If you know me, you know that I often find examples in the natural world that are great metaphors for the human condition – and for the divine. I’ve preached and written about dogs and rabbits, rocks and water, clouds and trees.
Today, I’m going to talk about ants and termites.
These insects – ants and termites – have two fascinating qualities: they are profoundly social and they engage in near ceaseless construction. They communicate with each other almost constantly and each one of them has specific work to do. Some move twigs, soil, and construction materials; others bring food; still others rear broods of their young. Each is engaged in a specific task.
At the same time, if you look at them from a distance, it is clear that they are engaged in common work. Elaborate, interconnected collaborative projects – the Hill and the Mound – that are the signature of their species. Their social projects are the things that make them what they are.
Scientists have observed these animals communicating with each other through touch and through chemicals like pheromones, so they can tell each other about the location of food or if there are enemies nearby or what their building projects need.
And about those building projects: ant hills and termite mounds are structures that involve elaborate, collaborative architecture. They require near constant maintenance and division of labor.
The work is compulsive. Ants construct, maintain, and repair the region of their hill without knowing what work is being done elsewhere and without a blueprint. Termites live out their brief lives in a social enterprise that goes back hundreds of generations. They don’t know how it started or how it will end up.
This is what characterizes all social animals. They keep at a particular thing as a group and work ceaselessly under genetic instructions and genetic compulsion on that project. They can’t help it! Being part of these large, joint projects is just who they are.
Now, the way I found out about the social nature of ants and termites is itself a story about another social animal. Humans.
I read about the nature of ants and termites in a book that belonged to my dad. After he died several years ago, I started taking his old books home with me one or two at a time. Part of me was interested in the books themselves (in this case, The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas) and part of me was interested in knowing the things my dad knew and passing them on. It was a way of carrying forward the thoughts of the author and my dad through me and to other people. In fact, I am doing that right now!
Like ants and termites, humans are profoundly social animals. Our interactions and relationship with other humans are fundamental to our nature. And like other social animals, we are engaged in particular behavior all the time, a collaborative project that is part of who we are.
Now, even though we humans do build things that take generations – like huge gothic cathedrals or massive transportation systems – it isn’t the building of physical structures that we are innately compelled to engage in. We have archeological ruins from around the world that testify to the fact that we move on from our physical group projects all the time and we are still human.
So what is our group project?
When we look at the projects of ants and termites, we know that each one is focused on their particular task, not a single one of them has any notion of what is being constructed elsewhere. And none of them know the origin of their joint project or how it will end up. Ants have a very brief life, but their hills go on for many, many years.
What do we have that is like that?
We have language. Language is the human project that makes us us. We are born equipped to use it. While specific languages like English or Chinese or Sign Language are not inborn, the impulse to communicate through words does seem to be something that humans engage in communally, compulsively, and that we can’t be human without. We seem to be born with a sense of past, present, future; of subjects and objects.
And not only that. We are able to use language in endlessly creative ways. We are not just stuck with a few key messages about food or safety or “let’s get together”…we name and describe things, we tell others what is happening around us.
Human language evolves and carries ideas and messages from the past into the future. (Like my dad’s book.) Language connects us to those we have never and may never meet, even to those who are anonymous. Language is for us like an ant hill or a termite mound – we each have specific roles in using it. We keep at it – using and creating language – compulsively. If two people meet and don’t speak the same language, they will find a way to communicate, to understand what each other’s words mean.
We can’t help it. It is who and what we are.
If you consider humans individually, we each learn language and use it in specific ways. Some use it to write or sing or create art. Some use it to solve problems or care for the young or the sick. Some use it to report on the past, others to address needs in the future. We use it to make lists, fix things that are broken, invent new things.
If you zoom out and see us from a distance (as we did with ants and termites) you can see that language is also a collaborative human project. No one knows how it started, but it was with us in our earliest days. No one knows how our languages will end up.
We use our languages every day, around the world. The ancient languages have evolved and merged and separated to become the languages we have today. No one from the Middle Ages would know what “radio” or “television” mean, but those modern words have their origin in Latin and Greek. All our new words are built on old ones. The languages we inherit evolve to meet new needs or facilitate new ideas. And no matter which specific tongue we use, we use it for the same purposes as humans around the world do. It is a group project across time and place.
There are some interesting aspects of human language that fascinate me as a person and as a Christian. For instance: the more we learn about ancient cultures the more we see that we humans are storytellers. We have used language to tell stories from the time we hunted and gathered our food, from the time we lived in caves and painted those stories on the walls.
In my faith tradition, storytelling is how we know about people like Moses, Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. Storytelling is how we are invited to sing psalms of joy and anger, awe and sadness. Storytelling is how we know the story of the struggles and passion of the early church.
Language is so core to who we are as human beings that it is how Jesus taught us about the kingdom of God and used metaphors like scattering seeds, harvesting crops, and growing mustard bushes. Storytelling is the way we learn about faith from a widow who lost a coin or love from a prodigal son.
We are not compelled by our nature to build buildings or make kings. We are compelled to use language to tell stories about those things. We are compelled to use language to transmit our history, our hopes, our very nature to those who come after us.
That language is the social project making us what we are is a proposition from science, from people who study human culture, linguistics, and history. But there is something truly spiritual about it, as well. For one thing, we know from the very opening words of our story – from scripture – through to the very end that we humans are not made to be alone, that we are made for each other and made to be social. So, for those of us who share this faith, it makes a great deal of sense that we are created with this language impulse that keeps us connected both immediately and across time and place.
And it makes sense that language is how we come to know about God and God’s love for us; that knowledge comes to us through stories being told around fires and around tables, stories written down and sung and painted. It is through language and through stories that you can look into the eyes of someone you love and talk about God…and it is also the way you can understand and interact with people whose eyes you will never behold. People like Mary of Nazareth and Mary Magdalen; people like Joseph and Peter and Paul; people who live today, but in far away places.
God spoke creation into being and has made us in God’s image, so I don’t think it is any accident that speaking is one of the key ways we connect with each other and with God.
And that is why I think it is not just language that makes us human. I think one of the key things that makes us human, that is as compulsive for us as building a hill is for ants, is love. It is the urge to connect with other humans. Language is the key way we do that, perhaps it is the purpose for which language has been given to us.
Language can be misused, just as love or any other gift can be. Yet it is the urge to connect with other people, to make stories together, and to be in communion with God that makes us who we are. It makes us us.
I am leaving a community I’ve been part of for almost 5 years. In that time we have told a lot of stories – and made some stories. Stories about being baptized and sharing meals around a table. Stories of making masks for each other in 2020 and creating new ways to connect online and outside. Stories about births and deaths and weddings.
After today, my story will diverge as I move on from that place, even as their story adds new chapters. Yet we will still be part of the same bigger story – the story that includes ancient prophets and kings and struggling church planters. A story that includes a musical score that is both ancient and modern. Most importantly, it is a story that has at it’s center Jesus. Jesus who is the story and who told stories and who invites us into the story of how God loves us and how we can share that love through our own stories, in our shared language.
(Adapted from my last sermon at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Austin, Texas)
