Tuesday, December 05, 2006

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.

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