From Babel to Beloved

“Babel to Beloved”

June 8, 2025 Cobleskill United Methodist Church, Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Genesis 11:1-9 and Acts 2:2-21

Pentecost Sunday

Genesis 11:1-9

The Tower of Babel

11 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as they migrated from the east,[a] they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” 5 The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore it was called Babel,[b] because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

Acts 2:1-21

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: ‘Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:“In the last days it will be, God declares,that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,   and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,and your young men shall see visions,   and your old men shall dream dreams.Even upon my slaves, both men and women,   in those days I will pour out my Spirit;     and they shall prophesy.And I will show portents in the heaven above   and signs on the earth below,     blood, and fire, and smoky mist.The sun shall be turned to darkness   and the moon to blood,     before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

We’re pairing two scriptures together today that are an intriguing fit.  Both are stories about people gathered and both are stories about inner desire.  Both are stories about language and diversity, or that lack thereof. 

We’re going to look at first at the Tower of Babel story and then I have a fun video to show you as we move into the Pentecost story.  

The Tower of Babel.  Do you know this story?  It’s from the early parts of the Bible in Genesis. We’ve had the stories of Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel.  And we’ve already had the story of Noah and the big flood, which feels like just yesterday, does it not?  Sorry, it’s hard to not joke about the weather here when it’s been so horrendous.  The Tower of Babel comes as people have once again found their stride after the great flood.  The water has gone down, they’ve rebuilt, they’ve come out from the disaster for a few generations.  They’re back to being themselves.  They’re back to their old ways.  

In many ways the Tower of Babel story is a critique on the way humanity tends to be when left to their own devices.  The Tower of Babel story, actually like the flood story before it, and the Cain and Abel story before it and the Adam and Eve story before it, are all stories that include human anxiety and hubris.  Attempts to become equals with God and “make a name for ourselves.” You could even look at these Genesis stories, origin stories of our humanity, and say- we keep making the same mistakes.  In the Bible and in present day life.  

This is what happened.  The people were all of one language and they decided to pull their power together and build a tower that would be so high its top would actually be in heaven.  “Let us make a name for ourselves,” they said.  We will go to God and we will be like God.  Anything is possible for us if we combine our power and uniformity.  We’ll build a tower to look down on the rest of earth.  We’ll hold all the power.  

God saw that they were and the scripture says “The Lord came down.”  The Lord saw the city and the tower.  The Lord recognized what was happening.  They were so homogenous, so similar, that they had pulled all their power together into a kind of hubris that even tried to rival God.  

They thought they could work their way to heaven; They thought being all the same was a strength that made them powerful like God.  

So the Lord came down with one giant lesson. We don’t all have to be the same and actually, it would probably be better if we weren’t.  The Lord came down to fix it up, mix it up, and scatter us all around.  A gift, actually. An origin story of how God blessed us with diversity when our heads had gotten too big with uniformity.  

Ready to see a fun video about this?  My friend Drew is a gifted United Methodist pastor in Virginia.  During the pandemic days when we were all stuck at home, he decided to use his gift for song-writing to help bring stories from the Bible alive.  I want to show you the song he wrote about the Tower of Babel.  Are you ready?

You’ll be singing that melody all day.  I hope anyway.  

The Lord came down.  He came to fix it up, mix it up, and scatter it all around. So come down from the tower, get to know a higher power.   We don’t have to be the same, that’s the message we proclaim.

So may the Lord come down, today!

The Tower of Babel is about how God gives us the gift of diversity, different languages, different origin stories, different homeplaces, different lives, so that we will understand that it’s not by being homogenous and building a tower that we get to God.  Come down from the tower, get to know a higher power.  The power is within us and among us.  It’s in our diversity.  It’s in our common purpose that we find even as diverse people.  

The Tower of Babel story tells us about our own human proclivity to “make a name for ourselves.” To build up, bigger and better, to be like gods ourselves in a world that we can dominate with our sheer willpower and conformity.  Again and again in the Bible there are stories about how ultimately that just doesn’t work out for us.  We try to use our power for domination and God scatters us in humility.  

The story of Pentecost is the perfect complimenting narrative.  Instead of trying to build up and meet God where God is, God comes down to us.  Not just in the form of a human called Jesus who lived with us for about 33 years.  But God also comes down to us in this enduring way that promises to never leave.  We call this God’s Spirit.  And she is our lungs.  The Spirit of God ignites our sense of responsibility.  In this homecoming, kind of, a sequel to the Tower of Babel, The Great Wind of God at Pentecost blows us from the places where we’ve been scattered into one place, where in the midst of our differences, we find a common purpose.  

You see, in one story, God scatters us away from our arrogance by giving us the gift of difference manifest in different languages and different homeplaces.  And in the other scripture God gathers us back together to let our differences be a blessing.  You speak in your language and yet I can understand you not because I can translate exactly what you’re saying but because there’s something deeper going on.  There’s a purpose and a passion that transcends language and life and origin.  In this new chapter, in this birth of a community filled with the Holy Spirit, there’s a thread that links us together that spans distances and differences.  The thread that allows us to collectively dream dreams, have visions, and share prophecy.  

The thread that we share, the passion that unites us is that we have seen and known and tasted and felt what true, unconditional love is like because God lived among us in the flesh.  The uniting Spirit among us is the shared conviction that we are God’s legacy, we are God’s body.  God brings our diversity together and ordains our difference so that we can be united for a mission that none of us can do alone.  That mission is to be God’s unconditional love for a world that tries to put conditions on our difference.  

In one scripture we get a reminder of the way humans tend to be, of which we need very few reminders these days.  Interested in themselves and their own success and their own rise to power.  Babbling on about how they are the greatest.  Building an illusion to mask the suffering.  

This is the arrogance that God scatters.  Again and again.  

At Pentecost, God brings what has been scattered back together in a magnificent reversal.  From babel to beloved. What is possible when we gather not for our own gain and glorification, but with the Spirit of God in our lungs and unconditional love in our hearts.  We don’t see God given diversity as something to be denied, but as a beautiful piece of God’s body on earth.  The body that on that day of languages and fire and wind became the church.

One of my favorite theologians died this week, Walter Brueggemann.  Brueggemann was an Old Testament scholar and studied, in particular, the prophetic imagination.  He was a prophet himself, always pushing and insisting that the Church- the body of people who follow Christ on earth- must provide a counter narrative to the rampant forces of consumerism, militarism, and nationalism present with us in our age.  

He said “The prophetic tasks of the church are to tell the truth in a society that lives in illusion, grieve in a society that practices denial, and express hope in a society that lives in despair.” 

On the birthday of the church, let us remember that God calls us from babel to beloved.  So come down from the tower, get to know a higher power.   We don’t have to be the same, that’s the message we proclaim.  We’re not here to build giant steeples, we’re here to love the world’s people.  

Let’s be a church that is always wider than it is tall.  

Can I get an amen? 

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Anna