The Primeval Mythology of Genesis - Babel and Beyond

John 17:20-23

Jesus prayed, “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one,

so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

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Artificial Intelligence is not your friend—it’s the Tower of Babel. That was the title of the first article I saw this week while preparing for today. Another headline from a Jewish student paper read: AI: The Modern Tower of Babel. A theme was emerging. Faith publications and organizations are writing incessantly about AI and faith, the church, spirituality, and more.

Then Pastor Mark told me to listen to a segment from 1A this week about AI and faith. It was fascinating—and a little frightening.

I’ll be honest, I thought I had pretty good job security against AI and robots… until I listened to that segment.

I learned about Pastors.AI, a chatbot trained for a specific church using sermons and resources from real pastors. Meaning, you could upload all the videos and manuscripts from Pastor Mark’s sermons over the past 24 years, and the chatbot would generate answers to questions, write sermons, and craft Bible studies—just like he would! You could have your own Pastor Mark in your pocket.

Then there’s Gloo—AI evangelism. Gloo claims it helps churches grow by tracking digital interactions, managing prayer requests, responding to texts, and making new connections.

Entire denominations are diving into AI. If you're Catholic, you can't use just any faith-based AI, so you turn to Ask Father Justin. Apparently, a problem arose where some people preferred confessing to Father Justin instead of their priest. Imagine that… And it’s not just Catholics who do AI.

Episcopalians have Cathy—Church Answers That Help You. Right on the Diocese of Lexington’s homepage, you can talk with Cathy and learn anything you want from the Episcopalian perspective.But what good is the church or denominations if you can just chat with Jesus yourself, AI Jesus that is? If you try that one let me know.

So is AI a threat to the church? Or a tool to help it grow? Is it humans trying to become like God, or is it a resource that makes God more accessible? Is this software a reversal of Genesis 1 where we make God in our image, one chatbot at a time?Is it a new Tower of Babel—our attempt to code our way to God?

How might this ancient story help us with such questions? More importantly, what might it tell us about Jesus?

The Tower of Babel is mysterious. It's short, raises more questions than it answers, and isn't referenced anywhere else in the Bible. Like the other stories in Genesis 1–11, it’s an origin story; one that tries to explain how different nations and languages came to be. Linguists agree though, this is not how languages came about. It much more complicated. As is this story. To read it as only an explanation of languages or cultures misses what all it reveals about God.

It’s also the origin story of Babylon. Thousands of years ago, Babylon made a major technological advance: the brick. They could take bricks, butter’em with bitumen, stack them on top of each other and build.

So the people said, “Let’s build a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and make a name for ourselves, or else we’ll be scattered across the earth.” That one sentence is full of so much irony. The tower didn’t reach heaven. In fact, God had to come down to earth just to see it. And when God finds it, God isn’t pleased. Why exactly? We’re not told. What we do know is that God confused their language and scattered all the people—the very thing they were trying to avoid.

That question—why did God do this?—has led to many interpretations, some with harmful consequences.

One interpretation says God scattered the people because mixing cultures, ethnicities, and languages is bad. That view has been used to justify segregation in this country and apartheid in South Africa.But I don’t read this story as the scattering being a consequence or punishment.

God said twice “to fill the earth and subdue”. Well you can’t do that if people are all in one place.

So scattering wasn’t punishment - it was the plan. As were the different languages and ethnicities. Diversity was God’s design from the start.

Another view is that God is suspicious of cities. So, urban life must be prideful or ungodly, while small-town life is holier and safer. But that doesn’t align with the broader biblical story.

God called Jonah to Nineveh, a powerful city, because God cared for its people and animals.

Jesus longed to gather Jerusalem under his wing. Revelation envisions a new heaven and earth—with a new Jerusalem at its center.

God is not suspicious of cities, but is as present there as anywhere else in the world.

And perhaps most pertinent today: some believe God scattered humanity because they were too advanced. Such a reading makes folks skeptical of scientific progress and technological advances like, well, Artificial Intelligence.

But I don’t think God was all that concerned about some bricks stacked a couple hundred feet in the air. Nor is God all that impressed with our towers of today: our advances, systems, or political structures.

And I am pretty sure God isn’t wringing hands over Artificial Intelligence like everyone else seems to be.

What I think God is concerned about is any human attempt to work our way up to God, any effort to work out our own salvation. And we try all the time. We think: “If I just do enough good,” “If I go to church enough,” “If I text with AI Jesus,” or “complete my Bible AI devotional”—then I’ll get to God.

All our technological advances will undoubtedly do a lot of good. But if we think software can save us, it’s no different than thinking a tower can take us to heaven. The tower never reaches.

We can’t code our way up to God.

But the good news of our faith is that we don’t have to go up to God because God came down to us in Jesus Christ. And through that person, that real, divine, tangible person, do we and all the world receive the grace and forgiveness we could never create for ourselves, no matter how advanced we get. Through that person, all the scattered people of the world might be one in him.

That’s what, or really who, holds this community together. We don’t all hold the same views, or come from the same backgrounds, or see the world in the same way. Sometimes it probably seems like we aren’t even speaking the same language. And yet, it is the grace and forgiveness and mercy of Jesus that binds us together as one.

This A.I stuff isn’t going away anytime soon. It certainly has it’s dangers. At the same time it is a technological tool and the church has always engaged with these tools. When the printing press was invited, the church made tracts and pamphlets. When radio came around, preachers broadcasted their sermons across the airwaves.

TVs gave rise to the televangelist. And today nearly everyone watches a service online before they ever step foot through our doors. So it should be no surprise that christians, churches, pastors, denominations, are using A.I. in all sorts of ways.

But like any tool, it can be misused and lead to harm, like thinking it can somehow take us up to God, as an ancient tower once tried. Or that it can bring Jesus down to us.

Yet it can’t do that either, because Jesus came down and is here already. Here at the table where we get our fill of his forgiveness in bread and wine. Here in the waters of baptism where we are washed by his grace. Here in your neighbor, who reflects the very image of God. By his coming down to us, Jesus made his love tangible through these physical signs of his grace that he freely gives to us.

And that’s something A.I. can never give. Amen.

Of Whom Shall I Fear?

Matthew 10:24-39

"A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household! 

"So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows. 

"Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven. 

"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

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There are any number of directions to take a message based on today’s gospel text, but what I felt most compelled to address are Jesus’ words about fear. 

The concept of fear was present to my family in several instances over a 12-hour period this week. The first example happened as I read to my children before bed. We are reading the book Woodsong by Gary Paulsen, about his experiences with sled dogs and the Iditarod race. The first couple chapters include several accounts of fear, particularly his account of a doe being chased by a pack of wolves and his story about the time he threw a stick at a bear and nearly lost his life when that bear attacked him. His writing on fear is gripping and palpable. 

Next there was the case of my child who could not fall asleep. By midnight a sobbing boy was admitting to us that the reason he could not sleep was that he was afraid of something. Perhaps out of shame or embarrassment, he initially didn’t want to tell us what he was afraid of. I tried to explain to him that the way our fears get out of control is when we fail to put words to them and keep them locked inside us. Eventually he told us what he was afraid of...and no, it wasn’t anything to do with the Gary Paulsen book we had read together (which was my first assumption). His specific fear is not important to the story, but suffice to say I think it helped for him to tell us about his fear. 

The next morning, during a family walk through the woods at Southeastway Park, my other son jumped over a large stick stretched across the path and screamed as he landed on the other side. What he noticed, while in mid-air, was that the large stick he was jumping over was actually a large snake! Not only was he terrified and shocked from the sight of a snake (an experience I know all too well and have struggled with my whole life), but now that snake was separating him from the safety of his family, as he was not about to jump over the snake again. 

In some respects, these experiences with fear are minor. Certainly there are other things in the world more terrifying than snakes or the thoughts that pop in our heads as we try to sleep. But on the other hand, fear is fear. You can’t experience only a little bit of fear. There isn’t a spectrum to fear as we feel it pulse through our bodies. And we cannot look objectively or rationalize our fear in the moment. The work of teaching ourselves how to overcome fear has to be done preemptively. 

It is tempting to think that the way to deal with fear is to avoid the experiences about which we know we are afraid. For example, my family could stop walking through the woods to avoid more snakes; much the same way that I have avoided swimming or surfing in the ocean because I’m terrified (and convinced) I would get attacked by a shark. This is far from an ideal solution. Not only does it end up limiting one’s life experiences but it’s entirely impractical to most situations. For example, I don’t think it would be in anyone’s interest for my son to avoid going to sleep ever again! 

Jesus never taught his disciples the ways of fear-avoidance. He did not comfort them with the words, “Do only what makes you comfortable, for as long as you follow me you will have a safe life.” Instead, Jesus warned his disciples that to follow him meant to make the same enemies as him, to endure the same afflictions and punishments as him, and to ultimately lose their life like him. Jesus’ command for his disciples to not be afraid is less an invitation to avoid fear than it is to run headlong into the things they think would be terrifying and have faith that God’s ultimate goodness will prevail through it all.

Jesus instructs his followers that the ones who profess to have power in the world have only the illusion of power. These illusions of power will be uncovered and exposed in the light of the gospel. Jesus says it would be right to fear only one thing: the one who wields absolute power over our soul and our body--that is, God; but even God is not to be feared because the one who wields absolute power over our soul and body will never harm us. Never ever...for we are too valuable. God is not in the business of destroying what God has created and redeemed. 

The quote “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” doesn’t belong to Jesus, but it is a Christ-affirmed conviction nonetheless. Only fear will prevent us from following in the footsteps of the Christ. Only fear will prevent us from sharing the good news of God’s redemption of all creation. Only fear will prevent us from seeing our diverse brothers and sisters as God’s children. Only fear will prevent us from critiquing the systems and structures that diminish peoples’ livelihoods and claim their very lives. Those systems and structures do not have ultimate divinely-ordained power and therefore we should not fear them. 

The three examples of fear I mentioned earlier are not the only ways in which I have learned about fear lately. I have also gleaned much from the work of African-American professor, author, activist, and theologian Howard Thurman and his book published in 1949 titled Jesus and the Disinherited.

In his chapter on the topic of fear, he posits that fear prevents us from having a meaningful and formative answer to the question at the core of each person’s life, which is: “Who am I?” He explains, 

“There are few things more devastating than to have it burned into you that you do not count and that no provisions are made for the literal protection of your person. The threat of violence is ever present, and there is no way to determine precisely when it may come crashing down upon you...The underprivileged in any society are the victims of a perpetual war of nerves” (29).

I don’t know what it is like to be underprivileged in society. My answer to the question “Who am I?” has not been shaped by the fear of violence against me or my people. But even for the underprivileged who live assaulted by the perpetual war of nerves, Howard Thurman insists The answer to “Who am I?” has to point to God. His grandmother, who was enslaved in Florida, would recount to him the constant message from the preacher of secret religious meetings who would triumphantly proclaim, “You–you are not slaves. You are God’s children.” 

Howard Thurman goes on to write, “This [identity in God] established for them the ground of personal dignity, so that a profound sense of personal worth could absorb the fear reaction. This alone is not enough, but without it, nothing else is of value” (39-40). In other words, only after a person understands they are inherently valued and cared for by God, can they then demand, bravely, in the face of oppression, to be treated by others as a child of God…which is exactly what is happening throughout the world right now.

My friends, God commissions you to be the beautiful hands and feet of Christ that bear the good news for all people that they are God’s beloved children. As we see throughout history, and still today, too many people stand in direct opposition of this inclusive message. But do not fear in your proclamation of the good news. Nothing is more important for God’s followers today, than to be fearless. To borrow the words of Howard Thurman once more, “Nothing less than a great daring in the face of overwhelming odds can achieve the inner security in which fear cannot possibly survive” (45). 

May you be fearless in your proclamation of the good news. Amen.