A Confusing Story with Ben Carruthers

Good morning once again.

My name is Ben Kroes.

I'm Director of Student and Family Ministry.

Great to be with you this morning and worshiping with you this morning, and for those of you who tune online, thank you so much for checking us out.

We are in our fourth week of our series.

How Did we Get here?

Where we're going through the book of Genesis and what I've loved about this.

If you've missed any of the previous three, please go back and check them out online.

But we've taken these familiar stories that we're familiar with from Sunday school or whatever.

We've talked about Adam and Eve, cain and Abel, noah and the flood Stories that we may know a little bit, maybe a lot, but have heard about at least and what we're doing is we're looking at them perhaps in a different light, a different way.

And the same is true this morning as we dive into this story of the Tower of Babel, which we're calling a very confusing story for multiple reasons, a play on words there.

But this idea of looking at a familiar story with a different light, it brought back a story for me.

Years ago, when I first started off in youth ministry, I brought about 15 high school students down to Des Moines, iowa for a student leadership conference, and it was Saturday night and so they had some entertainment, and the entertainment was a magician and he did a bunch of magic tricks, which were great, but the thing that stuck with me and really impressed me was that he had this weird metal art sculpture up there, and I know nothing about art, so maybe it was a masterpiece, I have no idea.

It looked like junk.

He had this art sculpture up and as he would and I know nothing about art, so maybe it was a masterpiece.

I have no idea.

It looked like junk, right, he had this art sculpture up and as he would turn it, the light would hit it and it would reflect a scene on the screen.

So you go ahead and show it again.

Watch this, yeah.

So now what we're going to do is we're going to watch it again, okay, because there were no oohs and no aahs when you watched it and it's pretty incredible, all right, so let's watch it again.

Watch this.

Watch this trip clip here.

Thank you, totally worth putting it in there twice.

Oh, yeah, now we're talking, right?

No joke, he's doing this thing.

He's spinning this piece of junk sculpture and these amazing images are popping up and there's music behind it, so it's getting more and more intense and finally, the grand finale is he turns it one more time and this picture of Batman shows up on the screen.

And I'm so engaged in what's going on here as I stand up, we're like we're in the front row.

I stand up and I'm like it's Batman, and all 15 of my students immediately left my side.

I felt so bad for them because the whole weekend they'd be like hey, is your youth pastor like the Batman guy?

And they're like we do not know him.

It was like Peter man, we do not know him.

It was horrible.

But I was so amazed by what had happened.

By just turning this what we thought was just some kind of metal sculpture, putting a little bit of light and turning it, we saw something completely different.

And I think that's what we've been experiencing.

As we dive into these Genesis stories, these stories that we know about, these stories that we grew up with, these stories where God is speaking to us, and maybe today in the Tower of Babel, as we dissect it, as we look in the scripture and understand the cultural context that are around during this time, maybe that light will shine a little differently and this will become a different story, and so that's our goal this morning.

Will you pray with me, heavenly follower, we give you thanks and praise for this time to gather and to worship, to sing your praises and to dive into your scriptures, your passages, your stories.

Lord, this is a familiar story for many of us.

So, lord, I pray that we can maybe set aside what we think, we know about or what we've heard in our past and really open up our mind, shed light on this familiar story in a new way, impacting our lives, impacting our hearts, so that we leave this place desiring to make a difference.

It's in your name that we pray, amen.

So this familiar Tower of Babel story you heard it read in our scripture reading, but this takes place about 700 years after the flood story, where King Nimrod so if you're pregnant here and looking for names, if you want a biblical name, just saying King Nimrod settles with these people in what would be Babylon eventually, and they decide they have this brilliant idea to build a tower to reach God.

So this is the story as we know it and maybe as we've interpreted it.

So, because of their pride, because of their arrogance, they think that they are going to build this beautiful tower that will reach the heavens.

And so they start building this amazing structure.

And because of their pride and their arrogance and their disobedience to God's commandment, right, we read the story and we know that in Genesis 1 and in Genesis 9, god gives them a commandment.

So we think it's a commandment.

We read it as a commandment to say go and fill the earth and multiply.

Well, here they are, gathering, they're not leaving this place, they're all gathering and they're commuting in one area.

So they're breaking this command that God has given them, and their pride and their arrogance is building this massive structure.

Why?

So that they can be famous.

They want all the attention on them, and so humanity is going crazy.

And so God comes down and sees what's happening and he looks at his creation and says this has to stop.

Right, for some reason, like God thinks man, what if they built this tower high enough where they get above the clouds and they see me and Noah playing Parcheesi or something like that?

Right, like God's worried about that, he's like we can't have this.

So what we're going to do is we're going to confuse their language.

So he comes down, they confuse their language and they spread out in the earth.

They're talking the same language.

All of a sudden God comes down.

Poof, you got bonjour, guten tag.

Or if there was a high school boy there, sup, right, confuses.

I just finished hebrew in seminary and I would take hebrew over like teenage speak any day.

I have no idea.

But he comes down, he confuses their language and then they spread throughout the earth.

The end.

That's the story of the tower of babel.

Now we can go and prepare for game seven tonight.

Let's go.

This is how we read it right.

People are prideful, they're arrogant people.

God has to come down and fix it or punish us and we scatter.

It's a nice little story and I hate to say it, but I am sure sometime in my ministry experience I've gotten up and talked on this story to explain the question for students why are there different languages?

Well, open your Bibles to Genesis 11, and it gives us a very nice answer.

We've used this for that.

But is that what's really going on here?

Is it a story of humanity getting it wrong, prideful, arrogant humanity getting it wrong, building this tower not following God's commandment and God coming down and punishing us, and now we have different languages.

Is that what this story is about, or if we turn it a little bit and shine a different light on it, is there something more meaningful here, something that, at the heart of every single one of us, can transform our lives and the lives of people outside of this place?

Is there something deeper going on in this story of Babel?

And I think there is.

I think there is.

I think it has to start with looking at these reasons why we think God comes down to punish us.

What's going on here?

The first is pride and arrogance.

Right, we read in the scriptures that humans have built this great tower for pride and arrogance so that their names may be known.

Right, in a lot of scripture passages we've taken this and inputted the word famous.

They wanted to be famous, they want the spotlight, they want the paparazzi, they want the world to know who they are.

A matter of fact in my Bible translation.

So I have an NLT Bible, the New Living Translation.

It's not what's in the pews, no-transcript, just kidding.

There we go.

All right, cool, all right.

Genesis 4 from the NLT.

Then they said come, let's build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky.

This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world.

Our translations has put that word famous in there, which there's really no other way to read it.

That says they're prideful, they want the attention.

Now the translation that we read today and as well, if you go really old school King James version, says this and I had to read this slow I haven't read King James for a long time.

I had to read it slow.

And they said go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach onto heaven, and let us make us a name lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

Let us make us a name also, sometimes make a great name, and we've taken this piece of scripture to be something bad, to show their pride and their arrogance, their desire to be famous.

Now, if we look at it with a different light and dive into the culture of the time and maybe even some more biblical text, we see that this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

God says lots of times he will make a great name.

Now this is God doing it, not people.

I understand, but this is God saying I will make a great name for Abraham, I will make a great name for David.

But this phrase during culture and that time used very often, not for pride, not for arrogance, not for fame, but in saying we will make a great name for my family and my sons and my daughters and their children, so that they may know who we are.

They couldn't go to Ancestrycom and get the whole background of their grandparents and their great-grandparents.

It was all traveled down through word, through memory, through stories, and that's something that we hold dear is family and knowing our family, knowing our past.

And this phrase make a great name, make our name known, was used in that context, not necessarily of pride and of arrogance.

So what if that's what's going on here, and it's not so much about becoming famous.

Now the second piece, the second thing that we think that is happening here, that God has to come down and punish humanity, is where they are gathering and they're not going and filling the earth and multiply Genesis 1.28.

He says the same thing again in Genesis 9.1 to Noah.

He blesses Noah and he says Do you see what we've done with that word blessing?

We've taken it away and put in commanded.

A blessing and a commandment are two different things.

God is blessing them, saying Go and fill the earth and multiply.

And he's not necessarily going to go like this reach all four corners of the earth, fill the earth with people or go to these destinations.

He's not saying gathering is bad.

He's saying I want you to fill and multiply the earth, and they're doing that.

I read this part and I really struggled with this, because our God is a God of community.

We gather together to worship and to praise.

This doesn't seem like the God that I know that he would say do not gather, do not come together.

But this makes sense.

It's not fill the earth and multiply as in leave this place, go and physically go to different destinations, but make sure to fill the earth and multiply.

So what if these two things that in the story the Tower of Babel that God comes down to punish us isn't really what's going on here?

What if it isn't them being prideful people or not fulfilling the blessing that God has given them?

What is going on here?

And I think the answer really lies in the tower itself.

In the tower itself I got a picture of the ziggurat of Ur.

Everyone say ziggurat.

Yeah, nimrod and ziggurats.

That should have been the title of the sermon.

This is a ziggurat you can go to Iraq and visit this tower.

This is the Ziggurat of Ur.

It was built over 2,000 years ago and it was built to worship the god Ur.

I'm just kidding, it was Nana.

That's what it was Nana, ur and Nana Easy to mix up.

Yeah, it was to worship the moon, god, nana.

But ziggurats have a particular purpose and many theologians believe that the Tower of Babel that we read about in Genesis 11 was a ziggurat.

So the meaning and the purpose of this tower becomes incredibly important in the way that we read this story.

You see a ziggurat this one in particular and all ziggurats had a purpose, and the purpose was this the tower was built to go to God.

We kind of get that idea in the story of Babel.

We see that they want to go to be with God.

So that was number one purpose.

But the second purpose was that halfway up they would build an altar or sanctuary or a worship center, and it's there where the high priests or whatever of that faith at the time would gather and the gods would come to them halfway up this tower and their worship was the humans understanding that God needed us.

And so they go to God, they go to their gods, they go to the god, nana, and they say listen, nana, we need more moonlight, we need more nighttime, it's really hot, our crops are dying, we need you to keep the night going longer.

And so if you do that, we will give you this.

If you do this for us, we will bring these offerings to you, we will offer you this.

It's a transactional relationship that happens in this tower, in these ziggurats, and it's here where I think God sees the problem.

Does God see the problem in our behavior?

Of course, man, we're all fools, we're all knuckleheads, we're all making mistakes.

But he sees humans building this ziggurat, a sign that says God needs us, a sign that says the relationship with God is transactional.

And this is the problem.

Is the problem that the people were prideful and arrogant?

I don't know.

Maybe Is it they weren't following the blessing of God, Maybe, or is it that they got what a relationship with God looks like wrong?

They thought it was about going to be with God because God could never come down to them, and they thought a relationship with God meant some kind of transaction.

I do for you and you do me.

And could it be that God saw this happening and, in his grace, comes down and says man, look at what the people are doing.

What if this continues?

What kind of God do you think that that they want to worship?

What kind of relationship do you think that they want to have with this kind of God?

What if this continues?

And maybe, out of his grace, he confuses us, because that's not the type of relationship that God wants with you.

That's what I think is happening in this story and that's what I think is happening today.

We still get this wrong.

We still build these towers.

We still have a warped idea of what it means to have a relationship with God.

We still continue to reach towards him with our good deeds, checking the boxes, trying to build that tower higher and higher, when, in all irony of this passage, god comes to us.

Verse 7, come, let's go down.

God comes to us.

That's the heart of this passage.

In that phrase, it shows the kind of relationship that God wants with you.

He doesn't want you to build these towers, waste the time doing all of these things.

He wants you to open your eyes and realize that he is here amongst us.

Now.

Come, let's go down.

The Bible is filled with examples of what that is.

He constantly puts this idea in front of us of what it looks like that God is with us and desires a relationship with us.

We just shared one communion, this kind of weird mystical experience where, through the bread and through the wine, god is with us.

Baptism through this water, this mystical experience with water that God's promises are here and present and God is with us.

It's Pentecost Sunday, when God sends the Holy Spirit to dwell among the believers to be with us.

It's Pentecost Sunday, when God sends the Holy Spirit to dwell among the believers to be with us and, ironically, what happens that day?

They all speak different languages.

Through Jesus Christ.

There's no other greater sign that God desires to be with us, that we don't have to build towers to go and be with God.

He dwells amongst us.

Jesus Christ, emmanuel, which means what God with us.

Scripture is littered with stories and evidence that God desires to be with us, in a relationship with us, even though we don't deserve it.

There's no tower big enough, there's no checklist that we could do, could reach to God.

So God comes to us and desires a relationship with us.

Communion, baptism, pentecost all of these things, man, amazing examples of God coming to be and dwell with us and I was trying to think about what does that look like for us on a daily basis?

What does it look like to really understand and know that God is with us and for me every time I thought about it?

You know, a couple weeks ago, ryan had this garbage pan full of all of his sports equipment and he dumped it out and the empty garbage can was the pit and the darkness.

And when I think about God coming to be with us and not having to reach to be with him, I think of stories when I've been in the bottom of that pit Complete and utter darkness and a feeling of being alone, a feeling where I just felt the most awful in my entire life, just a rotten human being and out of nowhere, my stepson comes up and gives me a hug, a time where I felt like my actions for what I had done was going to identify me forever.

It was who I was, was wrapped up in the things that I had done and a complete stranger looked me in the eyes and said you are not what you have done.

It's these kind of actions that I think, shows us that God is with and amongst us.

It's giving second chances that God is with and amongst us.

It's giving second chances.

God is with us and when we know that and experience it and live that way, there is a freedom that comes from that.

There's a no longer putting time and energy into building this tower to reach God with all of the good deeds you try to do.

We just sit and relax and there's freedom in that.

But it doesn't look like this.

It doesn't mean that God is with us, that he comes with his God one and he makes everything okay.

I think that's where the world says well, if God is real and if God is with you, how come he doesn't heal this person who you love?

How come he doesn't heal your marriage?

How come he doesn't help with parenting?

How come all of this?

If he is real and if he is among you and he wants this relationship with you, how come all of these things don't happen?

Because that's not the relationship we have with God.

But when you're sitting by that bedside of someone who you love, who's dying, god coming to us means you don't sit there alone when your marriage is breaking and falling apart.

It means that you're not going through it alone when you're having trouble raising your teenagers or dealing with being a parent.

It means that you don't do it alone.

It means in the darkness, in the bottom of that barrel, you don't do life alone.

That's what it means that God comes to us, that we don't have to waste time trying to reach him, that he's in the muck and the mire with us.

That's the relationship that we can have with this God and that's the piece that's being missed in the story of the Tower of Babel.

And when we are free from that, when we are free from having to build this tower, we start to see things differently.

We start to truly understand what it has meant when Jesus said to love one another, because we stop living for ourselves and we start living for other people.

That's the freedom that is in this God coming to be and dwell with us.

I want to close with a story about what that looks like.

What does it look like for God to be and dwell with us?

I want to close with a story about what that looks like, right, like what does it look like for God to come and dwell and for us to not have to worry about build our towers and to have freedom and to serve other people and ironically, I was driving in my car to a place that I think sums it up pretty great.

Over the past five months I've been doing this thing called CPE, which is Clinical pastoral education.

It's part of my schooling and it's spiritual care, it's understanding how to do spiritual care, and my site was Stillwater Prison.

And so since January I had gone down to Stillwater Prison once or twice a week and sat in a very tiny room with three other seminary students and four inmates of Stillwater Prison, four inmates who have all been there for over 15 years, for all committing murder.

And I'll be honest with you, when I got there, they put us in a very tiny room with four people who have committed murder.

I started to get a little freaked out.

Right, it was pretty intimidating.

And you walk into prison and you, you just walk through the door and it smells.

You just walk through the door and you just get hit in the face with despair.

It's an awful place.

And then I sit in this room with these other students and these four gentlemen who are serving life sentences for murder and that first day they just pour open their heart.

And over the last five months I've gotten to know these guys, and two in particular, fit this mold of what it looks like, that God comes to us and if we stop worrying about building our towers, we can make a huge impact on those around us.

This guy named Ramon.

He's been in for over 15 years, big guy, pretty intimidating guy.

They call him Crusher.

All right, so there you go.

He's telling his story and what he does in prison.

This is a picture of B West.

B West is the worst wing that you can be in besides segregation.

Besides the hole.

It's the worst place that you can be in besides segregation.

Besides the hole, it's the worst place that you can be in Stillwater.

And his job, his role, is to walk up and down those halls of men in prison who are in their cells 22 out of 24 hours a day.

And he walks up and down those halls giving spiritual care.

And he shared a story at our graduation last week that when he first started and when some real tough gangster guy started to cry telling his story, he didn't know how to react so he would just leave.

It kind of freaked him out.

He didn't know how to deal with tears.

And now he tells the story that as he walks those halls, men start to cry just knowing that he's near, because they know that he cares, because they know he wants to make a difference in their life, because they know that he cares, because they know he wants to make a difference in their life.

There's another man named Dimitri, who also serves probably at the darkest place in the prison, and that's segregation.

It's the hole.

He walks up and down those halls.

He chooses to be there.

He chooses to work in segregation.

He could be in a different wing, he doesn't have to do spiritual care, but he chooses to go to probably one of the darkest places that I can think of and care for others.

He goes to a place where he can walk up and down the halls and human waste is thrown out at the cell at him and he continues to go because he continues to care, because he stopped building his tower and realized that he is in the presence of God and now he can serve and love others.

So, people of Central, will you join me and stop building towers and realize that God is here.

God is present and live in his freedom and his grace and his love, and his rest and peace is here.

God is present and live in his freedom and his grace and his love and his rest and peace, so that way we may love other people just like Christ told us to Amen.