Genesis 11:1-9; Romans 8:22-27; John 7:37-39
The Tower of Babel story is not new to anyone here. We all
probably heard it for the first time when we were in grade 3, and we’ve heard
it a good number of times since then. It’s a simple enough story and has it’s
counterpart everywhere in the Bible.
Today we would call it an ‘Instant Karma’ story like those
you find everywhere on YouTube. Man hits girl in the face but doesn’t notice
policeman standing right behind him. Burglar breaks into house only to be
greeted by a couple of savage Rottweilers. My personal favourite is the road
rage driver who gets out of his car at the lights to teach and offending driver
a lesson but discovers he is dealing with six foot six muscle-bound Marine.
Instant Karma is when
we punish ourselves by our own silly actions and it sums up quite adequately
the story we have just read about the Tower of Babel. We need to add that even
though this story is thousands of years old, it is also curiously modern. It
applies not only to individuals, to nations, but also to the whole of humanity.
It could be a story about you or me. Let’s look at it again.
Like the
great story of the Garden of Eden it begins with God’s goodness and blessings. Humanity
finds itself in a time of unity, peace and prosperity. They spoke the same
language, with the same vocabulary and they had found a rich and fertile place in which to settle. Like Adam and
Eve they should have been filled with gratitude and praise but they weren’t.
Instead,
they turned inwards towards themselves and spoke to one another. How like
the people of today in their committees, tribunals and parliaments, and what a
great lesson for us! Rebellion against God is rebellion against God. It can be
done with medical procedures which rip babies from the womb, with drugs which
put old people to death when they grow tired of life, or with legal definitions
which say a man can marry a man or a woman a woman. And if you have nothing
else, it can even be done with bricks and mortar and bitumen.
And they
rebelled against God. 'Come,' they said 'let us build ourselves a town and a tower with its top
reaching heaven. Let us make a name for ourselves… . Yes, at the heart of it
all was a rejection of God in favour of ‘ourselves’ … let us build ourselves .. a tower – let us make a name for ourselves.
But every rejection of God is a rejection of
truth, beauty and goodness. History has shown us this in ways which only the obstinately foolish would
deny. Look at the lying, fake media. Look at the ugliness of totalitarian
architecture, and the evil of the extermination camps. When we reject God we
reject ourselves and bring down upon our heads not the anger of God but our own
anger.
Did not King
David say he would rather fall into the hands of God than into the hands of man?
He knew that man is much more ruthless than God.
Men who
desert their Maker become what a man is without his God. He becomes angry, pitiless
and, especially, he becomes a liar.
Every rejection of God is punished by man
himself. There is
really no need for God to do anything other than to let man reject him. From
the rejection of the God of love man will find only hate. From the rejection of
the God who unifies man will see only defragmentation. From the rejection of
God’s mercy man can know only the disappearance of mercy.
All this is a simple lesson which mankind
stubbornly refuses to learn. We can tell as many stories as we want but humanity seems determined to
learn the hard way, over and over again. Our story begins with phrases like: …same language…same vocabulary…rich…fertile
place…to settle – but given man’s rejection of God it ends with: …stopped building…confused …scattered.
How long will it be before we humans understand that we can’t do without God; that
we reject him to our own unhappiness and eventual destruction? If we don’t love
him let us at least acknowledge that we need him. We live our individual life
and our social life only through the gift of the Spirit of God who gives all
life.
Listen carefully to this line from the Responsorial Psalm we
have just prayed and let us take it to heart: You take
back your spirit, they die, returning to the dust from which they came. You
send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the earth.
