Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

The tower in Babel

11 At this time, everyone who lived on the earth spoke one language. They used the same words. ² People moved to the east. They reached a large flat piece of land called Shinar. They stayed there to live. ³ They said to each other, ‘We should make bricks and cook them until they are hard.’ These people used bricks instead of stones to build houses. They used tar to hold the bricks together, instead of cement.^[a]

⁴ They said, ‘Let us build a city to live in. We should also build a very tall tower. The tower will go up into the heavens. Then we will always be famous. If we do that, we will not have to separate and go to live in different places on the earth.’

⁵ But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower. He saw that the people had started to build them. ⁶ The Lord said, ‘Because they all speak the same language, they are able to do this. If they can do this together, they may decide to do whatever they want. ⁷ Now we must go down to them. We must make their language become confused. Then they will not be able to understand each other.’

⁸ So the Lord separated the people from one another. They went to live in different lands all over the earth. They stopped building the city for themselves. ⁹ That is why people called the city Babel.^[b] It was because the Lord confused all the people of the world and he gave them different languages to speak. From that time, the Lord separated the people from each other so that they lived in different places all over the earth.

One body with many parts

¹² Each person has only one body, but that body has many parts. All those different parts make only one body. It is like that with Christ too. ¹³ When they baptized us, we all became parts of one body. It was the one Spirit who brought us together. It made no difference whether we were Jews or Gentiles. It made no difference whether we were slaves or free people. God poured his one Spirit into all of us.

¹⁴ A person's body does not have only one part. It has many parts. ¹⁵ If the foot could speak, it might say, ‘I am not a hand, so I do not belong to this body.’ But what it says makes no difference. It is still a part of the body. ¹⁶ If the ear could speak, it might say, ‘I am not an eye, so I do not belong to this body.’ But what it says makes no difference. It still belongs to the body. ¹⁷ If the whole body was an eye, the body would not hear anything. If the whole body was an ear, it would not recognize different smells. ¹⁸ But God has decided where each different part of our body should be.

¹⁹ If our body was all the same part, it would not be a proper body. ²⁰ But as it is, a body has many parts. It is still only one whole body. ²¹ For that reason, the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I do not need you.’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I do not need you.’ ²² No. Even the parts of a body that seem to be weaker are very necessary. ²³ Think about the parts of our body that are not very special. We dress them carefully! And we take special care of those parts that we do not want people to see. ²⁴ But we do not need to do this with the beautiful parts of our body.

God has put all these parts together in one body. Some parts seem to be not very special. But God has shown that those parts are very valuable. ²⁵ He has done that to bring all the parts together as one body. All the parts work together to help each other. ²⁶ Then if one part of the body hurts, every other part also hurts. If people praise one part, every part of the body is also happy.

²⁷ All of you together are Christ's body. And each of you is a part of that body.