Bible Text: Genesis 11:1-9 | Preacher: Pastor Dorry Newcomer | Series: Genesis | Now here is an unusual story for the church.  It’s a building project, where everyone was speaking the same language.  Everyone was in agreement about what should be done.  Fund raising did not seem to be an issue.  Although they did not have fancy stone to build with, the people were working together well and had come up with a plan.  They would bake bricks instead of carving stone, and they would use bitumen instead of mortar to hold the bricks together.  Don’t you love it when a plan comes together????  Here is a building project that is not limited by funding, resources, labor, weather–or conflict!  Everyone was working together so well, the sky was the limit to what they could do!

That sounds like a dream come true.  Except there is one problem.  The story of the Tower of Babel does not have a happy ending, does it?  Their plan, to build a city with a tower that reached into the heavens, was coming together just fine.  The problem is, it was THEIR plan.  It wasn’t God’s plan.  They were building this tower to make a name for themselves.  They were building this city so they could feel safe–they were putting their trust in themselves, not God.  They were building this tower to satisfy their desires, not God’s.

At the heart of their project was not GOD’S will, but their own, sinful wills.

This should sound familiar by now.  Adam and Eve sinned by eating the forbidden fruit, following their will instead of God’s.  In the Noah’s ark story, God sent the flood to destroy people because they were not righteous.  They were living without any regard for God.  Now, the people are sinning again.  Their plans, their tower, their destiny–they had taken control, and were doing just fine without God, thank you very much.  But God did not create human beings to be self-sufficient. God did not create us to live for ourselves and ourselves alone.  We were created for fellowship with God!  But oh are we good at crafting lives that can leave God completely out of the picture.

Let’s give credit where credit is due, though.  God told Adam and Eve, and then Noah and his family, to be fruitful and multiply, and they sure did!  If you read Genesis Chapter 10, it lists a very extensive family tree.  So that’s good.  When they settled in a region that didn’t have any rocks in the landscape, they figured out how to make bricks.  Also good.  And apparently they all got along and were able to work toward a common goal.  That sounds somewhat refreshing given how conflict filled our society is today.

But despite all those good things, something was very wrong with their “all for one, one for all” approach to life.  The people of Babel forgot all about the God who made the universe.  They forgot all about the God who made the covenant with their ancestor Noah.  They drifted away.  In so doing, they probably thought they had mastered the whole world—look at the skyscraper they built!  But little did they know, in building that tower, they had demolished their souls.

This human dilemma is of course not limited to the people of Babel.  It is a timeless struggle!  Jesus put it very clearly to his disciples in Matthew 16.  What good will it be for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul?  What good will it be for the people in the city that would go on to become known as Babel, what good would it be for them to build a city that protects them and a skyscraper that builds their egos and a refuge that props up their false sense of security—and in the course of all of that, lose the connection to God that is at the heart of life?  They could fortify their city ‘til the cows come home.  They could build that stairway to heaven a mile high.  It wasn’t going to solve their REAL problem.  It wasn’t going to help their souls find rest in God.

This is an unusual story, and scholars point out that it almost seems like chapters 10 and 11 got switched.  In chapter 11, everyone speaks the same language and is living in one place.  But Chapter 10 describes the diverse people groups, with different languages and locations.  It seems like chapter 10 happened after the tower of Babel fell.  There’s a little mystery here.  But we also need to consider chapter 12, which Pastor Karen is going to preach about next week while I’m away on a retreat with our youth.  In Chapter 12, God makes covenant with Abram, who will later go on to be called Abraham, as in Father Abraham, the start of our family of faith.

Chronologically, I don’t know for sure which happened first—all the people in chapter 10, or the tower of Babel in chapter 11.  But I can tell you that, theologically, the Tower of Babel story is in chapter 11 on purpose, so it can easily be contrasted with what happens in Chapter 12.  It’s as if the writer of Genesis says, “Watch this!  The people built a tower to glorify and protect themselves.  But God scattered the people so that God could built something even better than a tower.  God chose one man, Abram, and through him built a FAMILY.  And this family would be special.  Instead of worrying about protecting and taking care of their own, this family would focus on glorying God, and blessing the whole world.”

Watch this.  God frustrated the plans of humans so God could instead use people to accomplish his plans.  God would work through them and their descendants to build the nation of Israel, which we will read more about as we get further into Genesis.  The New Testament calls Christians the New Israel.  Christians are the new iteration of God’s covenant with Abraham, designed to be a family that focuses on glorying God and blessing the whole world.

Fast forward to today, and this story in Genesis again says to me, “Watch this!  God frustrated the plans of humans so God could instead use humans to accomplish his plans.”  We are living at a unique time in the history of the church, a time when the church is largely in decline.  Many scholars believe we are in a time of reformation.  Notre Dame in Paris was built in 1163.  We’ve focused on building church buildings for a thousand years!  Church buildings are great.  They provide space for worship and education, they have steeples that serve as beacons in the community, here at Lima we are very blessed to have our wonderful building.  But around the world, there are a lot of empty churches on Sunday morning.  I wonder if, on a grand scale, declining church attendance isn’t another example of God frustrating the plans of man a little bit so God can use humans to accomplish his plans.

Jesus never asked us to build church buildings.  Jesus asked us to build something much more important:  a family, the Body of Christ, the Kingdom of God!  You can’t get bigger than that!  And this is a kingdom unlike any other.  It’s a kingdom where people from every nation and tongue are welcomed to gather around the throne of God.  A kingdom not made of stones or bricks, but a kingdom made of souls.   Your soul.  My soul.  The souls of all the church members who have gone before us.  The souls of the hopefully thousands of church members who will follow us.

The kingdom of God is where our souls ultimately find rest.  It is the church’s job to embody that kingdom as best they can, and point people toward it.  But because the church is also a human enterprise, our scripture lesson today reminds us that it is possible to build a building, build a congregation, even build a denomination, and not be in alignment with God.  We can have that “all for one, and one for all” thing going—but be focused on the wrong One!  As a church we must always be evaluating ourselves:  are we serving the God of the Universe?  Or something else?  Are we leaning in toward God?  Or are we really trying to prop ourselves up?  Are we truly caring for souls?  Or are we caring for our egos?

I want you to know that the Reconciling Team has been prayerfully wrestling with questions like this since our very first meeting.  What would God have us do? When would God have us do it?  In your bulletins today is an insert with our proposed statement of affirmation:

 

Lima UMC celebrates that all people are created in God’s image and are of sacred worth.  We are a welcoming community that affirms and values all people without regard to age, race, culture, sexual orientation, gender identity, mental or physical ability, family configuration, faith history, or socioeconomic status.  We seek to love all people because God loves all people.  As generations before us have done, we humbly continue to explore and live the meaning of Christian discipleship in today’s world.

 

 

This statement was crafted by a team of people who love this church.  But the church is not a building, the church is not a steeple!  The church is not a resting place, the church is a people.  This statement of inclusion was drafted so that all people will know that is our desire to treat people equally.  We are limited, of course, by our Book of Discipline.  We cannot act on that desire in ways that violate our United Methodist rules.  But the people who helped craft this statement, the two dozen people who have added their names to it today, do so because they want to see an end to people’s inclusion in the life of the church being limited by their sexual orientation.

On the back of your bulletin insert I tried to answer frequently asked questions, which I hope you will take time to read this week.   For now, I would just like to call your attention to one point of confusion.  The Reconciling Team is something that is at work within our congregation.  But the word Reconciling also appears in the name of the Protocol that is we’ve been hearing a lot about lately, and this is something that is happening within our whole denomination.  It’s confusing—over the years we’ve hardly ever use the word Reconciling, and now we are using it to talk about two very different things at once.  I’m sorry for that, but they didn’t put me in charge of naming these things!

We will be talking about both Reconciling things—this proposed Statement which only impacts our congregation, and the Reconciliation Protocol which impacts our whole denomination—on March 1.  In between now and then, I am going to ask you to think about this Tower of Babel story, and how in the short term, it seemed to have a sad ending—but in the long run, it led to something really amazing, something that endures even to today!  We are part of the family of Father Abraham, and God will not give up on the good work God has begun.

There’s a lot going on right now in our denomination, and in this congregation.  I feel like God is saying, “Dorry, watch this!  Lima, watch this!  United Methodists everywhere, watch this!” We seem to be in a season where God has frustrated the plans of the people so that God could use people to accomplish his plans.  And that gives me hope.  But we must acknowledge that this is never easy.  Most people I know, their first choice would be to be part of a church where there’s no conflict, where we never have to have any difficult conversations, where we could come together and get along and have everything go according to plan.  But a) I don’t think a church like that really exists; and b) what good would it do to be part of a church like that but have the plan that gets executed be the plans of people instead of the plans of God?  Or as Jesus might put it, what good does it do for us to gain the whole world and feel all warm and fuzzy and have peace and security and life on easy street–yet lose our souls?  The truth is, a little struggle is a necessary part of faithful living.

The reading from Revelation today reminds us that one day, all of humankind will be united.  We will be gathered together, not around a skyscraper or tower, but around the throne of God.  We will be one, and Jesus’ prayer for his followers will be answered.  God’s ultimate will WILL be done!  But in the meantime, we can expect some chaos.  Not only should we expect it, we can celebrate it.  Because, “Watch this!” God is in the chaos with us.  God is always working for good.  And God will bring to completion the good work God has begun.  Amen.