Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

The Tower in Babylon

11 There was a time when the entire earth spoke a common language with an identical vocabulary. ² As people^[a] migrated westward,^[b] they came across a plain in the region of Shinar^[c] and settled there. ³ They told each other, “Come on! Let’s burn bricks thoroughly.” They used bricks for stone and tar for mortar. ⁴ Then they said, “Come on! Let’s build ourselves a city and a tower, with its summit in the heavens, and let’s make a name for ourselves^[d] so we won’t be scattered over the surface of the whole earth.”

⁵ However, the Lord descended to look over the city and the tower that the humans were building. ⁶ The Lord said, “Look! They are one people with the same language for all of them, and this is only the beginning of what they will do.^[e] Nothing that they have a mind to do will be impossible for them! ⁷ Come on! Let’s go down there and confuse their language, so that they won’t understand each other’s speech.”

⁸ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the surface of the whole earth, so that they had to stop building the city. ⁹ Therefore it was called Babylon,^[f] because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over the surface of the entire earth.

The Unity and Diversity of Spiritual Gifts

¹² For just as the body is one and yet has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, form a single body, so it is with the Messiah.^{[a] 13} For by^[b] one Spirit all of us—Jews and Greeks, slaves and free—were baptized into one body and were all privileged to drink from one Spirit.

¹⁴ For the body does not consist of only one part, but of many. ¹⁵ If the foot says, “Since I’m not a hand, I’m not part of the body,” that does not make it any less a part of the body, does it? ¹⁶ And if the ear says, “Since I’m not an eye, I’m not part of the body,” that does not make it any less a part of the body, does it? ¹⁷ If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body^[c] were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? ¹⁸ But now God has arranged the parts, every one of them, in the body according to his plan.^{[d] 19} Now if all of it were one part, there wouldn’t be a body, would there? ²⁰ So there are many parts, but one body.

²¹ The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you,” or the head to the feet, “I don’t need you.” ²² On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are in fact indispensable, ²³ and the parts of the body that we think are less honorable are treated with special honor, and we make our less attractive parts more attractive. ²⁴ However, our attractive parts don’t need this. But God has put the body together and has given special honor to the parts that lack it, ²⁵ so that there might be no disharmony in the body, but that its parts should have the same concern for each other. ²⁶ If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. If one part is praised, every part rejoices with it.

²⁷ Now you are the Messiah’s^[e] body and individual parts of it.