I
grew up in Montclair, New Jersey, a suburban bedroom community that was a half
hour bus ride from New York City. Geographically,
Montclair was long and narrow.
Unofficially, it was divided into three parts.
First, there was
Upper Montclair, which did have its own zip code and was populated exclusively
by WASPS (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants). That was where my family lived. In fact, the only person of color I remember
growing up was the plump middle-aged African-American woman from Newark who
once a week trudged the half mile up the hill from the bus terminus to the
house across the street from me. She was
their family maid.
Second, there was
Montclair (middle Montclair really – though it did not have any formal label
that had stuck). Most of the Italians
and the handful of more affluent black families lived in that part of town.
Finally, there was
what was commonly referred to as Lower Montclair. It did not have its an exclusive zip code,
and the vast majority of African-American families that called Montclair home
lived there.
The Township of
Montclair had a neighborhood school system when I was growing up. There were six
elementary schools that were within walking or bike-riding distance from home, three
junior highs (one in each of the unofficial segments of town), and one central
high school smack in the middle between Upper and Lower Montclair. Not surprisingly, the best schools were in
Upper Montclair, and the worst in Lower Montclair. There were not a lot of people who wanted to
teach in rundown buildings with equally rundown fellow teachers, administrators,
students, and families.
When I was in eighth
grade, Montclair began a busing program in which students from Lower Montclair
were sent to schools in Upper Montclair while families in Upper Montclair
protested loudly about the possibility of their children being sent to school
in Lower Montclair. Busing never really
worked in our town, but it was the first time I had been in close contact with
anyone of a different race.
Years later, when I
was in college during the hot summer between my first and second year, I could
stand on our back porch in the evening and look to the east where the horizon
seemed to glow yellow and orange, like a sunset in the wrong part of the sky or
like firelight. It was, of course,
firelight because the City of Newark was in flames that summer with race riots.
Perhaps that childhood
background is part of the reason why several times a year, I traveled from
Maine to Montclair with our young children to visit their grandparents. By that time, Montclair was somewhat – if not
a lot - more racially diverse. And yet,
my parents always made an effort to take the kids into New York to places where
they could learn about the glorious diversity that had long characterized our
nation – or at least be exposed to people of color.
We went to the
Statue of Liberty, so they could read the proclamation carved at its base
(“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free”). We went to Ellis Island and
learned about immigration and the hopes and dreams and gifts that so many
ethnic groups had brought with them to America.
I remember one time
we were exiting a building in Manhattan, and a tall and imposing
African-American man held open the door for us.
Our young daughter Heather looked up at him, eyes wide and mouth open,
and continued to look up at him even as we passed him, her neck craned
backward. She had literally never seen a
person of color before in her life.
Perhaps like many
of you, I grew up in an unofficially closed homogenous community, not unlike
the community that the people who settled on that plain in Babylon sought to
create in the story we just read about the Tower of Babel. This is, of course,
a tightly constructed theological narrative that follows the story of Noah and
the Flood, both of which are considered pre-history, that is, not to be taken
literally but rather metaphorically.
That being said, God’s
direction to the Noah and his family as they left the ark when the flood waters
receded – along with a blessing - was to spread out to the far corners of the
earth. It was not unlike the blessing
and direction God had given humanity at the time of creation: Go forth with my blessing – and
multiply.
So, like spokes in
a wheel, Noah’s family split up. One
branch, the Hamites, came
to Shinar, an alluvial plain lying between two great rivers, the Tigris and the
Euphrates. The ground was fertile, water
was abundant, and the view was great.
Location, location, location: So
there they settled, and there our story for today begins.
The Hamites had
not been in Shinar very long before the community leaders decided to build a
great urban center. Because they were
made in the image of the Creator, they were very inventive in going about
it.
Most importantly, they learned how to make bricks and so
could build a strong structure. It would be something solid, permanent, fortress-like,
something to keep out the riffraff, something that would outlast them all,
something with a hint of immortality.
“Come, let us build ourselves a city (the community leaders agreed), and a
tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise
we shall all be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth.”
And so they banded
together in their common cause and did just that. They built a walled city with
a huge tower. And it is at this point in
the story that we tend to get it all wrong. We focus on the pride of the Hamites and their
desire to be equal to Yahweh/God by accomplishing the architectural feat of constructing
a tower that would reach the very heavens.
We focus on God being furious at their inventiveness, desiring only to crush
them. We say that is why, in a fit of
pique and as a form of punishment, the Holy One mixed them all up with
different languages and broke up their homogenous unity.
However, as Rabbi Shai Held wrote in an
article in “Christian Century” magazine, this story of the Tower of Babel “is not a simple morality tale about a human attempt
to storm the heavens and displace God. Nor, conversely, is it
a primitive allegory about an insecure deity who is so threatened by human
achievement that God needs to wreak havoc on the best-laid human plans. The
narrative is also not placed where it is in the Torah in order to explain the
vast multiplicity of human languages. Nor is it a lament about some lost
primeval unity. The story of Babel is, I would suggest, about something else:
the importance of individuals” (and, I would add, the importance of the
glorious diversity that God intended since creation itself).
If you read the Scripture passage carefully, you will surely
conclude that it was not just pride that caused the Hamites to build their
fortress-like city and impenetrable tower.
In the end, it was fear that motivated them – fear of being scattered,
fear of leaving the solid comfort of being with people just like them, fear of
letting the outsiders in, fear of what the outsiders might do if they were let
in.
As
one blogger I read this week noted, “They are experiencing that primal human
fear of change and its inevitable loss. They’ve found the perfect spot and they
don’t want to leave it. They need a tower to defend their turf, to let God and
everyone else know this land is theirs. They need a tower to ensure everyone
they love is held together in one place.
They
need a tower to make sure they never have to leave this familiar ground.” Their decisions and desires about the way
life should be are grounded in fear of the outside world and fear of those who
are different from them.
But is that not what
people do when they are afraid? Band
together, circle the wagons, build protective walls, insist on travel bans,
ratchet up visa regulations, split up families to discourage immigration and
asylum-seeking, declare that Europe will lose its Caucasian Christian identity
if too many of “them” are allowed in. How
do the Moors in Spain feel about that, I wonder? When people are scared, they want to be with
other people just like themselves – and they watch out for people who are
different. After all, when you are trying to build an empire, you want no
defectors. You want homogenous unity.
But
was not one of God’s first commandments to be fruitful and multiply, to fill
the earth, to spread out, to relish the abundant diversity of creation, to
extend original blessing to the four corners of the globe because everything –
everything – in creation is good? God’s invitation is to spread out and revel
in the goodness and abundance and diversity of that creation.
This
story of the Tower of Babel is not about architectural integrity. It is not about human pride or God’s
disapproval. It is about, as
Presbyterian pastor John Lentz wrote, “how fear cuts us off from the abundance
of God’s power and mercy. It is once
again about God’s uncomfortable but gracious push outside the walls of narrow
selfishness.”
And so God “muddles”
the Hamites because that is what the word “babel” means. God muddles them and forces them to confront
their fears, forces them to learn a second language, forces them to find the
common ground between themselves and those they had for so long feared. It may sound like a punishment, but it is
really a course correction so that, at some time in the future, as Jesus
proclaimed thousands of years later in the Gospel of John – sometime in the
future, they may all be one. There is
power in unity – but only when it is unity achieved by a deep and abiding
recognition and affirmation of the glorious diversity around us – in our churches,
in our communities, in our world.
As
Lentz goes on to say, “the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, proclaims that we
find our true selves not behind walls of self-made isolation or
self-sufficiency or narrow identity, but in the risk of scattering, the risk of
being sent forth into a diverse world.
And in realizing that we share, with all people, the stamp of divine
production that we’re all made in the likeness and image of God.”
Here
in the Lakes Region of Maine, we live in an area that is about as homogenous as
my childhood home of Montclair. The two
largest immigrant communities nearby are Portland and Lewiston, both a good 45
minutes away. We are lily white with a
patina of conservatism, and it is so easy to presume that, as individuals but more
importantly as a church, we do not have to be concerned with diversity. It is not our issue. After all, we do not need to worry about a
mosque being built three blocks away or even the likelihood of anyone who is
significantly different from us walking through tour doors on a Sunday morning.
However,
I believe strongly that our circumstances here should never let us off the hook
when it comes to affirming and embracing our individual, cultural, and
religious differences. In fact, because
we are so lily white and homogeneous, and socially conservative out this way,
perhaps we need to work harder than most communities to intentionally and
authentically find common ground with those who are different from us.
Our daughter, Heather, has come a
long way since those days of not being able to take her eyes off a
distinguished-looking black man who held open a door for her. She is fluent in Spanish and has traveled
extensively in Central and South America and Southern Africa. She has worked with immigrant communities in
Portland and with numerous high school aged students throughout the U.S. in the
school she started, the Field Academy, whose focus is challenging students and
teachers to find common ground between cultures and help them more fully appreciate
their diversity.
If
the church – our church - is going to survive and thrive, we need to attract
people like Heather, people who are part of a younger, more accepting,
generation who find meaning, purpose, and authenticity in celebrating the
glorious diversity that God intended from the very beginning. If we as a congregation build walls in so
many subtle ways, do not think that understanding religious and cultural
differences is our issue, and do not intentionally seek opportunities to learn
about those who are different from us, we will, well, we will be closing our
doors for good in another decade or so.
After all, the
church is built on the foundation of Christ who time and time again throughout
his ministry affirmed inclusiveness and radical hospitality. At its best, when it is thriving, the church
embraces the glorious diversity set in motion at the beginning, intuitively
understanding that when it comes to unity, the only form of unity that will ever
work is when God – and God’s purposes – are the center of the life of the
church.
We
are called – as individuals and as the church - to live by faith and not by fear. Additionally, we are called to demonstrate
our faith by moving out of the familiar, by leaving the comfortable behind –
the walls, the travel bans, the watching out fearfully for those who look
different, act differently, worship differently.
We are called to intentionally
leave behind what is no longer relevant, what we have known and been
comfortable with all these years, and instead put our trust in the Spirit who
leads us to a new identity, one that honors who we have been but at the same
time frees us from the limitations of that past. Only then can we embrace God’s future and
God’s dream for the world, a dream through which we will discover a powerful
unity, a dream created way back when God proclaimed the world blessed – and
good – all of it – in all its glorious diversity.
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