Rev. E. Scott Winnette
A Sermon Preached by: E. Scott Winnette
Pride and Prejudice
August 20, 2006
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." With these words, Jane Austin opens her novel, Pride and Prejudice. Some of you may be enthusiastic for a literature-based sermon with the love story of Mr. Darcy and Ms. Elizabeth Bennett, and their humorous class-based society. Well, I’m sorry.
Mary’s song reveals God’s passion for a world where there aren’t rich and poor, a world where everyone has enough. The Tower story reveals God’s passion for a world of diverse, self-sustaining, non-violent communities.
You sent sixteen of us into a rich, beautiful land and culture last week. Thank you for a great experience in El Salvador. I can’t share much this morning. Next week, the group will show pictures and share their stories. But, I will introduce you to Lionel, a member of a Christian based community of Ateo in La Libertad. He lives outside of San Salvador in the once-farmed coffee hills. He is slim, thirty eight, has a ready warm smile, and is passionate about his faith and his people.
We stayed with families of his poor community for three days. On the first night in La Libertad, Betsy Scroggs, me, and one of our translators, Kristin, were hanging out at the home where Marty Hauck, Caroline Brown, and Ellie Miller were to sleep. The home was cinderblock. The small one-window living room opened to the street. Its left wall was two doors opening to two tiny bedrooms. Through the back door of the room, you entered a covered porch with a dining table, a large concrete sink, and multiple barrels of water. In the garden there was a covered grill for cooking, the outhouse, and the bathing area for pail baths.
Lionel shared with us the history of his small community which was named for a defrocked priest. The Priest had taught them to look at scripture differently. He taught them that God loved, even preferred the poor. Lionel had grown up learning that God created him to live in poverty and that he should accept it. The priest showed him the many places in scripture where God speaks against usury, oppression and poverty. Lionel’s community was cast out of the local Roman Catholic Church for believing the rebel teachings. He shared the desire of his community that we develop solidarity with them as they work against their poverty, as they seek to purchase land to farm for their food, and to grow coffee.
It was amazing to me, a Spirit-filled moment. I had never expected to be sitting on an old couch, in a tiny Salvadoran home, discussing through an interpreter, the thesis proposal for my doctorate with a smiling, almost uneducated man who had sewn his own pants.
My Thesis is simply that we middle class American Christians can listen to the perspectives of scripture of the marginalized. As we look at scripture, seeking their perspectives, we will better understand God’s will for the world. Our hearts will be opened and we will grow into a solidarity that will compel us to join with them in their fights for justice.
I told Lionel that new biblical studies shared his viewpoint. The stories and teachings of scripture were written by and for marginalized peoples? I shared with you three weeks ago, that a preacher cannot escape his or her own context in interpreting scripture. As I study scripture, I will remember Lionel. I will try to imagine how he would understand the text, how he would interpret it.
When the Tower of Babel story is preached in a first world context, it is usually about pride and language. God punishes this city who pride-fully built a divine-reaching tower. God stops their ambitious project by confusing their central language. God creates disharmony, mis-communication and scatters the people over the face of the earth. I never understood this passage. It didn’t resonate with my faith in our God, somehow it made God smaller, petty. An industrious, united people who speak, think, and behave in unity find a new homeland. They build. This is the American, frontier dream, our manifest destiny. They set three goals: build a city, build a high tower, and build a reputation. They do this for security. To ensure they are not scattered across the face of the earth. And God sees their unity, their great potential, stops them, demolishes their dream, and scatters them. Why?
Imagine listening to Lionel and his farming community. They live outside of the city San Salvador which has absorbed a third of the population of El Salvador. The city once drawing the children of the farms of El Salvador with dreams of more than enough has grown a place of wealth and extreme poverty. It has become violent with youth gangs and protective police. Listen for a viewpoint from a third world country, which lives in the shadow of a North American Empire that promises freedom and considers building fences. Can this text be about either a petty, jealous God or a punishing, language-crafting One?
Put the story into context, Genesis 11. Genesis chapter one – God creates the world declaring everything good. Chapter two – God creates a naked, shameless humanity and calls it to farm and care for the earth. Chapter three – humanity succumbs to temptation learning disobedience and shame. It is cast out of its agrarian paradise. Chapter four – humanity learns jealousy, fear, and violence. Cain murders Abel; God curses Cain to wander, never to farm again. Chapter five – Adam and Eve bear generations up to Noah who is a promised child who will give relief for the curse between humanity and the land. Chapter six – God sickened by the violence of humanity vows to destroy creation; God favors the promised child Noah, and offers him a rescue plan. Chapter seven -- the flood and rescue of all God’s good creatures, the violent world dies, and the ark becomes a new seed of life. Chapter eight -- the dove searches for land; finally returns with an olive leaf; the earth dries; and God says to Noah, “Go out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh – birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth – so that they may abound on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” Noah worshiped God, God was pleased, and promised to never curse the ground again. Chapter nine – God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.”; God speaks against violence; God sends them out into the world saying, “be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and multiply in it.”; God makes a rainbow covenant valuing all life; Noah has three sons; Now it gets interesting. Noah plants a vineyard, gets drunk on homemade wine and passes out nude. His youngest son, Ham, sees him and tells his brothers. They without looking at his nakedness cover him up. Noah curses his youngest son for disrespect, declaring that all of Ham’s children will be slaves. Sounds like humanity learns shame again and responds badly with prejudice. Chapter ten – humanity grows moving broadly out into the world developing families, languages and nations. Accursed Ham has a grandson, Nimrod, who becomes a great hunter and warrior, not a farmer. Nimrod’s descendants populate the lands of Shinar. The chapter ends, “These are the families of Noah’s sons, according to their genealogies, in their nations; and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood.”
Chapter eleven begins, “Now the whole world had one language and the same words.” The Tower of Babel Story now contradicts the tenth chapter. We go from a world of many languages to one language. The compiler of Genesis is making a point. This Warrior Nimrod establishes a society in Shinar. It builds a city. The Hebrew word translated, “city” is better defined as a “fortified city”, “a walled city.” They begin building a mighty tower, wanting to make their name known. Why? They do not want to be scattered upon the face of the earth like the rest of the family.
Now, here is how I imagine Lionel interpreting this story. It’s not as a story about the creation of languages. We had languages in chapter ten. It is a story about a society that decided it did not want to farm anymore. It learned the ways of war, and decided it would take what it needed from others. As those it had stolen from came to get their resources back, Nimrod’s descendants built a walled city for protection. With the force of their military, they continue to ravage other peoples, stealing resources rather than working the land. To further establish their security, they declare their language central, their culture dominate, and they build a tower to prove their superiority to their cousins. They seek to promote an awe-inspiring reputation that will not be challenged. God decides otherwise. God breaks their unity. God sends Nimrod’s children out into the world to form self-sustaining communities, just like their cousins.
Now, this interpretation makes more sense. In it, God is God, recreating the world to benefit all people. The City of Babel sounds like history’s empires that absorb the resources of their neighbors; develop protective militaries; craft classist citizenries; declare their ways superior; and build monuments to promote their reputations. The first eleven chapters of Genesis prefer agrarian society over urban society, peace over violence. God keeps sending humanity across the world to inhabit coastlands, mountains, plains, forests, jungles, deserts, and hills, to develop distinct cultures, colors, textiles, foods, dances and languages. God delights in multi-culturalism.
Mary lived in the shadow of the Roman Empire. Her family was on the bottom of the Roman class system. They were fearful of its military. They were forced to learn its language. God spoke to her God’s love for all creation. God would raise through her a child of holy light. With praise she sings a song bringing light to her oppressed brothers and sisters, “God has shown strength with God’s arm, has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich has sent empty away.”
One day when I learn Spanish, I will ask Lionel for his true interpretations. Today, I imagine Lionel, whose family and friends live on the bottom of our class structure, invites us to sing a song of liberation with them. He invites us to join in bringing about God’s Babel blasting power again, so that all the rich diversity of human cultures will thrive and be cherished in the world. How? Work for peace. Encourage self-sustaining families. Promote small farms by frequenting farmers markets. Encourage working communities by buying fair trade products. Continue to live appreciating the diverse cultures around us and in the world. Practice the fruit of democracy speaking out against policies that threaten small of God’s children. And foremost, befriend and love our cousins of the world. Amen.
