Word to the Wise
Friday, February 18, 2011 - Friday in the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time
[Genesis 11:1-9 and Mark 8:34 - 9:1]Then the Lord said: "If now, while they are one people, al speaking the same language, they have started to do this, nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do. Let us then go down and there confuse their language, so that one will not understand what another says."
A week ago I was in California, preaching a parish mission at a church in Orange City. This parish, I was told, was typical. Eucharist was celebrated in three different languages, none of which resembled the others: English, Spanish and Vietnamese. Furthermore, there were significant numbers of Filipino, Korean and Chinese people in the parish. I am fascinated by languages and was frustrated that I could not preach in Vietnamese, although I managed fairly well in English and Spanish. I think we Americans are firmly of the belief that God speaks English and that all other languages are a punishment for sin!
God promised never again to destroy the world by natural disaster and made a new covenant with humanity. However, humanity typically decides that it can be God by its own efforts! The story of the Tower of Babel is yet another example of the futility of such an effort. The story makes its point as part of an effort to explain why there is such a multiplicity of languages! As in Genesis, there is an original state of affairs which humans manage to lose because of their pride. In this case, the original state of affairs is a common language! God frustrates the plan to build a "tower with its top in the sky, and so make a name for ourselves." God does this by scrambling the communication system: language!
It can be truly humbling to try to learn another language. Perhaps the lesson of the Tower of Babel contains the warning that our human efforts to communicate, whether it be by oral speech, Twitter, text messaging or whatever should not include the claim that any of us is God! AMEN
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