An Unfamiliar Presence

About 3 weeks ago, I was walking home after visiting a sick friend of mine. I was walking home and I passed a heap of a man lying on the side of the road in the twilight – dark & unmoving.

There was no way I could avoid this guy because I had to pass him to get to my house. Anyway, I passed him and went inside because the dinner hour was nearing. I asked my wife about the man who looked like he was dead on the roadside and she said he had been lying there for a number of hours. She said all that had happened was that when the neighbours, whose grass he had been lying on returned home, they had beeped their horn loudly at him, then wound down their window - commanding him to move on ! He didn’t move.

It took another half-an-hour but eventually I was standing in close proximity to this unmoving figure of a man. His hair was overgrown & mattered, his face darkened by dirt and grime – his clothes unspeakable in their filth. I had a friend with me who could speak good Indonesian. I felt safe. He tried for a number of minutes to find out the unmoving guy’s need, but all he got from him was incomprehensible grunts. Finally we asked a passing local who this guy was and he said, ‘orang gila’ – a crazy person.

Standing before this guy who was unable to speak – lying before me unmoving – in a culture I am only beginning to understand was unnerving. I felt out of my depth – even a little annoyed because it was dinner-time and in my family dominated by the routine of little kids – I was currently the absent Father.

I stood and looked at this vulnerable and unmoving guy, wondering what to do. I stood & stared and chatted about the options with my friend then finally I went back home. Dinner was finished so I related the story to my wife in the kitchen. Ever practical, she asked me, “What are you going to do ?” In the absence of connectedness to this culture or ringing up for the help of some charitable or government agency, I was left with only one option - the concrete action !

I said, “I am going to take him some food”. So I did ! I walked out into the darkness and shortly after I was standing again alone before the darkened figure of the unmoving man. I was struck in those moments by a remembrance of Mt 25 and Jesus saying, “When you do this to the least of these… you do it to me !” It struck me that here in this moment I was standing at the feet of Jesus and this one before me, felt like a stranger. Yet there was something more damning ! My actions on behalf of his needs felt equally strange and unfamiliar. I was standing at the feet of Jesus and I did not know this one before me. I felt ashamed.

Feeling chastised and humbled by the moment, I crouched down and said softly, “I have some food & drink for you... I will pray for you also.” I said a short silent prayer over him then I stood up, turned and walked back into my house. In the morning, I went out to the curb-side to see what had happened to the man & he was gone.

Sons of the Name

There is a small verse in Genesis 4, which appears between the beginnings of civilisation & the ending of the Flood that says, ‘At that time people began to invoke the name of the Lord’. That means they invoked the name of the One who is wholly Other.
 
However by the time of the story of the Tower of Babel the world had turned. This is now the story of the Sons of Shem, or the people of the name, who had ‘one language & the same words’. After the flood, they migrated east to a great plain of Shinar & settled there. Three times the Sons of Shem say among themselves ‘Let us’. ‘‘Let us’ brick some bricks’, ‘‘let us’ build a city and a tower’ and ‘‘let us’ make a name for ourselves’.
 
What the Sons of the name did made good sense – it was reasonable. Reality dictated that unless they erected a protective structure of order and were very intentional about that, they would be overwhelmed with that most fundamental terror – chaos. The Sons of the name feared they would be dispersed over the face of the earth.
 
Hesenberg’s principle says, ‘The act of observing a phenomena changes it’. God descends to see the city and the tower that the Sons of the name have built. God descends and God sees. Wholly otherness draws near & things are no longer the same. God discerns a singular people, with a singular language - building an empire of the sun. A self-centred universe is the growing intention of the Sons of Shem.
 
So God acts to confound these plans of men. He descends & his arrival is a speech act. God speaks and the irony of the Sons of the name becomes evident. These men with their singular language do not understand the speaking of the Name of the One who is wholly other – Babel means both ‘Father God’ in oriental languages and ‘confusion’ in Hebrew.
 
In the Bible truly hearing the name of God equals obeying his commands. In misunderstanding, in not being open to translating God’s name, the fear of the Sons of the name is realised. The speaking of the Name of the One who is Wholly Other releases a great diversity of languages onto the Sons of the Name and they can no longer build their city.
 
The people of Babel - City of Confusion - are dispersed over the face of the earth.
 
The Sons of Shem are the forefathers of Abraham. They are now truly the deconstructed people of the Name, wanderers whose very survival will depend upon their sensitivity & hospitality towards the wholly Other.