Babel came before the blessing. The moment Moses finishes telling us about the tongue-tied workers at Babel he begins telling us about the genealogy of Abraham. Before Babel humanity was one nation, one people, one tribe. And somewhat contrary to our modern sensibilities, this wasn't all peaches and cream, or even advantageous for city planning. The men and women of the world merely used their linguistic homogeneity as an excuse to go to new heights in defying their Creator. So out of the nations, God calls Abraham to become the father of a new nation, a father of a new faith, the father of a new beginning as God's holy people.
But the promise was never for Abraham's ethnic descendants alone. From the very beginning, God declared that he would give Abraham a land, a nation, a people . . . and that through him, all the nations of the world would be blessed. That's right. As soon as God got done scattering the wicked rebelious people of the world to the winds, he started working on a plan to bless them and bring them back.
Of course for most of their history the Israelite nation seemed happy to end with the "you'll be a great nation," and "I'll curse those who curse you," and just kind of forget about the "all peoples" part. But God didn't, and neither did His faithful prophets. Just listen to Isaiah in the final chapter of his prophecy:
"And I, because of their actions and their imaginations, am about to come and gather all nations and tongues, and they will come and see my glory . . . I will set a sign among them, and I will send some of those who survive to the nations . . . to the distant lands that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory. They will proclaim my glory among the nations. And they will bring all your brothers, from all the nations, to my holy mountain . . . And I will select some of them also to be priests and Levites," says the LORD. As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me," declares the LORD, "so will your name and descenants endure . . . all mankind will come and bow down before me." (Isaiah 66)
Isaiah prophesied that God would raise up Israel as a light to the nations, and that the nations would stream to that light. But Israel fell short. Their sin kept them from being God's ambassadors to the world, just as the world's sin had kept the rest of humanity from responding to God's call. They far too often chose to reinforce the divisions between "the chosen" and the rest, rather than boldly going to the nations as Isaiah had prophesied. So since God didn't fulfill this promise through "faithful Israel," how did he fulfill it? As N.T. Wright puts it, when Israel failed in faithfulness, God fulfilled His covenant throught "the faithful Israelite," Jesus the Christ.
The Risen Christ is the beginning of the end of the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham that through him, all nations would be blessed. At Babel God had scattered the nations, and at Sinai God had separated His people from all the other nations of the world. But through the resurrection Christ called all the nations back unto Himself. He became our inter-ethnic peace, by making the two one and [destroying] the barrier the dividing wall of hostility . . . His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility (Ephesians 2). In the context of Paul's other teaching in the resurrection, I am convinced that this language about the "one man out of the two" is a direct reference to the resurrection. Whereas at the cross Jesus put to death our hostility, in the resurrection he united all flesh in himself, by becoming the first fruits of the new heavens and the new earth, the older brother of a new human family for the glory of God. The faithful Israelite has fulfilled Isaiah's vision: He has survived the wrath of God, He has gone to the nations, He has brought them to his father, and He has found them through His resurrection to be His brothers before the Father.
When the Spirit came in power at Pentecost, it was this blessing to the nations that gave Peter the opportunity to declare that through the resurrection and ascension of the Christ, Jesus had received the Spirit and poured it out on them in power. Are not all these men Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Capadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism; Cretans and Arabs- we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues! Amazed and perplexed they asked one another, 'What does this mean?' Luke is practically shouting at us now. Here are all the nations of the world saying 'what can it mean? what can it mean?" I'll tell you what it means, Luke shouts. It means that because the Risen King has given His Spirit the promise to Abraham is fulfilled! The blessing is given for all nations! Babel is reversed! Men gathered around a monument to their own power, and God scattered them to the four corners of the earth, but now every tongue and tribe and nation is gathering around the risen Christ, the sign and seal of God's power poured out for the salvation of humanity. He is indeed our older brother!
And of course what was begun at Pentecost was carried out in the missionary journeys of the apostles, and will be fulfilled on that glorious day when every knee shall bow and tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, and when the river that flows from the throne of the Lamb will send forth the trees whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.
The most shocking part of the story, though, is the way that God's blessing comes about, the strange twist on God's reversal of Babel. Because at Babel they spoke one language and were cursed by being forced to speak all sorts of strange languages. But at Pentecost and even in the new heavens and the new earth, the babbling praise of the nations becomes the glory of the risen Lamb. God doesn't reverse the curse by allowing humanity to return to one language; he reverses the curse by bringing as many bizarre and strange tongues and tribes from the furthest and farthest places of the world as He can find, and allowing them to create a symphonic chorus of praise to His own glorious name. God doesn't give us understanding and a new humanity by making us all the same, he gives us a new humanity by keeping us all different and allowing us to understand one another! In Tolkien's powerful creation narrative he describes the songs of the gods, beautiful and strong, but corrupted by the foul, dischordant singing of the Satanic figure. But the creator god does not silence the evil singer; he changes the song, so that it becomes more beautiful still. That is what the risen Jesus did through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost; that is what He promises for every nation under heaven at the end of all things.
This is why Paul clings to the metaphor of the body: you are the body of Christ, with each member playing a different part. God doesn't heal Babel by creating a nation of hands. He heals Babel by making the risen Christ the head of a host of diverse and different arms, legs, hands, feet, eyes, ears, and toes, who through their diversity bring great and glorious honor to the Father. That's why John didn't hear Americans and Mexicans speaking Hebrew in his great vision; he heard Americans saying 'ya'll come back now' and 'como esta usted' and yet he understood it all.
Jesus Christ is the elder brother of a new family, a new humanity, filled with little tiny toddlers who look as different as do the nations of the earth, and yet who hear their Father delightfully crying each new day, 'Ahh, I can see the family resemblance now! And how similar to their older brother they are becoming!'
There are a million implications here, as there are with all of the truly divine and beautiful mysteries. In the same way that we have worshipped other kings, we have far too often lived in other families besides the one new and truly human family founded at the resurrection. But I will leave all of that to our imaginations and prayers in the days ahead. Instead I will say only this: I have found first hand, through Bible Studies with African-Americans in Memphis, worship with Asians and Malagasies, fellowship meals with the many tribes and nations of Kenya, and church services from Belize to Ukraine and back, that coming together as the younger brothers and sisters of the risen Jesus is the absolute hardest and most difficult thing imaginable. Racial reconciliation may be the least talked about theme of the New Testament, and for good reason: it makes all of us miserable. Read Paul again, and remember that one of the biggest issues facing the early church was how would Jews and Gentiles ever be able to live and work and worship together. Take off the spiritual blinders that make everything in Scripture about "spiritual truths" and hear the ethnic clashing and chaos of the early church and hear Paul say he destroyed the dividing wall of hostility, making the two one, bringing peace. Because at the same time I am totally and utterly convinced that worship and life in the diverse church is the most rewarding and God honoring thing I've ever experienced. As one author put it, the injunctions to love one another spread through the New Testament are there because the church was and always has been a community made up of natural enemies. But when we submit, when we come together, when we listen to the African-American spirituals and Kiswahili praise songs, and Mandarin house church hymns and claim them for our own and as an equal part of God's great movement in Jesus, we find our brother better and more beautiful than we ever rememberd. It is this worship, the worship that transcends the Jewish temple and the Samaritan mountain (and the Presbyterian organ, and the Church of Christ's choir, and the Baptist's rock band) that is truly in Spirit and Truth, and that therefore truly brings glory to our Father. And I'm convinced that if you or I really mean what we so often say about wanting to know Jesus and be like him and to follow him and all of that, we'd go sprinting for the church located among the ethnic people group we have the absolute hardest time not hating.
Ben Witherington has written that New Testament worship is worship with "one eye on the horizon;" that we pray and sing and study "in the shadow of the kingdom." In other words we don't just look back. We look forward. And when we look forward we find the Risen Lamb glorified by the body of Christ called from every tongue and tribe, the body of Christ comprised of all of the worst ethnic and tribal enemies in the history of the world gloriously brought into loving unity, falling on their faces before the LORD.
If we truly believe this message, it will change our lives, and not least our missions. Because if we really grasp this message, we will stop paternalistically going out into the world in order to rescue "those poor backwards people," and will start joyfully looking for new worshipers, new enemies turned fellow brothers and sisters, more people with stranger tongues singing stranger songs that are becoming the one song of this crazy, cantankerous, messed up family . . . with the Risen Christ at its head.
Peace,
Michael
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