Faith | Cats | Hope | Grace

Being scattered. Being found. Being loved.

For me, this is a through line in this morning’s readings.

The beauty of the lectionary is the familiarity and the regularity of hearing the stories of our history and that have shaped our faith. There is something deeply comforting in that familiarity. But while the lectionary is fairly static, the world around us isn’t. And neither are we. It changes in ways that give us new vantage points to hear Scripture from. And if I can be honest with you for a moment, the reading from Genesis was a little challenging in this moment in our collective history. Part of my personal history with this story comes from reading it and learning about it in the children’s Bible my grandmother gave me. Through a combination of childhood memory and probably some editorial license with the story, the message I have carried with me of the Tower of Babel is that is a story of prideful humans trying to build something that would rival God and to show them to be an important people. God comes, see humankind’s prideful actions, and puts an immediate end to it by mixing up their language and destroying the tower. Now here is where either editorial license or Sunday School hijinks may have contributed to the confusion. I remember, as much as any four-year-old can, building a tower of blocks in Sunday School and then someone knocking it down like in the story. But that destruction isn’t in the story. There is a danger in thinking we know something, and know it so surely. Some times in thinking we know something, we don’t leave ourselves open seeing or hearing what is actually there. Or in being so certain of something we don’t allow ourselves the space to hear something new. To hear God speaking to us in that moment.

So in preparing for this sermon, I saw that it was the story of the Tower of Babel, knew that I knew it, but to do my due diligence I would at least skim it. And I was stopped in my tracks. In that early, quick skim, I saw a story of humankind puffing themselves up with a city and tower, God coming and seeing the work and being displeased, and creating new language as punishment. In that early, quick skim I read that God created diversity as a punishment. My heart sank, I closed the lectionary, and proceeded to ignore the problem for a week. Better living through denial.

In skimming the text, I was bringing the world with me into that reading. Efforts to dismantle programs seeking to increase the diversity of those in our schools, our companies, our boardrooms are now frequently in the news. So are efforts to edit our history so that only a single story is told. So are efforts to stop the celebration of the diversity in our communities. All of this was sitting on my heart as I did that skim of a story I thought I knew.

But, well, I had a sermon to write and you can only sit in denial for so long, so I went back to the text and prepared to be uncomfortable. This time, I still saw the people building a city for themselves. But the why felt different. There is still a tinge of pridefulness, but undergirding that is a desire to be seen and for a sense of permanence. And that legacy seems only achievable through singularity—a single place and a single language and a single people. Humankind seems to have felt that the best way forward was a single, large, monolithic group. To move forward by ultimately, not moving. But even deeper than the desire for a legacy and permanence, I saw their fear. “and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” Humankind was afraid. Afraid to be separated from one another. Afraid to move in any direction. Afraid of being scattered. In that scattering, I can imagine those gathered in that city were afraid of being lost. Afraid of being forgotten. Afraid of not having a name, of not leaving a mark on the world and with that the ease of disappearing. There are so many fears and worries wrapped up in that single fear of being scattered. So, God punishes them with the things they are most afraid of—being scattered. And here, I might use air quotes around the word punish. Because God is just sending them forth to do the thing we had been called to do. “Be fruitful and multiple and fill the Earth.” No city, no matter how large or beautifully built is going to fill the Earth. So, he forces the issue. God creates language—and with it, diversity—and scatters us thither and yon. Humans seem to forever want to stay within our walls with our stark boundaries and with our divisions. And God even more often reminds us lovingly that that is not his plan and shoves us out of the door. Sometimes, we need to be scattered.

In my late 20s, I visited London and Paris for the first time. I was traveling with a friend and we were going to meet up with friends from college who had settled abroad. I’d studied French in college, but had had limited chance to actually use it. So, with this trip, I wanted to really stretch myself. And I was definitely given that opportunity. We got around on public transit, ate at local restaurants outside of the typical tourist locations, and met up with the college friend who had settled there and with their new Parisian friends. For days, the bulk of my human interactions were in French. And while my comprehension was ok, speaking was a challenge, so interaction with the new friends felt a bit stilted. Everyone was kind, but it was exhausting. One evening, my traveling companion was going to go and catch up with a different group of friends and I was opting for a quiet evening. I was going to stop by a crepe stand for dinner before heading back to the hotel. I’d done this with my friend and knew how to order and thought things would go fine. And they did, until they didn’t. The man at the stand was asking me what I wanted on the crepe and I was saying yes and no as appropriate. And then he got to two words that I didn’t recognize and I froze. Complete deer in the headlights moment. And the man laughed and asked in English, “Are you practicing your French on me.” I sheepishly answered yes. He smiled and complimented me on at least trying. And while he made my order, we had a conversation in English. We talked about Chicago, where I was living at the time. He said that he had wanted to visit and I talked up a few of the sights that were my favorites. All in all a simple conversation. But for someone who was feeling a bit lost and hadn’t even realized it, talking about home in your mother tongue is a blessing.

In similar, but still different ways, I imagine that it was what those Jews from across the then known world gathered in Jerusalem felt. In a completely unexpected moment, a piece of home finding you. And it wasn’t an easy find. The writer of Acts tells us that there were people from over ten different places and presumably ten different languages. Imagine everyone talking at once, some voices probably louder than others. At some point it probably feels less like language and just noise. It probably also becomes a bit overwhelming and scary. And in the midst of that noise a voice speaking your native language finds you. And as you listen, it’s not just a snippet of a conversation or a story from home, but instead in this far off place you hear of God’s deeds of power. Even in this far off place, you have been found.

And this is what gives me hope—that we can and will be scattered, we will be called to go to new places and become new people, we will increase our diversity and difference from one another, and then we will come together, bringing that difference, in new and life-giving configurations. And most importantly, we will never be lost from the eye of God. There is nowhere we can travel, no distance—both physical and spiritual—that we can go where we won’t be found and where we can hear and experience the love of God.

To love and to be loved. It’s the easiest thing and the hardest thing in the world to do. Jesus tells those gathered that if they love him, they will keep his commandments. Easy peasy. Behavior one immediately leads to behavior two. But human beings are nothing if not complicated creatures. We have waged entire wars to show how much we love God. We have twisted ourselves into absolute knots trying to create boundaries of who is and who is not my neighbor so that someone else’s needs are not our problem. We humans see the point and manage to zoom right past it.

But we are beloved children of God, so we aren’t left to stumble in the dark trying figure it out ourselves. Because our Creator and our Savior know we need help. So we have been sent an Advocate, a spirit of truth. The Advocate inspires us, encourages us, pushes us to live our lives as Jesus lived his. Caring for the sick, the poor, the marginalized. Calling for justice. Loving others through service. And because discernment can be challenging for us humans, the Advocate is the spirit of truth helping us to sort through our own thoughts and beliefs and biases to really hear the ever-evolving ways we are called to love our neighbor. In the Gospel reading, Jesus is preparing the disciples for a time when he won’t be with them. To a time when they won’t be able to physically perceive him. Here we have another potential moment for humanity to feel unmoored. To feel lost. For fear to begin to settle in. But humanity’s continuous relationship with God is one marked by change, newness, and revelation. It is also a relationship marked by constancy, steadfastness, and permanence. It is a relationship so blessed in its complexity. God is constantly doing a new thing, revealing himself to us in new and unexcepted ways. Sharing a different part of himself with us. But in all that change and new revelation, God never leaves us. We are not alone. We are never, ever truly lost. Who we are changes. Where we are changes. How we encounter God changes. Where we encounter God and the people we encounter him with changes. But at the center of all that change and newness is the constant presence of God.

We are a people who are scattered and gathered and loved beyond measure. Thanks be to God.