Towers, Tents, and Other Trifles
[The following article is an edited version of the Commencement Address given to the graduates of Asbury Theological Seminary on May 20, 2023.]
A few weeks ago, I asked one of our sons, who graduated from this very institution in 2018, who his commencement speaker was. As you would expect, I got that “deer-in-the-headlights” look, because, of course, he had no idea. Then I asked him if he remembered anything his commencement speaker said. He answered, “All I heard was, ‘You don’t have to go to class anymore.’” So, graduates, I am tempted to say, “My name is Bill Arnold, and you don’t have to go to class anymore,” and sit down.
But let’s assume that there is value in turning our thoughts for these few minutes to what I brazenly consider to be the most important topics of life. Of course, I could never make such a claim – that I’m going to talk about “the most important topics of life” – unless I draw from a text more profound than I could ever hope to be. And so, I turn to the opening chapters of the Bible. These opening chapters of Genesis see all humanity as constituting one great family traceable to a common ancestry.
The first two chapters of the Bible created for Israel a worldview that was in many respects unique in the ancient world. Even as we read it today, we have to be impressed by the way Genesis 1-2 produces in us an appreciation for the goodness of God’s creation and the special role of humans in it. However, after just two chapters, the text moves quickly to the origins and history of human sin and its consequences for that beautifully created order. As Genesis moves breathlessly through individual rebellion, fratricide, and corporate sinfulness, we as readers are gripped with the unnerving conviction that the world is out of our control – indeed, it seems, the world is out of God’s control. There seems to be no way out. The answer, if there even is an answer to this world’s problems, is beyond us.
We then stumble upon this passage about the Tower of Babel read for you just now. What a curious way to bring this first portion of the Bible to a close! With one language and a common list of vocabulary words, “they” (our ancestors) settled in the valley of Shinar, that is, Babylonia (vv. 1-2). Without any further explanation or description, the text says simply: “And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth’” (vv. 3-4).
Our ancestors resolved to use the latest innovation in building techniques, bricks hardened by firing until they were almost like stones: “let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” These early humans wanted to make their accomplishment permanent, lasting, durable. This technology would make it possible to build as never before. They had resources and a new technology! And they were determined! The familiar “come, let us make bricks and burn them” is a singular imperative followed by two plural cohortatives (students, this is my last chance; here’s a little Hebrew). With these exhortation cohortatives (let’s make bricks and burn them), the verb of motion in the imperative (come on; let’s get going, we can do it) serves to intensify the suggestion. The effect is forceful: it shows their resolve to encourage each other into action. They were determined. Their plans were premeditated; they were communally and collectively hell-bent on success. There would be no stopping these humans now.
The same intensity is repeated in the next verse: “Come, let us build.” The Babylonian ziggurats were enormous stepped pyramids that served as the base for temples. Cities throughout that region for well over 2000 years housed their most important gods in temples beside or on top of these stepped pyramids, so that in general, religion served their personal and corporate ambitions.
Our ancestors drew on all their resources and the latest technology in order to manipulate religious power in building a tower to their own ingenuity. And the text is clear about their motivation in yet another cohortative (v.4): “let us make a name for ourselves.” To be left without name in the ancient world was the worst of fates – essentially, to cease to exist.
The significance of the name is further explained by the opposite of having a name – that is, being scattered across the face of the earth. To have a name is to be respectable and important, to be accepted and revered by other human beings. To be scattered, on the other hand, is to have nothing.
And so, near the end of this first portion of Genesis, we have this picture of our ancestors, breathlessly provoking each other and grasping for power. They grasped for significance, for meaning in life. This text concludes the shameful narrative of human sin. As we watch in horror, God’s perfect creation moves from taking forbidden fruit to murder, from the near ruin of the faithful line of Seth to a catastrophic flood. These first eleven chapters of the Bible, with only occasional bits of God’s grace, convince us that the world is hopelessly lost in its own lust for power, for importance, for significance in life. And perhaps this is why we have now reached the climax of that history, because now humans have turned to religion itself – in the building of a tower to heaven – as a means of control and power.
It would be easy for me this morning to condemn the abuse of religion as a means of seizing power. Perhaps we could start with the Nazis’ manipulation of the state church in 1930s Germany, or with al-Qaeda or the Taliban and their abuse of women. Or what about Russia’s courtship with the Orthodox church while yet waging war against Ukraine? Yes, those would be easy targets for me. But let’s talk about something a bit harder, a bit closer to home. What about our own politicians or church leaders using Christianity to win elections or to seize power for denominational institutionalism? It isn’t easy to admit that we are part of a system that uses God all the time to get what we want. After all, this story of the Tower of Babel, like the rest of Genesis 1-11, is the story of Everyman and Everywoman. It graphically explains our story; it explains who we are, and why we are the way we are, and it puts us precisely in the place we all know too well, by telling the story of how our ancestors behaved.
You are leaving Asbury Theological Seminary as a highly trained Christian professional. You proud ATS graduates are going out as ministers of the Gospel and as representatives of Christ and His Church. As such, your task is more than that of being a social worker or secular counselor, as noble and as necessary as those professions are in our day. You are going out to help others with their problems, but you do so by offering them Christ and Christ crucified. So today, the message of Babel’s Tower is to be more aware: you and I are still tower-builders; and we’ve gotten good at it. And make no mistake; this is the greatest threat to your ministry, whatever form of ministry you are about to enter. My experiences as a seminary professor have confirmed in my mind that we religious professionals are the best tower-builders in the world. Any time (or perhaps every time) we use our positions of influence and authority to build a tower, a monument, to our own cleverness; we are one step further away from the Garden of Eden, one step closer to Babel. Every time we rely on our own intellect, our own resources and latest technology, to grasp for significance and meaning, we are no better than these ancestors standing before their pitiful tower at Babel. We manipulate colleagues, or publishers, or students – graduates, please make your own application here. If you are ever tempted to manipulate people in your churches, or fellow pastors, or colleagues, you thereby forsake the very reasons you are in service to God and God’s people. Whenever we triangulate relationships among our colleagues in order to protect our turf, when we neglect our families in order to write one more paragraph, we take another step toward Babel – a step away from Eden – and we begin to look more and more like tower-builders rather than kingdom-builders for God.
But this is not the final word of the Tower of Babel passage. This text has many more words (vv. 5-8), and two more of them are cohortatives. After the humans finished the city & the tower, the Lord came down to see their handiwork (v.5). God marveled at what they had accomplished, not because it did make them significant or gave them permanence, but because their unity in effort and communication made for a remarkable, if pathetic, ability to build and build and build, and to produce more and more meaningless and insignificant monuments (v.6). Their tower was a monument to the very insignificance they feared, their city a monument to that very emptiness and hollowness they sought to avoid. And they would obviously never stop. God remarks: “nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them!”
And then we encounter these last exhortation cohortatives: “Come, let us go down and confuse their language there” (v. 7). Not only do we learn here what we are like, about our very nature as tower-builders, but we also learn about God. This time the cohortatives are not part of arrogant human speech, but of divine speech. God is just as determined as our ancestors were to take action. And the specific action he took is surprising: “So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city” (v. 8). The very thing our ancestors were trying to avoid – i.e., the very transience, the brief and meaningless existence just there “over the face of all the earth” – that scattering was their punishment. Not only did they lose their name, the enduring importance they were looking for, they also lost their home in Babylonia and their unity of language. What has been lost is irretrievable, gone forever.
Things haven’t changed much since those days long ago in Babylonia. In fact, even in our best moments of service to God, we humans get confused about our roles in building God’s kingdom. Consider, for example, the reaction of the apostle Peter at the Mount of Transfiguration. He saw the face of Jesus shining like the sun in dazzling white clothes. Suddenly, Moses and Elijah were there speaking with Jesus. Then, the apostle Peter thought, how fortunate it is that he, Peter, is there too (along with James and John, of course). And he then did what people do – what we all do – he wanted to use his big fishermen’s hands to do something, to build something. “I know, let’s build tents up here, one for Jesus, one for Moses, one for Elijah, and I myself will build them for you all. Just look what I can do.”
Let’s not be too hard on the apostle. The most generous reading of the Gospel account is that he was thinking of God’s great deliverance from Egypt and the way Israel’s ancestors lived in tents 40 years in the wilderness. Jews commemorate that event every fall in the Feast of Tents (or Tabernacles), so maybe, just maybe Peter was thinking about that. But the likelihood is also that he was so impressed that he and his two buddies were there and not the other disciples, that he wanted to draw attention to it.
I love that Jesus does not rebuke Peter in that moment. There is no, “Peter, get behind me and out of my way; you’re the very voice of Satan,” or “Peter, what were you thinking?” Instead, there was immediately a bright cloud and a voice from the cloud (like at Mount Sinai), and it said, “This is my son; hear him.” And then the apostle Peter fell on his face and was overcome with fear.
In a few minutes, I’m going to invite you to pray, and I’ll ask you at that time to bow your head. Remember, that bowing your head is a symbol in the early church for falling upon your face before God. It acknowledges that this is not about you. Even walking across the stage in your 45-seconds of fame is not about you; you’re called into Christian service, which is first about being a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ, and second about serving Christ and His Church. Your ministry lies before you. You can build tents and towers to your own clever ingenuity, in your own power, and relying on your own skills. Or you can offer the world the truth of this Gospel, which by definition makes you a servant. The degree to which you build towers, tents, or other trifling, insignificant things, is the degree to which you are no better than our ancestors at Babel.
No, things really haven’t changed much since those events in Babylonia. And God hasn’t changed much either, I dare say. Speaking personally, I know that I dilute myself by over-emphasizing the eternal value of the books I write and even the students I teach. My writing, my teaching, and my preaching are only eternal to the degree that they contribute to building God’s kingdom, to building a monument to God’s greatness, and to God’s enduring covenant and love. Everything else we do will someday stand – like Babylon’s ancient ziggurats appear today, sprinkled across the barren landscape of Iraq, lost in decay and deterioration – as monuments to our own futility and vainness. And just so, someday our personal towers of pride and professional ambition may – no, will – crumble suddenly into worthless debris and, like ancient Babel itself, be left abandoned to decay in the heat of the desert sun.
Graduates, God has gifted you to learn, to proclaim, to instruct, to counsel, to console or convict, to write. But any of your work that fails to contribute to the enduring covenant, to that everlasting relationship God has established with God’s people, will not last on the day God comes down to see. Because just as God came down to see the city and the tower at Babel, so God continues to come down, because God is a coming-down God. And when God comes, he comes in order to see (v.5). The tasks God has placed in your hands, this work is the most important any of us could request or expect to receive. We are all about building God’s city and God’s tower. And we can be grateful today that whatever we manage to contribute to God’s city and tower is eternal without end.
Bill T. Arnold is the Paul S. Amos Professor of Old Testament Interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky.