Babel | Penticost
This summer my church has been in the OT looking at the great christian myths -- those larger than life stories - about Samson, Daniel, Jonah, Ruth, the Tower of Babel -- and well, our production team could've called them "sunday school stories", but we didn't. we called them "christian mythology" because these stories are larger than life. larger than the flannelgraph versions -- and definitely a lot more PG-13 or NC-17 we got when we were kids. as we are rediscovering them, they are speaking to us in a big big way. and i'd like to tell you about one in particular -- i had the chance to play an audio role in it -- and since it was such a big deal for me, i wanted to share.
we looked at the Tower of Babel story from Genesis 11, and then saw this amazing reverse echo in Pentecost -- that Pentecost was the movie of the Tower of Babel, run in reverse:
ToB: mankind not waiting on God & trying to make something happen
Pen: mankind waiting on God & God making something happen
ToB: all the people speak one language / God divides the languages
Pen: all the people speak many languages / God unifies the languages
ToB: people trying to stay together
Pen: people going out
... anctually this was stacy's euraka which became the thesis of the morning, which was largely a discussion time. but then... also a meditation. which is where i came in. our production team challenged me -- and i was really excited about -- doing an uptempo, 10 minute meditation bit using spoken word from all the languages i could get ahold of in our small (<50) church. I found mike who could read hebrew and greek. my girlfriend jackie spoke arabic (she lived in cairo for six years). a french foreign exchange student contributed authentic french. and my two friends lily and john who are still in school contributed from their latin studies (kids are so smart these days). my friend dee did the primary spoken voice in english, which i used as sort of a backbone, but then dropped way back into the mix.
please feel free to use this as a service idea in your congregation... download the audio if it works for you -- or get inspired to do your own thing.
Tower of Babel MP3 - 11.6meg
we looked at the Tower of Babel story from Genesis 11, and then saw this amazing reverse echo in Pentecost -- that Pentecost was the movie of the Tower of Babel, run in reverse:
ToB: mankind not waiting on God & trying to make something happen
Pen: mankind waiting on God & God making something happen
ToB: all the people speak one language / God divides the languages
Pen: all the people speak many languages / God unifies the languages
ToB: people trying to stay together
Pen: people going out
... anctually this was stacy's euraka which became the thesis of the morning, which was largely a discussion time. but then... also a meditation. which is where i came in. our production team challenged me -- and i was really excited about -- doing an uptempo, 10 minute meditation bit using spoken word from all the languages i could get ahold of in our small (<50) church. I found mike who could read hebrew and greek. my girlfriend jackie spoke arabic (she lived in cairo for six years). a french foreign exchange student contributed authentic french. and my two friends lily and john who are still in school contributed from their latin studies (kids are so smart these days). my friend dee did the primary spoken voice in english, which i used as sort of a backbone, but then dropped way back into the mix.
please feel free to use this as a service idea in your congregation... download the audio if it works for you -- or get inspired to do your own thing.
Tower of Babel MP3 - 11.6meg
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