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            Imagine yourself as a Jew living in exile in Babylon twenty-five hundred years ago. A little Hebrew girl and her parents venture outside the ghetto and she hears for the first time people speaking different languages. Why, she asks her mother. And mother says, “Darling, let me tell you a story.” The story of the Tower of Babel explains and it also teaches. This story explains that people are scattered and speak many languages because God was upset with what they tried to do. But the deeper lesson is that the confusion and suffering that come with diversity of language and culture are mysteriously both the symptoms of human pride and sin; and, at the same time, the opportunity for healing and community.

           That is a spiritual answer to a question that historians or sociologists might answer differently. But for people of faith, humankind builds to make a name for itself, not God. Fortunately one of the jokes in the story in Hebrew translates easily into English. To babble means to speak incoherently. People speaking in other languages sound like they are babbling to us. But the word babble and the word Babylon sound similar. And for a Jew in the Ancient Near East, Babylon meant one thing: empire. So the deeper meaning of the story is something like this: When humankind sets out to make a name for itself, the result is not God, but empire. Mankind fears being scattered, fears many languages and cultures, fears the foreigner and the outsider. We humans prefer a world that is bounded in which we can feel safe and secure among our own. And though this is a retreat from life in all its diversity, in fact, because the motivation is fear – aggression always pushes to expand the borders – not by welcoming in “the other” but by conquering him and forcing your beliefs and ways and culture and language on the conquered. Family becomes tribe, tribe becomes town, town becomes nation, nation becomes nation-state, nation-state becomes empire. And even though God scattered the people, and the tower was never finished, that empire-building impulse stays embedded in the human heart, and so, from the biblical point of view, human history has been one empire after another – Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, Holy Roman, Russian, British, and today, American Empire.

           Does it bother you to hear me say this, especially on a national holiday? It should. The Bible has nothing good to say about empires. The Bible says they come and go with sickening regularity. The Bible says their goal is domination and their behavior is characterized by militarism, economic injustice, and oppression. All this the Bible calls the sin of pride. And the Bible says that empires regularly fool themselves about what they are up to. Empires justify their conquests by assuring conquerors and conquered alike that it is all for the good. It is about the spread of civilization, uplifting the poor, spreading enlightenment, and above all conquering in order to make peace. And it is all done with the blessing of God. Those who dwell within Empire tell themselves that so much they come to believe it. They talk about the white man’s burden to civilize, and so forth, including, today, the importance of the spread of democracy. Our current leaders act profoundly shocked and offended when it suggested that the Iraq War is really about oil. No, they assure us, it is about defending our security and spreading liberty.

           As I approach my retirement from parish ministry a couple of months from now, I find myself wondering about whether things have changed much in the world in the last thirty-seven years since I was ordained. I do wonder. When I first started preaching in 1970, America was embroiled in a very unpopular war led by a detested president. Churches were split between those who equated patriotic support for the war with religious faith, and those who criticized what they saw as a national sin. Critics were attacked for aiding the enemy and undercutting the troops. Our leaders warned that if the war was lost, the consequences would be dire for our national security. World opinion was against us, and the flag draped coffins kept returning home. And now years later? Well, what hasn’t changed much is American Empire. And what hasn’t changed is the challenge for people of faith to face the difficult task of living in the midst of empire. But I believe the lessons of our faith and the experience of history can help us.

           First, I believe our tradition teaches that if you are people of faith living in the heart of empire, pray for the well-being of the country where you find yourself. When the Hebrews were carried off into cruel bondage and exile in Babylon, the prophet Jeremiah wrote to them and said to pray for Babylon because your well-being is directly related to the well-being of your captors, and you are going to be there for a long time. Such prayer does not imply blessing or even endorsement of empire. It is advice to find your place in this reality without losing your soul. Saint Paul said to pray for the powers that be wherever you are. Though Paul is criticized for this, his words can be taken in the same light. Not endorsement but a recognition of reality. And, of course, did not Jesus say, “Love your enemy. Do good to those that hate you.”? The lesson for me in this is that I am an American, for better or worse, even as I am a Christian. I benefit from the national wealth that surrounds me, even as I share in the collective guilt that accompanies the accumulation of that wealth and power. It’s too easy to simply blame Bush and Cheney and all the rest for our problems, without addressing the realities of the empire lifted them up to lead us. So I should be praying for them.

           Second, while praying for our country, we must work to expose the arrogance and self-delusion that lies under the surface, and seek to change the policies that grow out of it. One hundred and seventy-five years ago, America’s foremost intellectuals, people like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglas – all spoke out against two evils in particular – the Mexican War and slavery. They saw President James K. Polk’s westward expansion and provocation as the crude imperialism that it was, justified by the bogus doctrine of “manifest destiny.” And, they saw slavery at home as going hand in hand with imperial expansion. The American West was a battle ground not only to expand by conquering Mexicans and native Americans; it was also a battleground over whether new states would be slave or free. Thoreau’s famous teachings on civil disobedience and refusal to pay the poll tax were precisely about this. And, we can look back on this period and say that our greatest politicians and church leaders spoke and acted as well – including Abraham Lincoln as a young congressman from Illinois whose first speech in the House was in opposition to the Mexican War. The patriotic and religious message for Americans, in season and out, is speak the truth to power, and work to change both attitudes and policies.

           Third, faith and history have shown us that there is a direct link between social justice and inclusion of all at home, and what we do in the world. While we should expose national political hypocrisy, we should also expose a religious and cultural hypocrisy that ignores injustice within. Nineteenth century leaders understood the connection between slavery at home and imperialism abroad. Today, at home the issues are economic injustice, racism, sexism, homophobia, and the clash of cultures.

           In the debate on immigration we are caught in this bind: we want secure borders, but we also want cheap labor. We recognize that the historical genius of America has been in its ability to assimilate newcomers, a true nation of immigrants. But how we do that, if we fear and distrust immigrants because they are different? The Tower of Babel was about one language, one culture, one people, one empire. It was about conquest and assimilation. That was the style all the way from the Babylonians to the present.

           A couple of weeks ago I attended an awards ceremony of Impact Silver Spring. This organization owes its existence to the efforts of people devoted to the cultural, as well as economic re-development of Silver Spring - from our church, people like Jim Henkelman-Bahn, and Jackie Bahn-Henkelman, and community co-workers for social change like Frankie Blackburn. Our own Delilah Marrow was among those receiving recognition for her development of a residents’ evacuation plan at the Oaks where she lives. The mission of Impact Silver Spring is to see the wonderful multiculturalism of Silver Spring not as a problem, but as an opportunity – for inclusion and the raising of consciousness – both for arriving immigrants and for long-time members of the leadership community. And we see also in efforts like Richard Jaeggi’s Gandhi brigades that our call is to nurture and support spiritually-based, socially inclusive, and justice-oriented initiatives – right here at home. I say spiritually-based, because the church’s answer to the sin of empire is the experience of Pentecost. That important moment was the recognition that those filled with the Holy Spirit were reversing the misguided impulse to empire shown in the Tower of Babel story. Amazingly, and miraculously, those gathered in Jerusalem all spoke in their own native tongues. Yet all present could understand one another. It is not about one language, one culture, one empire. For people of faith, it is about one spirit.

           In closing, I mentioned earlier my musings on what has changed in the world during my thirty-seven years in parish ministry. Looking back, I believe that one of the real mistakes made by many, not all, but many, in the peace movement, was to blame the military, specifically the men and women fighting in Vietnam, for the policies that took them there. Many who served, including some of you sitting here today, speak of returning home not to receive a hero’s welcome, but to be met instead with indifference at best, and hostility at worst. Perhaps we’ve learned in the meantime how wrong that was, although the scandalous news about our government’s ill-treatment of physically disabled and mentally suffering veterans shames us all. But to pray for the country in which we find ourselves is to pray especially for the soldiers who answer the call to defend that country. Mostly these are men and women who don’t hatch these misguided policies, but those who respond out of a sense of duty. They deserve our special prayers. Our Called to Care Program strives to stay in touch with them and their families. Many of you provided valuable support and volunteer assistance to wounded Iraq veteran and child of our congregation, Peter Lohman. Geoff Grammer for whom we prayed during his stay in Baghdad  now serves as director of outpatient psychiatry at Walter Reed at a terribly difficult time. These are just two examples, and many more could be given.

            Each Veteran’s Day Sunday, we try to do something in recognition of our Veterans. I would now like to invite each U.S. veteran present to please stand.

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