A Wonderful World

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

May 15, 2016

Pentecost & Confirmation Sunday

A Wonderful World

Genesis 11:1-9

Now the whole earth had one language

and the same words.

And as they migrated from the east,

they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar

and settled there.

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.”

The Lord came down to see the city and the tower,

which mortals had built.

And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people,

and they have all one language;

and this is only the beginning of what they will do;

nothing that they propose to do

will now be impossible for them.

Come, let us go down,

and confuse their language there,

so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”

So the Lord scattered them abroad from there

over the face of all the earth,

and they left off building the city.

Therefore it was called Babel,

because there the Lord confused

the language of all the earth;

and from there the Lord scattered them abroad

over the face of all the earth.

***************************************************

Forty seven years ago –

that sounds like such long time.

Not so far back that dinosaurs roamed the earth,

but far enough back

that telephones were wired into walls

and had rotary dials;

and if you wanted to call a number

outside of your area code,

you called long distance,

which, of course, you almost never did

because it was expensive.  

The closest thing to a home computer

was called a slide rule,

which had about as much cachet

as a plastic pocket protector.

Ties and suitcoat lapels were thin;

shoes were sensible;

cars were big;

television, boxy, bulky and richly veneered,

was just emerging from primordial black and white

into a wonderful world of color.

1969 was the year in which I was confirmed,

confirmed at the church

I had grown up in in Buffalo.

Our class was big;

I don’t remember precisely,

but I am guessing there were more than

20 in my class –

the church had over a 1000 members back then.

Every Sunday we gathered in the Youth Room,

seated in a semicircle,

facing the three adults who taught the class.

The two most popular girls in the class

sat at one end of the semicircle,

and the two coolest boys

sat at the other end of the semicircle

so the four could make faces at each other,

while the rest of us sat in the middle.

We all struggled not to look bored,

but the fact was, we were –

that’s the one thing I remember about the class:

It was dull.

The curriculum came from the denomination,

and our focus was on preparation

for the examination we would all endure

at the end of the year,

the examination by the Session,

a requirement that still stands

in our Book of Order.

(W-4.2003)

The exam was rather like today’s SOLs

and the teachers had to teach to the test.

I don’t recall my actual Confirmation;

That memory was erased by

my memory of the examination.

It was on a Sunday night at the church.

My classmates and I were seated before

the 24 members of the Session; all men.

The girls wore dresses,

and we boys squirmed in coats and ties.

Information had been sprayed on us throughout the year,

like a light dust that clung for a short while

but then eventually wafted away.

We’d been given 50 questions

and told that the elders would ask us each

one question from the 50,

But of course, we were not told which question

we were going to be asked,

so we needed to know the answers to all 50.

Happily, grace abounds in the Reformed church,

and we all passed,

but all in all it

there was little constructive in the process.

In fact, even back then I determined

that if I ever were to teach Confirmation Class,

I would do things very differently.

What we try to do now

is not shoot information nuggets and packets

at our young people.

Instead, we try to encourage them

to think about their faith,

try to encourage them to ask questions,

try to help them understand

that asking questions is not only okay,

it is the key to a vibrant, vital faith.

We ask our students a lot of questions

over the course of the Confirmation year,

but we are not looking for right answers;

we’re looking to the students to think,

think about what they think,

why they say what they say.

Even the best religious education

can be infected with mythology

and bad information.

Where in the Bible does it say that it was an apple

that Adam and Eve ate?

How did we come up with 3 kings,

and where did their names come from?

Why do we think Mary Magdalene was a prostitute?

We want our students

to look at their Confirmation year

as the beginning of a lifetime of questions,

of exploration, of learning,

of a intentional faith,

of growing a deeper faith.

And as they study and learn,

they may find themselves looking at stories, texts,

they thought they knew,

but reading them with fresh eyes,

a fresh perspective,

seeing something new, different

in words they thought they understood.

Our text is a perfect example

of a lesson most of us have heard,

learned, thought we understood:

a story of the great tower

humanity built from pride, arrogance, vanity—

“to make a name for ourselves”

as the text tells us.

We read this as a story of pride and punishment,

God’s pre-Jane Austen novella.

The children who seek to build a tower

that will reach the heavens

to make a name for themselves

will be stopped in their tracks,

the prideful scattered to the winds,

all of them condemned never again

to understand one another       ,

lost in a sea of languages.

But perhaps that’s not what the story is about.

Perhaps the story is more about God’s concern

that humanity was getting too comfortable

in its unity and uniformity,

one people bound by one language;

not “filling the earth”

as God had commanded them.

                                            

So God scatters his children,

not to punish them,

but simply to fufill God’s goal.

And in scattering them

God gave them each their own language,

again not to punish,

but simply because diversity is good,

After all, the lion doesn’t make the same sound

as the camel.

And the first Pentecost reminds us

that language has never been a barrier,

never been an impediment to the Word of the Lord.

The Word of the Lord transcends language.

it is the same whether it is in Hebrew, Greek,

Latin, or any of the languages

that came centuries later,

including English.

It is always the Word of the Lord.

My Confirmation Class was very white,

very waspish, very uniform.

It was not reflective of the world;

it was not even very reflective of Buffalo back then,

which was a mosaic of ethnic neighborhoods.

Our Confirmands will go out into a

wonderfully diverse world,

a world that’s truly global,

a world where they can communicate

just as easily with someone

on the other side of the world

as they can with someone next door.

Our young people will be part of a multicultural world,

a world in which most followers of Jesus Christ

live outside of the United States,

learning the Word of the Lord

in more than a hundred tongues.

God does not want the unity that binds us

to be language, skin color,

ethnicity, a country’s borders;

God wants the unity that binds us

to be all of us looking to God,

living in obedience to God’s will

as “whole earth disciples”.

Our text, read with fresh eyes

tells us the story of wonderful world,

a vast world God created for all God’s children

that is as rich in diversity as it is in beauty.

We can build our towers –

that’s not what troubles God.

It is when we build walls that God grows concerned.

We are tear down walls, remove barriers,

so we can walk with one another,

never pridefully, always humbly,

bound in unity, all of us God’s children.

Then we will make a name for ourselves,

a good name,

a name that will put a smile on God’s face,

a smile that it seems to me would stretch

from earth to the highest heavens.

AMEN