Our students are going through a series in our worship gatherings entitled ‘the God story.’ The God story is a journey through the Genesis narrative … a seeking to understand the storyline of what the original author intended to unveil to his audience. (side note: creation, the fall, the flood…these are all storylines which reveal something deep, profound, and engaging about this God which the writer expresses). Our journey through the beginning of things brought us to a story in Genesis 10 and 11 … the storyline of a guy named Nimrod and his vision to build a city.
In interest to keep this relatively short, I won’t go into full detail. But, there’s a lot going on here behind the scenes. Nimrod was a sort of living legend…a hunter so well skilled at his craft that he was regarded as a sort of king sent from the gods to walk among them. The original hearers of this story would’ve known Nimrod…he would have filled the legends and stories of the Babylon empire.
At this point of the story, the early humans are on a journey eastward…populating the earth as they move forward. This moving east is significant in the storyline. It’s significant because it finds it’s roots in another story…the story of Noah. After the flood this God speaks to Noah and says, ‘Go forward and multiply. Fill the earth.’ This wasn’t a command. This was destiny. God was revealing to Noah his destiny…to fill this earth. “This is what you were created for. Now go forward, and live in your destiny.”
And so, in the moving forward of things, a man rises up and says… we are done with the moving forward of things. And so, Nimrod says, “Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower reaching into the heavens. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world.” And the people moving forward, moving eastward in their journey…stop and build a city.
Now, this is where the story gets strange. Apparently this God comes down from the heavens and walks around the foundations of this city. He becomes fearful of the potential of these humans…and says ‘Come, let us confuse the people with different languages…then they won’t be able to understand each other.’
Weird.
For the longest time, I couldn’t grasp this story. Why would Moses write about this?!! The people just wanted to build a city…a place to call home. What was so wrong, so offensive about that? We build cities all the time…
But this is about more than a city. This is about more than buildings, streets, and governments. This is about the early human’s destiny – about their very definition of what it meant to be human. This was an act of rebellion and defiance with implications larger than they could’ve understood.
This was treason.
And we find the treason in this statement: “Let’s make a name for ourselves.” This is intentional from the writer’s standpoint…because Genesis is rich with God naming things. He names the day, and the night. He names Abraham and Israel. He looks at Adam and Eve and names them humans.
This God names things not out of boredom, but out of purpose.
To say ‘Let us make a name for ourselves’ is to denounce the name God had given the people. It was to separate themselves from the journey and destiny that God had prepared for them. It was a choosing to become a different human than the humans they had been created to be.
The different humans go on to build this city in Babel…which later becomes the foundation for Babylon…an oppressive empire founded on the backs of slave labor and injustice. The empire which would enslave and de-humanize the people of God.
For the original audience, this was the “ah-ha” moment.
Because the writer’s chief concern isn’t that they grasp the history of the moment, but that they grasp the teaching of the moment: let us never settle outside of the path God has given us. Let us always move forward, and never settle.
Genesis, after all, was written to the Hebrew nation as they wandered in the wilderness for forty years on a quest to discover and take hold of the Promised Land.
And that message is still for us today. May we never settle in a broken world. May we never become the different humans – choosing to walk away from our destiny found in the Creator. May we instead choose to be the new humans – choosing to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly in the path of God.
And may we walk … because following Christ is never stagnant nor stale.