Say What?

Rev. Peter Friedrichs

October 21, 2007

Our story today reminds me of a story from the Hebrew Bible, what some people call the "Old Testament." It's contained in the book of Genesis, and some of you may be familiar with it. This story tells the tale of some of the earliest human beings on the earth, who gather at a particular place to undertake a great task. These people are all very much alike, and they speak the same language. They share the same beliefs and they think a whole lot of themselves. They are proud of what they can do, being of one mind. So they say to each other, "Let us build a great city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves."

Now, as the story goes, God watches what these people are doing, and he understands that these people are, in fact, pretty great. But he also sees that they are really full of themselves. He realizes that the people are primarily concerned with showing off, and telling the whole world that they're the most important thing on earth. God decides that he needs to remind these people that, although they're pretty great, he is even greater, and that they should be put in their place. So God proclaims that these people should start to speak in different languages, and that they should leave the city and populate the rest of the earth. Of course, the people are no longer able to speak to each other, so they scatter and the great city is abandoned, and the magnificent tower is never finished.

The story of the Tower of Babel, as it's called, is a folk tale that was used to explain why, since the Bible says that we're all descended from the same family, there are so many different languages and cultures on the earth. But it also is a story that reminds us that, while we can think we're pretty great, we have to keep that in perspective. The Tower of Babel stands as a reminder to us that we shouldn't build monuments to ourselves, that we are not the be-all and end-all, that we must strive to remain humble and aware of our place in the grand scheme of things.

The Alphabet Tree story, like the story of Unitarian Universalism, seems to me a continuation of the Tower of Babel story. It tells us what happens, or at least what can happen, after the people have been scattered across the earth, speaking in different languages. Think of the individual letters on their separate leaves as the people speaking different languages. When the letters are just jumbled up and disorganized, they can't communicate, they have no meaning. Then along comes the bug, who helps show them that they can, in fact, talk to each other if they just get a little more organized, if they think things through. So the letters form words. But these words are just random. They have no meaning and they have no power. They are not coherent. Until the caterpillar comes along and shows them how they can make sentences. But even that isn't good enough, because, the caterpillar tells them, they need to make sentences that mean something. And finally he shows them that, even if the sentences spell out important principles, they're meaningless unless they're shared with the rest of the world.

In our Unitarian Universalist faith we agree to affirm and promote seven principles. One of those, the Sixth Principle, is the goal of world community, with peace, liberty, and justice for all. In case you missed it, the words that our alphabet tree created this morning here in our sanctuary were words of the Sixth Principle. In this principle we say that everyone, no matter where they live and no matter what language they speak, is entitled to live in peace, to be free from oppression and to be treated fairly. Those are pretty easy concepts to grasp, even though they're hard to achieve. But what of this "goal of world community?" Is world community possible? Is it even desirable?

We see the impacts of a global economy already. American jobs are being done faster, cheaper, and some say better, by workers living in far-away countries. The price we pay for gasoline is determined as much by China's energy needs as it is by the capacity of our refineries here at home. We can purchase consumer goods at lower prices because they are produced overseas, although recent scares about tainted foods and toys with lead paint remind us that there is a price to be paid for that. But a global economy is not the same thing as a "world community."

To be in community is to share similar values, similar hopes, similar dreams. And it is making the commitment to love and support each other in the work of sustaining those values and pursuing those dreams. Rev. Ken Collier has said that "community is about serving each other with humility and generosity. It is about creating ways to help each other… It is about reaching out to each other and touching, sometimes literally, with a gentle and healing hand, sometimes with food or clothing, sometimes with a place of shelter, sometimes with a mind or a heart, sometimes with the caress of a soul." There is an intimacy in this view of community that seems to be at odds with the goal of "world community." It is why we sometimes hear the phrase "Think globally, act locally." Each small thing that we do, with our family and friends, with the members of this church or in our local neighborhoods, moves us -ever so slightly - toward the goal of world community.

The goal of world community seems like a lofty, unattainable objective, doesn't it? But even so, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive for it. And in the story of the closer to this goal. We need to learn how to talk to each other. We need to learn how to bridge the gulfs of language, self-interest, and suspicion that prevent us from appreciating that, as human beings, we share the same hopes, the same dreams. Peace. Safety. Food. Housing. Education. These are the things that bind us together with all the other people on the planet, and it is these dreams that form the foundations for a world community. But we must talk to each other. We must be willing to reach out across cultures and stereotypes and fears to find our common bonds.

The Bible tells us that, before God intervened, the builders of the tower "were one people, and they have all one language; and nothing they propose to do will now be impossible for them." The power of the letters in the Alphabet Tree came not when they were huddled together after the storm, but when they were organized and left their tree to go out in the world. My colleague Anya Sammler, minister of the Unitarian Universalist church in Sterling, Virginia, has said that we sit among the rubble of the fallen tower of Babel and that, as Unitarian Universalists, we are called to rebuild it. But we are not to rebuild is vertically, reaching to the heavens. We are called to build it horizontally, as a bridge between peoples, striving to unite us in our common humanity. I think that's a pretty powerful image. As Unitarian Universalists, as human beings, we are called to be bridge-builders.

Rebuilding the tower as a bridge begins with the foundation, and the foundation is made up of the language - the words - we use to communicate with each other. Words can be used to unite or to divide, to hurt or to heal. Words used as weapons, attacking those around us, particularly those who are different from us, words spoken in anger or from fear, widen the gap between us. In all our relationships, whether at home or at work or at school, we must strive to find the words that bind us together. Words of hope and love, words of peace and blessing. Words that bridge the gaps between us and reveal our common humanity and our shared destinies.

May it be so.

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