Not long after we were expelled from Eden, everyone in the world had one common language and speech. As people moved eastward, they gathered together and considered, "Let us work together and build a city, one with a tower that climbs to the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves." And together they made bricks and mortar and built a tower, a great high tower so as to make a name for themselves.
And God looked from the heavens and saw the budding steeple of their cathedral. He saw their efforts to reach the heavens, that their common language had made them proud. He saw that they could make a great name for themselves, yea, great and godless too. And he saw that once they could accomplish these things they would no longer try to know him for they would believe that the earth was their own.
So God confounded their language and separated them by tongue, tribe, and nation, and they could no longer understand each other or hope to reach heaven before eternity was theirs. And it was called Babel in that place for there was much confusion.
Au Revoir. Auf Wiedersehen, friends...Ailinon.
Many cultures share this story with the Jews, but as expected, everyone seems to tell it in their own way. Central Americans, for instance, believe that Xelhua, one of the world’s seven giants tried to build a pyramid in order to reach heaven, but the gods destroyed it and the builders could no longer speak to one another. Herodotus places the story not in Babel but in Marduk, where there are known remnants of a once great ziggurat. The Qur’an lays the scene in the Egypt of Moses.
They are the same story, spoken through different tongues: pride always goeth before a fall and no matter how great we think we are, we will always be leveled in favor of a greater glory. We build our tawdry towers and time and time again, we watch them tumble down while we are left alone, wide-eyed and tongue-tied, to remember that we are dust.
Then the Lord stoops down and makes us great.
Many years after the Tower of Babel, the followers of Jesus stood awed, side by side in Jerusalem, watching a man who had risen from the dead ascend to heaven on a cloud. Jesus’ disciples recalled His words and believed at last, that they would “receive power when the Holy Spirit comes…and…be witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Yes, they prayed; let it be so. Help us to speak and teach us what to say. Come, Lord Jesus, come.
As they were praying, a great holy wind came and shook that place, and “tongues of fire" alighted upon each one of them. And those who knew Jesus were filled with His Spirit and glorified Him in languages that they could not before. And all were amazed for everyone there, from any tongue, tribe or nation, could hear the Gospel spoken in their own words.
In this redemptive Pentecost, the punishment of Babel is reversed; the diversity of language and culture is now a palimpsest of re-written history, a gift for the good of proclamation. Through Jesus, the veil is torn, communication re-opened. In Jesus, we who are many become one body, not Gentile or Jew but Gentile and Jew. The Hebrews can tell Romans of Jesus and His mighty deeds; the Pygmies and Eskimos, the French and the Welsh, all are offered the same message in different tongues.
Allelujah! Alabar!
Now we can offer the great Name to each other, yea great, and Godly, too.
This is our blessing and our curse, the fall of the Tower of Babel, another demonstration of God’s wrath intertwined with His mercy. Here we are to this very day, we assorted, eclectic, and sundry citizens of earth, scattered and curious at the base of our tower. It is true that we have been exiled from our great high city, from the gods we try to build with bricks. It is true that our skyscrapers are no match for Mount Chimborazo, that our submarines fold in the depths of the seas. And once again we’ve nothing to do but blink at the Milky Way and exclaim at our limits:
“Wonderful!” “Vidunderlig!” “Wunderbar!”
And wunderbar it is. We are born wearing fig leaves; we are swaddled in darkness. Yet we are offered understanding and light in abundance. We who tried to reach heaven by the work of our hands are promised that in the last days, the God who topples our towers will replace our dumbness with a “spirit of unity...so that with one heart and one mouth” we will glorify Him.
And the great holy city we longed for will be here.
