Reversing Babel
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
The curses of God are terrible, horrible things because they lead to terrible, horrible consequences for us. They are a sign of being cut off from His grace and mercy—a sign that we have idolized ourselves and lifted ourselves up as His equal. This is why the serpent said, “You will be like God,” and Adam and Eve chose to believe him.
God told humanity to fill the earth, to multiply, and to spread out. But the people were afraid of what would happen if they actually did what God commanded. So they said, “We’re going to make a name for ourselves.” Why would they need to do that if they were already one people with one language? What they meant was, “We will glorify ourselves. We will lift ourselves up to heaven.” And so they began to build a tower to heaven.
But God has to look down to see this “mighty” tower. He says, in effect, “These geniuses just don’t get it. I tell them to do one thing, they do the opposite. If they keep this up, I will eventually have to destroy them.” So God comes down and confuses their language. They can no longer understand one another. Where there is division, there is conflict.
You’ve heard the saying, “Fences make good neighbors.” Why? Because fences mark the dividing line. Division creates conflict, and the people disperse. The world becomes even more broken. They still chase after their own glory.
To this day, we deal with the consequences. We have to learn multiple languages to communicate. At seminary, I had to learn biblical Hebrew and Greek. Hebrew has structure and beauty—even if it has a lot of phlegm in the pronunciation. Greek, on the other hand, treats rules more like suggestions. English is even worse—because we stole rules and words from Latin, German, French, Spanish, and Native American languages and mashed them all together.
This division of languages led to division of nations, which led to nations warring against nations. It led to oppression, slavery, and treating whole groups of people as less than human. This is the result of our sin—thinking too highly of ourselves when we shouldn’t. And yet, even this curse is better than what would have happened if God had not intervened, because humanity would have destroyed itself.
But for every curse in the Bible, there is a reversal—a blessing that comes in Christ, in His church, through the Holy Spirit.
Fifty days after Easter—Pentecost, a holy day of Judaism—people from many nations gathered in Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit came upon the apostles, and eleven men preached Christ crucified. Everyone heard the message in their own language. They heard Christ resurrected in their own language. They were astounded: “Aren’t these Galileans?” Galileans were considered hicks with a distinctive accent. Yet they proclaimed the Gospel with power, and that day 3,000 were baptized.
The church began to spread across the world. It is still spreading. The church continues translating Scripture into the languages of the world. Lutheran Bible Translators do this faithfully. Lutheran Braille Workers do the same for those who read Braille. Sign language is its own language as well.
Why? Because the salvation of God is for all people. Christ died for everyone. What God cursed at Babel, He reverses in the church. In the church, we keep the First Commandment: we are not God; we need a Savior. Our sin has cursed us to death, but thanks be to God that in Jesus Christ He has overthrown even death.
In the church, the nations become a new people. Peter says we are a royal priesthood, a holy nation. In Revelation 7, we see people from every tribe, nation, and tongue gathered together praising the Lamb. Last week we heard about the tree of life and the healing of the nations—all people.
The church is the only truly transnational organization that exists. In Christ, you have more in common with a Chinese Christian who lived 200 years ago than with a cousin who does not believe. In Christ you are one. In Christ you are the bride of Christ. In the Holy Spirit your sins are forgiven. That man’s sins were forgiven, and you await the same eternity.
So we have a job to do—a desperately critical job—because the clock is running. It is the same job the apostles had in Acts 2: to go to that cousin, that child, that neighbor, that coworker, and in our words and actions, with meekness and gentleness, proclaim Christ. To show that there is hope. To show that all the curses are reversed in Jesus Christ. All the curses are answered in Jesus Christ.
The empty tomb stands over all of human history as the answer. There’s that Sunday school joke: “What’s the answer?” Jesus. So what’s the answer to all the curses? Jesus.
In His name. Amen.
