17 February 2023 - language barrier

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city

and a tower with its top in the sky,

and so make a name for ourselves;

otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth."

Because of sin people often come to care too much about things that are not really so very important. They set about building all sorts of towers designed to reach all the way up to heaven. But of course they never even get a fraction of the way there, in spite of all of the effort entailed. It is sad because, for committed sinners, such endeavors feel necessary for survival, as though without them we would "be scattered all over the earth". When feel the need to prove the value of our own existence by making a name for ourselves rather than receiving our value from God we are embarking on a project that can only end in frustration, one which it is merciful for God to bring to an end sooner rather than later.

Then the LORD said: "If now, while they are one people,

all speaking the same language,

they have started to do this,

nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do.

This great project that united so many planners and workers was really an exercise in futility. And the Lord did not want to allow the people to be lost in futility, doing whatever the presumed to do. Being one people and speaking one language would seem to be a good thing. But when that unity allowed the uninterrupted pursuit of what could never satisfy it was not actually a positive. 

Let us then go down and there confuse their language,

so that one will not understand what another says.

It was not the original intention of the Lord to divide. Rather it was the inevitable result of ignoring the Lord himself who could be the only true fulcrum for true human unity. Human ambition could not provide the raw materials because seeking a name for oneself would inevitably mean something slightly different from everyone involved. It was all but built into reality that such an project as Babel would have the result of confusion and division. We see this in politics in our own day when we witness that even very good and well meaning politicians have difficulty uniting their disparate constituents.

And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing (see Genesis 12:2).

We need rather to wait for the Lord to make our name great than to try to do so ourselves. Only his idea of greatness can be the true basis of unity. And his idea of greatness, as we see in today's Gospel, is something quite different from our own.

For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,

but whoever loses his life for my sake

and that of the Gospel will save it.

Rather than a tower to unite heaven and earth we find instead a cross. We do not build up by our strength, so much as give ourselves away by love. It is by coming to care about the name of the Son of Man above all else that we may hope to find our own names where they truly belong, in the lamb's book of life. The cross was able to bridge the divide between man and God in a way that no human effort ever could. It was precisely for this reason that the cross can now become a true basis of unity.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God (see Ephesians 2:19).

As a sign of the unity established by the cross we can come to see the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost as the anti-Babel, reuniting all people in the same speech, establishing humanity as the chorus of right praise to God which we were always meant to be.

Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? (see Acts 2:7-8).

Matt Maher - All The People Said Amen