept that.
In Genesis, Chapter 12, immediately after the events of the Tower of Babel, we find the beginning of the Abraham story. And it is almost as if God makes a conscious decision to take a different approach. Instead of dealing with humanity all at the same time, God is going to start with one man and one tribe and use them to bless all the nations of the Earth. Because of Babel, this new story will take longer. And it will be filled with many failures along the way. But the good news of Pentecost is that our God keeps pursuing us no matter what. Even when we forget who we are and even when we keep building those towers for the wrong reasons, the Spirit swoops in. The Spirit moves and descends among people like us gathered here this morning at Park View Baptist Church and once again, the Spirit calls us by the name that we have been given—the people of God. And all God’s people said, AMEN.