Do you know what this is – (holding up a toy with flashing lights) It’s a language translator. I got it when I was down in Hollywood yesterday at Universal Studios. I had time before my flight home after Dora’s funeral service yesterday, so I went over to Universal Studios and bought one of these. It’s great because now I never have to make an effort to understand, or be understood, by anyone else. It’s all done for me by this gadget. I’ll never again have problems with communication. It takes care of how to make my words and thoughts clear to everyone else.
That being said, I’m going to turn it on now so that you’ll perfectly understand everything that I say and every nuance of meaning that I intend. Trying to make myself understood is no longer my problem – it’s up to this device to make you understand. In fact this’ll make it so that all that I say and speak will make all the difference in your life. This device makes my speaking the best that ever was, or ever will be, spoken. I’ll be able to do anything I want just by using this to speak to others. I’ll get what I want, how I want it, and when I want it!
… you think? You’ve got to be asking yourself, does he really believe this? Does he really think that toy thing can make him into the best speaker in the world? What a load of… tripe. What a foolish idea. He’s so full of himself with that thing. What arrogance: what pride!
Ah, yes, there it is. We’ve finally come to it, arrogance and pride. My arrogance and pride. What is that? What is arrogance and pride? And what does it have to do with us here today? Well, our pride and arrogance is just that; it us wanting to be self sufficient and proud of who we are in ourselves. It’s us wanting to be in the place God should be in our lives. Today that’s revealed in the Old Testament lesson that’s what God showed us at Babel.
Babel was us being proud and arrogant, not humble and receptive. It was us standing before heaven shaking our fists in the air, rather than standing with our palms opened and receptive. Standing with your arms out stretched to the God of heaven is different than trying to climb up to heaven and take something away from Him. That’s what Babel was about. That was us trying to put ourselves in God's place.
It's one thing to receive humbly and with thanks, what God offers; and it’s a different thing to try and take it away from God. The tower was man’s arrogant and prideful attempt to reach into heaven by himself without God. But we as Christians, we stand on earth and receive what God offers to us by the blood of Jesus and through the promise of the Holy Spirit. He sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to unite us, which is the opposite of what happened at Babel.
Actually what God did at Babel was a merciful thing. It helps us to confront our need for the gospel, of our need for a savoir who can bring heaven to us... (repeat) who can bring heaven to us. What happened at Babel can be seen as the reverse of what happened at Pentecost in today’s New Testament reading. The pride we displayed at Babel is the root of our human misunderstandings – it’s the bottom line reason why we can’t communicate well and we have to struggle to understand one another. Our arrogance is why something like a fictional universal translator toy seems so attractive.
Like all of God's law, the purpose of confusing our speech at Babel is to make us see our need for our savior and His cross. We are prideful and willful and we want to make a name for ourselves. Look at verse 4 of the Old Testament reading today. Read that verse with me out loud. "Then 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 and not be scattered over the whole earth.'"
To make a name for ourselves means that We want to be in charge and answer to no one else. The power of a name, the power to name something is an enormous thing. The name that something or someone has is its signifier. The name helps to define and understand the thing or person.
What was Adam’s first job in the Garden of Eden? It was to name the creatures as God brought them all before him. To give something its name is to define it. You’re in control of that which you name. That’s why when we name our children it’s a serious thing. We instinctively know that. We know that whatever name we give our child will have an impact on their future.
The classic example of that in our culture is of course the Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue". That song, in a fun way, makes the very serious point we’re talking about. Remember the line in the song, "So I give ya that name and I said goodbye; I knew you'd have to get tough or die; And it's that name that helped to make you strong." The name, the dad knew, would define how that boy grew up. And Sue knew it too, the last line in the song goes; "And if I ever have a son, I think I'm gonna name him...Bill or George! Anything but Sue! I still hate that name!"
The point for us is what we read that the people said when they were deciding to build the tower, "let us make a name for our selves". We were so proud that we wanted to claim the power to make our own name by our own effort and strength. We wanted to possess the power of God, so we decided to make a tower so large that we would make it to heaven on our own.
God, it turns out, however, is rather clever. Rather than attack the tower, which was just the symptom of our pride, God took away the common language that gave us the ability to join together to build it. He took away our common speech, the source of our arrogant power. Speech is what we use to name things and speech is what we were using to confront God with. The tower was a symptom of our lust for God's power and for His rightful place in our lives. We know that to have a common language is to have a common power.
God knew this, since speech was His idea in the first place. Look what He says in verse 6, "The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.'"
Language, speech, is power, true power. To be able to speak a common language is to have power in common. That’s also what makes Pentecost so important. The languages expressed at Pentecost weren’t changed into one language, but Pentecost is what gave the power of speech to the one unifying message of God … the gospel.
Our one language at Pentecost became, not a common tongue but a common message. Pentecost show us that what’s important is the language God the Holy Spirit gives us in the message of the gospel. The unifying message, the common thing we have to speak about, is only to be found through the Holy Spirit as He was given on Pentecost.
The Holy Spirit was promised to us by Jesus in today's gospel lesson and then He went to the cross to die for our sins. He went to die there for our pride and arrogance that caused God to confuse our language at Babel. Jesus in verse 26 of the lesson, promised to send to us the Holy Spirit who truly would make clear all things that Jesus taught. We ARE not self made nor are we self-sufficient. We’re created by God… to need God.
At Babel we tried to replace God with ourselves. We did so because we’re full of pride. And God, our creator God, in His mercy, showed us just how dependent we are on Him. By confusing our language we were shown that He alone has all power, even the power of speech.
Without the power of speech, without the power of expression, we’re alone and lost. We can’t even speak to God or hear from Him without His gift of speech. Jesus died on the cross to make it possible for God to again speak with us. Our sin, pride and arrogance had cut Him off from us. We silenced Him in our lives.
But through His promise and through the work of Jesus, God restored us to ‘speaking terms’ again. And Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to guide us in our speaking with God. The Holy Spirit lives in us… granted to us in our baptisms and by faith, and He makes us understood to God. He is truly the translator for us when we ourselves don’t even know how to make ourselves understood.
All our misunderstandings and all our difficulties communicating with God are resolved… in the cross. On Pentecost we were given the ‘common tongue’ the common language of the Holy Spirit. And there are times when we can’t even understand how to use Him in our own minds. We must rely on the Spirit to speak for us and through us. Sometimes when we’re confused or at a loss to understand how to communicate, we simply must rely on the language that is the Holy Spirit. A friend pointed that out me again this week. They reminded me from Romans 8:26-27 26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. 27And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will."
What Jesus did on the cross is too deep in many ways for my heart to understand. I can only sigh in the Spirit in the face of such an act that brings heaven to me. I’m truly left speechless before the cross. Only the Holy Spirit can direct my thoughts, my heart, and my mind to receive such a wonderful gift: the gift of the redemption of my soul. Jesus has overcome the sin, arrogance, and pride that I have- to bring me back to a speaking relationship with God.
God promised, through His word, through His power of speech, that He would do this. And in Jesus’ death and resurrection, God's promised word is fulfilled. What He speaks happens. We can only speak back what He has given us and poured into us by the Holy Spirit to speak. That is truly comfort for us because God comes to us in His word and in His sacraments, and He gives us the words we need. He gives us the power of language to speak, to speak His message to others. And His message is that we don’t need to build a tower to heaven to grab God's grace from Him, in Christ, His grace is His gift to you.