Open-ended,
Life-centred,
Gospel-Focused Explorations of Hebrew Bible
Eucharistic Readings from the Australian Prayer Book.
Genesis 11:1-9... Pentecost, Year C...
(For JN 14: 8-17 scroll on site)
NOTES: 1]Always read
the Hebrew Bible in the light
of our understanding of God revealed in Jesus.2] Till near the end of Ch.11
we are in 'pre-history'. 3] An ancient story teller uses
the ruins of a Temple Tower from Mesopotamian (Shinar of v.2) days to
interpret language differences as rebellion against
God. WARMING UP: Have we ever
looked at something from ancient times & wondered how it came about?
TREASURES OLD & NEW:
Identify God at work in anything this week?
ENTERING INTO THE STORY:
1-2 If 'one language & the
same words' is an imprint from what Jung called humanity's 'collective
unconscious', could we
see it making any difference if somehow we were all able to speak one
language again? How long could we see that lasting? Would it take
rebellion against God or against each other to pull us apart again?
Isn't
rebellion against eachother
rebellion against God anyway, & vice versa? Are we conscious of any
'imprints' from our collective human memory? (Hint: Look in GEN 1 to 11)
3-4
Do we still have some vestige of 'imprinting' in us that makes us think
that the higher we go up, the closer we are to God? Is there some real
truth in there somewhere? Has religion always had a drive necessitating
humans to
build, & 'reach for the sky'? Has that changed much? How much is
that drive to build still connected with 'making a name for ourselves'?
Is that the essential rebellion
against God? Do we still have imprinted
in us some fear of being 'scattered abroad' in some sense if we don't
establish ourselves in tangible ways?
5-9 Do we
still have any sense of God 'coming down' to see what we're up to? Is
that a helpful way to understand God? How much does that kind of
thinking contrast with / contradict the fact of God's coming among us
as one of us in the person of Jesus? Would it be our general impression
from our Christian Faith that God is very much on about human one-ness
& coming together rather than reacting as he's imagined to react here? What
would God really have to be concerned about if people did come so close
together as having one language? Hasn't God actually given us one
language - the language of Love? Is the evidence of history more a
matter of humans choosing to stand apart from each other than coming
together in Love or any other language? Is it our experience more that
God is on about confusing us, or that we are on about confusing God?
Does confusing & scattering as acts of God cause us any unease? If
we were telling such a story today, how might we need to re-shape it to
make it compatible with our understanding of God revealed in Jesus by
the Spirit? Given that we can't just change an ancient story because it
doesn't tell things the way we see them now, is
there some way we can legitimately re-interpret it for today? Is it
just best to
ignore it & hope it'll go away? Or, do we tell it as it is but
explain that that was an ancient way of looking at
things & we see things differently now?
As this is the Hebrew Bible reading for Pentecost, is there some way we
can make an honest connection with the outbreak of tongues on that day
without doing an injustice to either the integrity of the Babel story
or the Pentecost One? (Maybe that 'language of love' bit above is
important?) If the early Christians were meant to understand
the tongues of Pentecost as a bringing together by God of peoples he'd anciently separated for their
rebellion, does that have to be good enough for us too? Or would that
be plain dishonest?
