Genesis 11:1-9 –The Tower of Babel…

Lesson Focus:

As a church we are called not to make a name for ourselves, but to be fruitful and multiply.  Pentecost is the renewal of the command and an empowering to be fruitful and multiply.

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1.     Understand that the scattering which took place at Babel was the nudge given to humanity so that they might multiply as God’s image bearers in creation.

2.     Understand that we are called to make a name for God by bearing his image in creation. 

3.     Understand that Pentecost is another scattering so that we might be fruitful and multiply. 

Catch up on the story:

Noah and his descendants have been saved from the flood and have begun to repopulate the earth.  Directly after Noah and his family get off the Ark, they are given his command, at least twice, "be fruitful and multiply."  It's not a new command.  In fact, it’s the same command that God gave Adam and Eve at the beginning of time.  If the Flood narrative is a reset/restart on creation, then the command to the new fathers and mothers of humanity is the same: reproduce yourselves, your godly selves so that the world that God has created might be filled with the image of God bearing people, people who look and act like the one who created them. 

Noah's descendants have, in one sense, been fruitful and multiplied.  They have had lots of offspring and they are beginning to fill the whole earth.  But, in another sense, they have not been faithful to the command.  Implicit in the command to be fruitful and multiply is the idea they will cover the whole earth, not in a dominant kind of way, but in a diverse kind of way.  In our passage, however, Noah's descendants begin to consolidate their power so that they might make a name for themselves.       

The Text:

Making a Name for Ourselves:

I think there's a natural drive, inside all of us, to want to become something, to want to do something with our lives.  Well, if it's not natural, then it’s at least a large part of the story we are told about how life works from the very earliest of ages.  We tell our kids things like, "You can grow up and become anything you want to be." 

At least, that's the story we tell ourselves here in America.  It's the American Dream.  The dream is that no matter who you are, where you are from, what your race, gender or religion is, you can become someone or something important.  We tell our kids, if you want to be president, you can be the president.  You just have to work hard enough.  We tell our kids, if you want to be a doctor, you can be a doctor. We tell our kids, if you want to be famous and make a name for yourself, you can! 

In fact, shows like American idol, The Voice and America's Got Talent all thrive off of the American Dream and its hopes of becoming something, of becoming someone.  Some contestants, I’m sure, participate in auditioning for shows and competitions like these because they fear obscurity, they fear that one day they will die and their name and everything that it represents will be lost to the world.  No one will care, years after they are dead, who they were or what they did.  They will be lost in obscurity. 

If you've ever watched American Idol, or any of those types of talent shows, you'll notice that each individual who auditions has hopes and dreams about what that opportunity might lead too.  For some of the more promising prospects, we are treated to a montage of what their life has been like so far and the struggles they’ve had to overcome and still need to overcome.  Some, who are realistic, realize that they have only a slight chance of becoming famous, or having their name becoming recognizable.  Others, who obviously don't have a good grasp of reality, think that they've got an honest shot.

The show does what it promises, though.  Some of the contestants do actually make a name for themselves.  The winning contestant in American Idol gets a record deal and a good deal of notoriety.  Their names become household names.  In some cases, the runners up become more famous then the winners, going on to make more records and become even more of a household name.  But for every one person that become famous, there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, who do not.  Dreams are crushed.  Not everyone gets to make a name for themselves.  But everyone gets to try.  

Making a Name for Themselves:

This is where the stars of our bible story this morning are.  They are trying to make a name for themselves.  They fear obscurity, being lost to history as just another group of people who lived, worked and died with nothing to show for their labor. 

Let's provide a little context for the passage.  Not too long ago—scholars disagreed on how long ago, but I'm not sure it matters all that much—the world and everything in it was destroyed by a giant flood.  Humanity was evil and that continually, to the very core of their being.  God, who had created creation to be good, and it was very good indeed, was sad and sickened by how his good creation was turning out.  There was one man, however, Noah, who was doing his very best to be what God had created and intended everyone to be, a faithful follower of God –a faithful bearer of God’s image in the world. 

Noah, because of his faithfulness, was spared from the destruction.  God commanded him to build an Ark, to stock it with food and with pairs of animals of every kind.  God's intention was to press a giant reset button on the world.  Noah, his family and the animals he saved, would become a new start.  Noah and his descendants would not be like those that had died in the flood.  No, they would be fruitful and multiply (a command that they are given at least three times after the Ark hits dry land).  Their being fruitful and multiplying is more than just being good at making babies. They were to be the kind of person Noah was: God fearing, faithful, image of God reflecting people.  They were to spread throughout the world, bearing God's image, making a name for God as his creation, everywhere they went. 

And, for the most part, they did.  We are told, in the text, that Noah's sons have lots of children.  We are told where they end up living and what nations are birthed from those families.  Nations are formed, languages are created and the image of God is spreading all over the world.  But this wasn't enough for Noah's descendants.  No, they wanted to make a name for themselves, not God. 

The Scattering:

Our text reads like this, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” (verse 4)  Like every contestant on American Idol, Noah's descendants set out to make a name for themselves.  Very clearly they are afraid that they will die in obscurity, no one will know that they ever existed, that they had even walked on the face of the earth.  They want, desperately, to make a name for themselves.  

Just how are they going to do this you ask?  By building a monument to their own strength and abilities.  They are going to take the normal stuff of building and creation and form it into a city and a tower that will touch the heavens.  This tower will keep them from being scattered; it will be a testament to their greatness for years, decades and perhaps millennia to come.  It will be a monument to them. 

We all know about monuments.  They are valuable aids in remembrance.  As society, anytime we want to remember a person or an event, or a generation of people, we build a monument out of materials that will last a very long time.  Monuments help us remember; they immortalize people and events.  They center our attention on the greatness of certain individuals or groups.  But very rarely do they point beyond a person or group of people. 

This quality of monuments to immortalize is precisely the problem with the tower that Noah's descendants set about to build.  God, who is always watching, decides to come down and take a closer look at what his creation is doing.  Upon further inspection God declares, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.  Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech."  v. 6-7 

It isn't out of fear that God decides to do something about Noah's descendants ambitious building plans; rather it is out of a desire for God’s creation to engage in the task of being fruitful and multiplying that God decides to act.  You see, making a name for themselves, monument building if you will, is directly contrary to the command to be fruitful and multiply.  It takes the focus away from being and becoming who they were supposed to be as God's created beings, as people who were to take the image of God into their world and make it known.  They were to be fruitful and multiply so that God's name might be spread throughout the world, not theirs.

So God comes down and acts.  He acts, not to destroy, but to nudge, to guide his creation to do what they were created to be, God-fearing, image of God bearing people just like Noah had been.

God confuses their language.  Really, the force of the words means that God made it impossible for them to hear and understand each other.  Communication becomes impossible, and their fears are realized, they are scattered.     

Our Scattering/Hearing, Speaking, Being, Doing...

But today is Pentecost, and God is doing a new thing.  Well, not really a new thing, but an old thing in a new way.  In the passage from Acts 2, a passage we are all very familiar with, God breathes his Holy Spirit on his followers 40 days after his resurrection and ascension.  

They were all gathered together in the upper room.  They have been waiting and praying because Jesus told them to.  Suddenly, the room begins to shake and the wind begins to blow.  Tongues of fire begin to settle on each of their heads representing the Holy Spirit.  This mighty wind blows them out of the room, out of the building and they begin to proclaim everything that they have seen and heard.  There are people from all over the world living in Jerusalem and they begin to hear the disciples talk, in their native language! The confusion, the inability to hear and communicate that happens at Babel, is undone.  Scattering takes place.  Only this time it is a scattering that isn’t the consequence of disobedience, of trying to make a name for oneself; it’s a scattering that is the fulfillment of the command to be fruitful and multiply.  It is the sending of those who are bearing the image of Christ to the world, so that those in our world might become like them as they are becoming like Christ.  It is the undoing of Babel. 

So What…?

What does this mean for us? It is a call to quit trying to make a name for ourselves.  It is call to not fear that if we haven’t done anything in life, if we haven’t built a monument to ourselves, then we will be left to die in obscurity.  It is a call to attend to the command that God has given us from the very beginning, the call to be fruitful and multiply.  It is a call to be Holy Spirit filled people who are scattered throughout our world to make a name for Christ. It is the call to evaluate our individual actions to answer this question: Does this make Christ known, or does this make a name for me?  

What does this look like for our church?  There is always a choice, when thinking and planning for the work of the church.  It is the same choice that those at Babel had.  We can make a name for ourselves. We can build a monument to ourselves, a legacy to the work that we have done, so that the Webster Groves Church of the Nazarene might be someone. 

Or, we can be fruitful and multiply.  We can work to be image-bearers of Christ, seeking to make a name for him, not for ourselves.  This choice needs to be the lens through which we view each and every decision about programming and activities.  Does this make a name for us? Or does this make Christ known?  Does this feed the hungry?  Does this clothe the naked, does this work to take care of the widow, the orphan and the poor?  Does this proclaim the Good News in all of its forms, spiritual and physical?  Is this motivated by self-giving love, the love that Christ has for us, or is it motivated by self gratification?

This struggle between these two questions is nothing new.  It’s been happening since the beginning of time.  It is with confidence, however, that we celebrate this day: God is faithful and will help us to be fruitful and multiply!

Critical Discussion Questions:

1. What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text? 
1. God has give creation a mission and that mission is to bear his image in creation so that he might receive glory through us.  Our attempts to make a name for ourselves keep glory from being given to God.  God, in this narrative, is nudging creation to be faithful to the command to be fruitful across the whole earth. 
2. At Pentecost God is renewing the command for us to go throughout the earth and bear his image to creation.  Only this time, we are to tell the story of the love and faithfulness of God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  God scatters us in the power of the Spirit, translating for us his message into the words of the people who need to hear the gospel.   

2. What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?
1. Holiness means allowing ourselves to be sent, through the power of the Spirit, so that we might bear God’s image in the world.  It means that our own name and notoriety take a back seat as we are used to tell the story of God’s love and faithfulness.  In short, it is ceasing to seek a name for ourselves and allowing ourselves to be scattered in our community and world so that God’s love and glory may be displayed. 

3. How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?
1. All our decisions concerning life and church should be filtered through this question, “Does this make a name for myself?  Or does it make a name for God?”  As we reflect on this question it should help us make career decisions, life decisions, and decisions regarding the church’s events and programs.  The story of Babel and of Pentecost is a reminder that we are not building the church for our sakes, or even the church’s sake, but for God’s sake, and for the world that God loves. 

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly.  Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1.     Look back at the previous chapters.  What is the context for this story about the Tower of Babel?  What command has God given Noah and his descendants after the flood?

2.     Why did the people at Babel want to build a tower?  What was their motivation? 

3.     What was God’s response?  Why does God choose to act as he did?  Is God scared of what the people might now be able to do?

4.     Why would God confuse their language?  How might that help them fulfill God’s earlier command to be fruitful and multiply, filling the whole earth? 

5.     Today is the Day of Pentecost.  Read Acts 2:1-13.  What similarities might there be between the Tower of Babel story and the one in Acts? How is God using human language to further his mission?

6.     Reflecting on our personal lives and our church: are we more like the people at Babel before God confuses their language, or are we like the disciples on the Day of Pentecost?  Are we trying to make a name for ourselves or are we allowing ourselves to be scattered? 

Genesis 18:1-15 –“Oh yes, you did laugh!”

“Faith is not a reasonable act which fits into the normal scheme of life and perception. The promise of the gospel is not a conventional piece of wisdom that is easily accommodated to everything else. Embrace of this radical gospel requires shattering and discontinuity.”[1]

 -Walter Brueggemann

Lesson Focus:

We sin because we fail to have proper faith in the sometimes-nonsensical ways of God. 

Lesson Outcomes:

Through this lessons students should:

1.     Recognize that faith sometimes means living in ways that may not make a whole lot of sense. 

2.     God works to fulfill his purposes for creation even when we do not have proper faith.

Catch up on the story:

God has promised to make Abram a great nation, through whom all nations of the world would be blessed.  Up to this point we aren’t sure how this is going to happen because Abraham and Sarah are barren.  Sarah, in attempt to try and have children vicariously, gives her servant Hagar to Abraham.  This situation only causes discord.  Later, God performs a covenant ceremony with Abraham changing his name from Abram.  God also give him the sign of the covenant that is circumcision. Once again, God reasserts that he will make Abraham’s children a great nation that will bless all the nations.  

The Text:

Our text begins during the heat of the day.  Abraham, who has just had all of the male members of his family circumcised as a mark of the covenant that God has made with him, is sitting at the entrance to his tent.  He looks up, and the text tells us he sees “the LORD.”  This first verse, however, may function as a heading to the section.  Scholars are divided when it comes to the identity of the three men with whom Abraham interacts.  What is important, at this point, is that God is reminding Abraham and Sarah of his promise to them. 

Abraham, while sitting in the entrance to his tent, spies three men and runs to meet them.  When he arrives at the three men he bows down and addresses them.  The text is unclear about what Abraham knows about these three men.  He may know that these men are different in some kind of way.  Perhaps he knows that they are messengers from God.  His immediate treatment of them gives us no clue as to his understanding. 

Providing hospitality for those who were traveling was one of the most important, if not the most important, social rule of the day.  To turn aside strangers or travelers, not offering them food, water and shelter, would have been unthinkable.  It would have also brought shame on the family.  Abraham’s offer of hospitality will be contrasted with the hospitality (or lack of) that is offered to these men in the city of Sodom.   

So, Abraham addresses the men as if he were their servant.  His aim is to please these strangers. Abraham offers them the things that traveling men most want; water for drinking and washing, rest, and food.  The men do not refuse Abraham’s offer.  The narrative moves quickly as Abraham begins to instruct Sarah to make bread from the best flour and his servants to kill and prepare a tender calf.  It would have taken some time for the food to be prepared, but in the interest in moving the story along we cut straight to the shared meal.

Abraham brings the food to his visitors and they engage him in conversation.  There is no small talk.  The men want to know where Abraham’s wife is.  Abraham responds that his wife is in the tent.  Sarah, as almost certainly you and I would do in this type of situation, was listening to the conversation between her husband and the three strangers.  I’m sure her ears perked up when the conversation turned to her.

The men offer a promise to Abraham and Sarah.  To be sure this promise had been offered to them some time before and now it seemed as if it would be impossible to fulfill.  The men declare that in due season Sarah will give birth to a son.  Let’s remind ourselves of what has taken place so far.  God came to a barren couple, a couple for whom the possibility of life and future were non-existent.  To be barren, in the biblical world, was to be already in a sense dead.  There will be no one to carry on the name, no one to carry on the memory of the family.  God comes to this barren couple and promises them a future filled with descendants that outnumber the stars in the sky. 

Time passed and Abraham and Sarah still did not have any children.  It was then that Sarah decided to take matters into her own hands.  She would give her maidservant, Hagar, to Abraham as a wife.  They would have a child through Hagar.  It works, too.  Hagar becomes pregnant and gives birth to Ishmael.  Abraham is content now with what he has.  After Ishmael is born God comes to Abraham and Sarah once more.  Ishmael will not be the one through whom God blesses the world; he is not the fruit of God’s promise to Abraham.  Sarah herself will have a son.  Abraham’s response is one of laughter.  How can this be?  Abraham is 100 years old and Sarah is 90!  The promise that was originally offered will be kept.  Sarah will have a son. 

We aren’t told how much time has passed between God’s last conversation with Abraham and the three visitors.  It is enough time, however, for the couple to doubt that God will keep his promise.  Sarah hears the voice of the men proclaiming that she will have a son soon.  Like Abraham, her response to this news is one of laughter.  It is, however, not the laughter that is born from the joy of good news.  It is the laughter that comes from disbelief. 

It is the laughter that comes when a friend tells you that he is finally going to go and talk to that girl he has been admiring for such a long time, or the kind of laughter elicited when a Cardinals fan hears a Cubs fan say, “This is our year!”  “Haha!  I’ll believe that when I see it!” Even though both the NIV and the NRSV render the verse, “she laughed to herself,” the original text indicates that the laughter that Sarah produces is not just a polite little laugh, or even a silent chuckle to herself.  It is, rather, a full out belly laugh produced by the absurdity of an old woman giving birth.[2] Perhaps the laugh is also a way to cope with the reality that what Sarah has hoped for has not come to pass.  Even now that these men say that it will happen, the wound is still sore; she believes it less now than she did before. 

Sarah wonders out loud how it is that someone of her age, who has stopped menstruating, can have a child.  The question is then put to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh…Is anything to wonderful for the Lord?” Here is the crucial part of the text, this question, “Is anything to wonderful for the Lord?”  The question concerns Abraham and Sarah’s belief, or lack there of, in God’s ability to fulfill the promise against all odds.  It was nonsense to Sarah that at her age, and in her condition, that she would be able to have a baby.

The question is asked to us, and to the aged couple in a rhetorical manner, and it is asked with confidence.  The question is left to linger in our minds.  It is left to challenge our assumptions about the nature of our world and what is possible.  Left up to us, a promise such as the one these men make to Sarah is very laughable.  It just is not possible.  For Israel, whose story this is, and for us too, it is meant to draw us into believing that the world in its broken state is not how the world should or ought to persist.  Indeed, it calls us to begin to have faith, faith in the promise that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has tangibly changed things. 

At the end of the day,

“The story is constructed to present the tension between this inscrutable speech of God (that comes as promise) and the resistance and mockery of Abraham and Sarah who doubt the word and cannot believe the promise. Israel stands before God’s word of promise but characteristically finds that word beyond reason and belief. Abraham, and especially Sarah, are not offered here as models of faith but as models of disbelief. For them, the powerful promise of God outdistances their ability to receive it.[3]

What might be even more remarkable is that God keeps his promise despite their unbelief. 

So What…?

The narrative ends with this simple yet profound question hanging in the air.  It moves on to a story about great evil in the world while Abraham and Sarah continue to wait for the fulfillment of the promise.  The last words of the section, “Oh yes, you did laugh” should haunt us.  How many times have we encountered a command of Jesus only to laugh at it because of its impracticality?  We laugh in the face of Jesus’ command to turn the other cheek when someone wrongs us.  We laugh in the face of Jesus when he commands us to repay evil with love.  We laugh in Jesus’ face when we pretend to serve God yet we are bound to making money.  We laugh when Jesus tells us that in order to truly gain abundant life we must first give it all away.

No doubt, many of us will deny our laughter in the face of the foolishness (to us anyway) of the kingdom of God.  We will say to ourselves and to others that, perhaps, Jesus did not mean those things literally.  Our laughter is a sign of our disbelief, and that disbelief leads us into sin because we cannot fully trust the one who has the power to bring us from death to life.

Last week, during the first week of Lent, we confessed that our sin, our violence and wickedness causes God anguish and grief.  This week, as we continue our walk toward the cross, let us confess our lack of imagination and faith in our God who “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” (Romans 4:17)  Let us ask that we might have great, yet simple faith to follow in the path of Jesus.

Critical Discussion Questions:

1. What does God look like in this text/Who is God in this text/What is God doing in this text? 

a.     In this text God continues to be faithful even when we are not.  God, faced with the laughing disbelief of Abraham and Sarah, does not stop to find someone else who will do his will unquestioningly, but continues to remain faithful to his promise.  While our disbelief doesn’t always disqualify us from relationship with God, it does hinder us from fully enjoying and experiencing all of God’s life-giving ability.  

2. What does holiness/salvation look like in this text?

a.     Salvation looks likes God’s faithfulness in the midst of our unbelief.  Even though we laugh at the way and plans of God, God still is working for us.  This text does not directly show that there are consequences to our unbelief, but to be sure, there are.  Even after we have proven ourselves unfaithful, or unwilling to be faithful, God ultimately provides us with chances to respond to his gift of salvation.  Even though Abraham and Sarah have laughed in the face of God, God is still going to work redemptively through them.  

3. How does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?

a.     This story calls us to answer the question, “Is there anything too hard/wonderful for God?”  The answer to this question can only be spoken after we have witnessed and heard of God’s mighty and saving deeds.  As we engage the story of God’s redemption in the bible, and we listen to the stories of God’s people in our church who have experienced God’s loving kindness, we are compelled to answer a resounding “No!”  We should then walk forth in faith and obedience even when it makes no sense.   

b.     While our faith may falter, and we may not believe in God’s future for our world and our lives, God is still able to work through us.  If in the past we have laughed at God’s plans because they seem inconceivable, there is still hope for us.  God desires to work through and with us even at times when are not exactly willing.

Specific Discussion Questions:

Read the text aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly.  Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.

1.     Familiarize yourself with the story of Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 12, 15-17).  What are the promises God has made to Abraham (Abram)?  How has God kept those promises so far in the story?  How have Abraham and Sarah taken control of the situation for themselves?

2.     The men repeat God’s promise to the couple that they will someday have a son.  Why do you think God chooses to remind them instead of just making it happen? 

3.     Sarah laughs at the news.  Put yourself in her situation (90 years old, barren for all these years, had ceased menstruation), how would you have responded to such news? 

4.     Sarah’s laughter is one of disbelief.  The idea that she will have a child at her age and condition is just too absurd to believe.  Yet, God chooses to use her anyway.  Why do you think that God chooses to use us at times despite our disbelief?   

5.     The question asked at the end of the story is, “Is there anything too wonderful for the Lord?” (v. 14).  Why do you think this question was asked at this point in the story?  How do you think Abraham and Sarah would have answered the question at the very end of their lives? 

6.     The question in verse 14 is meant for us as well.  What might be some of the ways we respond to Jesus’ teaching like Sarah responded to the news of her approaching pregnancy, that is, with a lack of faith?

7.     Are there times you just can’t see how God’s desires for the way we should live make any sense? 

---

[1] Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1982), 158–159.

[2] “Commentary on Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7,” Working Preacher.org, accessed January 19, 2015, https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1087.

[3] Brueggemann, 158.

We're Not Dead Yet... -Genesis 12

The promise is God’s power and will to create a new future sharply discontinuous with the past and the present. The promise is God’s resolve to form a new community wrought only by miracle and reliant only on God’s faithfulness. Faith as response is the capacity to embrace that announced future with such passion that the present can be relinquished for the sake of that future.
-Walter Brueggemann

After Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden, the Story turns bleak.  We aren’t long out of the Garden before there is murder.  Brother kills brother.  We’ve said that when we reject God’s Story and attempt to write our own that terrible things happen.  The eating of the fruit, brother killing brother, these are but the beginning.  Generations pass, and no one is listening to God the Director.  The evil that happens from seeking to live in a world of our own making instead of a world of God’s making multiplies and piles up.  As the Characters in our Story multiply and divide, so does their wickedness.  Finally, God has enough.  The Director, who is ever trying to get his Actors and Actresses to follow His script, decides that He is going to fire everyone except this Noah.  And by fire, I mean let go in a very permanent way.  So, God floods the world, intending to purge it of its evilness.  Only, after the whole thing is done, God realizes that the problem that his Actors and Actresses have with going off script isn’t one that can be fixed through destruction.  It’s a heart problem, and heart problems must be dealt with in very different ways. 

It All Falls Apart... -Genesis 3

 “Anxiety comes from doubting God’s providence, from rejecting his care and seeking to secure our own well-being.  Failure to trust God with our lives is death.  To trust God with our lives is to turn from the autonomous ‘I’ to the covenanting ‘Thou,’ from our invented well-being to God’s overriding purposes and gifts.  This shrewd narrative does not believe there are many alternatives.” –Walter Brueggemann

“And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.”  There’s vulnerability in being naked.  We’re only ever naked, without the garments that protect us in so many ways, when we feel safe and secure, when we are with people who we know will not take advantage of our nakedness.  As adults, we’ve mainly lost those feelings of safety and security.  But, if you’ve ever spent much time around small children, or if you have small children of your own, then you will know that nakedness for them is no problem.  For innocent children, giggles and laughter often accompany the freedom of being without clothing.  Oftentimes my children, when they are without clothing – say after a bath – will run through the house laughing and yelling, daring us to catch them, daring us to once again encumber them with clothes.  They are free.  They are safe.  They are protected by their parents who have created an environment that allows them to be so.