THE FLOOD
Genesis 6: 7-22, What Happened, continued
HAMACO Lesson #2, 1/18/09

If you remember from two weeks ago we read the beginning of the “J” version, which we said was the earlier of the two Flood stories. And we ended with verses six, seven and eight: 6) The Lord was grieved that he had made man on earth, and his heart was filled with pain. 7) So the Lord said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them." 8) But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Let’s begin there and read verses nine through thirteen. As we read you will see that the story seems to be repeating itself, even though it isn’t word for word, and it adds some information. This is because today’s verses come from a different version of the numerous flood stories in circulation then. This, then, is the “P” version, written by priests during the Babylonian captivity. READ vv. 9-13

Now let’s compare the “J” and “P” versions verse by verse, reading “P” first each time. Notice first that “P” begins without any mention of the “J” story of which it is probably unaware. Verse 9: This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. The “J” version says: “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” Verse 10: Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. “J” does not mention Noah’s three sons directly. Only later, (in 7:7) does he refer to “Noah and his sons and his wife and his son’s wives.” Verse 11: Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. “J” says, “The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become…” Right away these words make it easy for us to identify with this story. Now “P” continues: Verse 12: God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. “J” had said it this way: “…and that every inclination of the thoughts of [man’s] heart was only evil all the time.” Verse 13: So God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them… Here is how “J” said it: “The Lord was grieved that he had made man on earth, and his heart was filled with pain. Verse 13 continues: I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.” Very similar to what “J” says “So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals…creatures that move along the ground, [and] birds of the air…’” ( Now Read vv. 14-16)

Now let’s read verses seventeen and eighteen with an eye more toward the theological implications rather than the physical descriptions of the rain and the ark. Remember, this is still “P’s” version as God tells Noah, 17) I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18) But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you.

So the facts of the story itself, in the form we have it, are largely self-explanatory. Before it rained for forty days, Noah, on orders from God, built a huge ark to survive the ensuing flood. (Just a little side bar: it wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark. What an apt description of faith.) In that ark he preserved enough of each species to eventually replenish the earth in accordance with the covenant God made with him. But if that were the sum and substance of this story do you really think it would have survived thirty or forty centuries? Probably not.

So there is more to it, and that “more” is theological. In other words, we, by knowing it is more than just an interesting story, are moved to ask, what is its meaning, especially in light of the fact that almost all civilizations have similar stories from their antiquities? And could God really have become murderously angry with humankind? There are many, many questions one could ask about this story; but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We will get to some of them in coming lessons. But today we must resist the temptation to get ahead of our text.

So let’s begin with our first question, “What is the story’s meaning, in light of the fact that almost all civilizations have similar stories from their antiquities?” This event may have happened. Nobody really knows. Positive evidence would be nice, but there is none. I used to think that the many similar stories from other ancient civilizations were strong evidence that a worldwide flood did happen. After all, why else would they all have had these stories? But geologists, especially those from Christian and Jewish belief systems, have found no evidence of that. Can we say, though, that since no positive evidence has been found, the Flood didn’t happen? That seems a little premature in the sense that significant artifacts proving ancient events, people and places are quite often found. So armed with some evidence and continued hope, the digging continues.

Our second question, “And could God really have been murderously angry with humankind?” is more difficult because we have to begin with the presumption that God really did get that angry, either that or this is a story he left us to illustrate an important truth he wants us to have. Neither choice satisfies everyone. However, I think I have a way we can utilize both. Let us assume God really did get this angry—but then ask ourselves ‘Why?” Let the geologists continue their search for the “what” of the story, but in the meantime we shall seek its meaning, as either a historical event or a God-inspired story, what does it mean—for us? For that answer, we who revere the Bible as God’s word must dig in other places—holy places. We seek wisdom from words centuries old as if they were written for us; and we believe they were. Too often we are disappointed by the pronouncements of humankind—those who claim to know the Bible isn’t true, but can’t say what is. The Bible, on the other hand, tells us about 1) ancient problems that persist today, situations we can instantly recognize, 2) of ancient inclinations which seem eerily familiar, 3) of the meaning of faith in God and the lack thereof, 4) and of consequences we would rather not consider. To read these stories with our eyes open, so to speak, usually finds us looking uncomfortably into a mirror.

I would suggest that finding God’s will in the stories he has left us is light years ahead of finding the ark. I’ll not soon forget a pastor many years ago, who, when I shared with him my hope for what the Shroud of Turin, if it did belong to Jesus, could reveal, said to me, “Phil, what if it isn’t the authentic shroud of Jesus? Would that destroy, or even lessen your faith?” I guess my answer to that question had to be “No”, for sure enough, we are no closer now to proving or disproving the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin than we were then, yet my faith has grown without such proof. Similarly, finding the historical ark, while it would be very exciting, actually would do nothing for my belief, for as a Christian I am to, “Walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Cor. 5:7)

So what would cause God to become this angry? If we go back to the text both versions will give us the answer. Let’s read verses eleven and twelve, “Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.” Our narrative prefaces all God’s destructive action with this indictment. He became murderously angry because everything he had created had become corrupt and violent.

Now that’s an interesting paring of words: “corrupt” and “violent.” So what is the evil that first corrupts us and eventually leads to violence? Christian poet, Lucy Shaw says, “We can talk endlessly about power for good versus power for evil, but it has long been understood that no matter what its motivation, personal power may corrupt, and…that results in the destruction or annihilation of another.” In the same vein, Lord Acton of England famously said, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Now I know such a lust for power doesn’t answer every question about the genesis of corruption. For instance, theologian H. Richard Niebuhr says, “…we are convicted of having corrupted our religious life through our unquenchable desire to keep…our love of our good in the center of the picture.” But does this, too, not reflect the use of personal power? How else do most individuals and nations acquire and exercise domination and control over others? And for what other reason than, “…to keep…our love of our good in the center of the picture”?

So is it not possible just from our reading of this text to say that in the same proportion that we relax our hold on God, we insure our own corruption? And would it not be true that when we think first of ourselves and what we declare to be ours, we are trifling with the root source of corruption. Do you know why I don’t like to hear this, why I would rather disown such a theory? Because I’m implicated—and I don’t want to face that! Because God, if we use the Old Testament phraseology in this story, destroys us for that. And it doesn’t get any better if we use a more modern understanding of how God deals with our sin; allowing us to destroy ourselves.

The important thing, I think, is to understand that this story, while interesting and time honored, isn’t about a flood. It is about us, and about the consequences of separation from God. But there is hope! That’s the good news. The bad news is that you will have to wait until the next lesson to find out what that hope is.

THE FLOOD
Genesis 7, Boarding the Ark
HAMACO Lesson #3, 1/25/09

First, read the sections of chapter seven from “J”; then read them from the “P” sections. These sections are as follows: from “J”—7:1-5; 7-10; 12; 17; and 22-24. From “P”—7:6; 11; 13-16; and 18-21.

How would you respond if someone said to you that it wasn’t Adolf Hitler who committed the greatest act of genocide in the history of the world, but God? Does the story of the Flood tell us that God could actually do that? This story is referred to by some as a saga, because a saga tells of something in prehistory which no one could have observed. In sagas such as this one, the basic truth it underlies, the reason it is told, is veiled. But (as we said in the last lesson), the people who read it with an inquiring mind come to recognize its essential truth.

But why must the truth be veiled? Why do we have to search for it? As you know from your own experience, what we find for ourselves is so much more believable than what we are asked or told to believe. And to search for the truth in the Flood saga is a good thing for another reason. For what we learn there carries over to many other stories of brutality found in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament, sometimes wrongly called the Books of Moses). Such stories cause many people to dismiss even the possibility of a just and loving God. Consequently, they want no part of our religion, even declaring it a negative force in human history. So searching for the truth about God and his actions is what this lesson is about, but using only the narrow focus of the Flood saga. Let’s try today to shed some light on how to understand this story.

To begin, fast forward a few thousand years and we find ourselves, and not as an entirely peaceful people either. Just in the past one hundred years we have been involved in no fewer than seven wars or other major military actions. This doesn’t even count the thousands of murders on our streets and in our homes that occur each year. And we aren’t the only ones; Israel and the Islamic peoples (who, according to our common beliefs, are our fellow descendents of Abraham) can hardly be characterized as peaceful either.

Regarding most Americans, though, I grant you we believe we go to war reluctantly and for honorable reasons, and I am one of them. But that is our perception—our reality. The perceptions on the other side of the world are quite different—and that, for them, is just as real. The way most of our enemies see it, our violent actions aren’t surprising; for instance, it’s easy, even though erroneous, to connect our belief in the Bible to acquiescence in the mass murder God committed in the flood story. How are we to deal with that? Arguing the point is useless; no one ever wins an argument. Instead of that, let’s concentrate on our own understanding. How do we Christians infer the meaning of God creating a flood that destroyed almost all life on earth, and secondarily, does that give us the right to destroy those with whom WE are estranged? You may think that is a ridiculous question, but remember in the minds of our enemies, it isn’t ridiculous at all.

When reading this saga I can’t help but grieve over the millions who perished. You know, they were more than just millions, they were people. Each had a life, each had a story; in many ways they are us. They had children and grandchildren; they loved and were loved. Such an event makes the devastation Hurricane Ike visited on Galveston or Crystal Beach trivial by comparison. But we can relate because we remember our horror at the devastation we saw there, the lists of missing persons presumed dead, a grief only exacerbated, not be numbers, but by the many personal stories we heard.

Were all of Noah’s neighbors bad? If so, what happened to their chance for repentance? At Crystal Beach most escaped. Were they good? This has to be more than a simplistic “good” versus “bad” story. The narrative tells us nothing of the victims, other than, as we pointed out last week, they had become violent and corrupted. Yet from them we hear no cries of pain, no begging for another chance, no pounding on the door of the ark. Nothing. They are silent. After the fact they simply slip out of the story, seemingly forgotten. Nothing is even mentioned of their remains, of the millions of bloated, rotting carcasses strewn over the creation of which God had said earlier, “it is good”. Could this be the same God who gave us the story of The Good Samaritan, the one who told us to help the poor, heal the sick, and visit the imprisoned; who taught us about unconditional love?
We can never fully uncover these mysteries. There is a line of theological thought, though, that helps us take a step past the obvious. If we go back to chapter six (6:3) we read, “Then the Lord said, ‘I will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.’” If you remember, and surely you do, we said at the time that these words seemed strange, for the text tells us elsewhere that Noah himself lived to be 950 years of age; his sons also had long lives. So there must be another way to understand God’s meaning by saying, ‘his days will be a hundred and twenty years.’ God, the story implies, was talking with Noah. He had observed the total breakdown of morality among his people, and says to Noah in frustration, ‘‘I will not contend with man forever…’ (Did they think he would? Do we?) But that statement alone certainly doesn’t close the door on the possibility of redemption. Why? Because God goes on to say, ‘…his days will be a hundred and twenty years.’ In other words, God is giving them a hundred and twenty additional years to turn back to him; a hundred and twenty years to repent. And if that is the proper understanding, God surely must have asked Noah to be the proclaimer of this good news to his lost generation, a sort of prophet, even before the days of the prophets. For Noah was the one God saw as righteous. Noah was the one called to bear witness to God’s grace in a world that was under a sentence of death. I’m beginning to see some parallels here to my Christian beliefs. Are you?

But did anything change? Obviously not! For now we are back to the place in the story we read today. God comes to Noah again, declares again that he is righteous in his generation, and tells him to get into the ark that now was completed; rain was on the way; or, according to your local weather man or woman, a thirty percent chance! I’ll bet Noah was saying to himself, “Gosh! I hope I didn’t cut too many constructions costs here.” Anyway, the point being that the millions of people who perished HAD been given the chance to repent and they chose not to do so. Are the parallels we mentioned still visible? Looking at it this way, the Flood story represents the ultimatum of Jesus, his own call to repentance. It also tells of consequences for not doing so. Or, as Paul said, “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life.” (Romans 6:23)

But this is still a gruesome story that strikes at our concept of a loving God. Did God actually do this, or does the story mean that he allowed humankind to die of its own evil malignancy? We can only ponder that. I’m not sure, really, if it even makes a difference. How would death be different if one is killed by a God-created disaster or allowed to drown in the consequences of one’s self-inflicted sinfulness? One thing we don’t have to wonder about, though; the faithful one was saved.

Whichever way you choose to believe, there is something else in the story that is nothing less than astounding, given the things we think we know about God. Let’s go back to chapter six (6:6) where we read, “The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.” As we said last week, the phrase, “was grieved”, is rendered in some other translations as, “was sorry” or “it repenteth him” (It caused God to feel the need to repent for what he had done). Taken together, the Lord, looking at this creation grown evil, his being sorry and feeling the need to repent, all leads to one of two inescapable inferences: either God made a mistake or he is showing us what to do when we err! What other conclusions are we to reach when the text says he wished he hadn’t done it; he had tried to persuade humans to change the way they chose to live their lives, but this didn’t work either. They refused; as we read in chapter six (6:5), “The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.” So God repented by destroying them (or allowing them to destroy themselves). And God repeats, “…for I am grieved that I have made them.” Those tragic words underlie the Christian belief, born two thousand years ago, about the indictment under which we live even today. They necessitate both God’s need to send a savior, and our need to accept his offer of salvation through that savior. “…for I am grieved that I have made them.”

In our next lesson we will look into the implications of this, of the text saying “God was sorry”; and “it repenteth him.”

THE FLOOD
Genesis 6: 1-8, “What Happened?”
Lesson #1, 1/4/09

Today we begin a series of lessons on Noah and the Flood described in Genesis chapters six through nine. My sources are the NIV Study Bible (and notes); The Apocrypha; Genesis by Walter Brueggemann, from the Interpretation Bible Series; The Interpreter’s Bible Commentary; and the book, In the End the Beginning, by Jurgen Moltmann, just in case you want to check me out on any of this. The most important resource, though, is that you read this in your own Bibles and take the time to meditate on its meaning. Is it no more than a wonderfully interesting tale about a flood? It may be; similar flood stories have been found in almost all ancient civilizations. Did it really happen? It may have, but most current scholars doubt it and few even debate that anymore. Could it have happened? Of course, if you believe that, “with God all things are possible.” Is it about more than a flood, though? You bet it is! And that is where we are headed in the next few weeks.

READ THE TEXT

Have you ever had an itch that you just had to scratch? Well I have a recurring theological itch that I must scratch now, even before we get into the meat of the flood narrative. Actually, it is a part of the story that no one has yet been able to understand. And maybe that explains my fascination with the origin of evil. Here we have a creation so racked by sin that its own creator decides to destroy it. There is something very unsettling about this. If God created everything, did he create evil? Holy Scripture provides no definitive answer, but I continue to search anyway. There is this feeling I have that won’t away; God doesn’t want me to take someone else’s answer, but find it for myself, even if it turns out that there is no answer.
Walter Brueggemann suggests that the sin narratives which begin with 1) Adam and Eve in the Garden, 2) Cain and Abel, 3) and continue to the "Sons of God" from the first part of this chapter all suggest that the problem (evil) is that creation refuses to be God’s creation, refuses to honor God as God. Thus both the world and God are denied their rightful place. According to Paul, in Romans 1:25, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator…” The prophet, Jeremiah (2:11) has God saying, “Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they [the things people worship] are not gods at all.) But my people have exchanged their Glory (Me) for worthless idols.” Then the prophet Hosea (4:7) writes for God: “The more the priests increased, the more they sinned against me; they exchanged their Glory (Me) for something disgraceful.”

This seems to reveal the essence of sin: not worshipping God as God. But still we are left wondering about the origin of sin. From where could it have come? Jurgen Moltmann writes of a Jewish interpretation that asks why God created man and woman at all, knowing as he must have, that they were going to cause him much grief and pain. (We’ve probably asked ourselves that question more than once regarding our own kids!) But the flood story, Moltmann believes, provides this elusive answer. The narrative tells us specifically that God “grieved”, and that he “repented”; meaning he was sorry for what he had done. In other words, God made a mistake, and it was so egregious that he decided to wipe the whole thing out! I’ll bet you’ve done that too; you created something and didn’t like it, so you destroyed it. I know I have sat for hours working on a paragraph, read and re-read it, and then said, “Nah!” and hit the delete key. In fact, I don’t even think about the time I spent; I just know it isn’t what I wanted—it doesn’t measure up—so out it goes. I made it so I have the right to get rid of it. Or as Bill Cosby said to his teenage son, “I brought you into this world and I can take you out!”

So since I have found no other answer, could it be that the origin of sin is God—who made a mistake? Does my own search for the origin of sin and maybe yours as well, culminate with the insightful words of C. S. Lewis: “I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer.”

But there is another way of thinking that is a little more traditional. In The Interpreter’s Bible we find a quotation from Ecclesiasticus (“The Wisdom of Jesus, son of Sirach”). (Ecclesiasticus, or Sirach, is a book in the Apocrypha which is a collection of books included in almost all Christian Bibles throughout the world except Protestant Bibles.) Ecclesiasticus 15:14 says, “He (God) himself made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his [own] counsel [or ‘imagination’].” According to The Interpreter’s Bible, “This verse is part of…Sirach’s explanation of the presence of moral evil in God’s creation. Its origin is within man…” Evil, then, would be a product of our own imaginations which are corrupted by our failure to acknowledge God as God. I think it would be wise now to leave you with those thoughts since I see some of you about to go into cardiac arrest. Remember, though, that I never committed myself as your teacher to sweet platitudes. If I can’t cause you to think, I have failed. But if you silently refuse to think, you have failed!

As with almost all of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament), this story has at least two authors, or sources. They are called “J” and “P”; one (“J”), refers to God as Yahweh (our Jehovah) and is the earlier tradition; the other, (“P”), was written later by priests. I only bring this up because we will see in chapter six that the flood story is told twice, as was the creation story. Rather than omit one tradition, the chroniclers included both.

It is important, too, to know when these stories were put together. We are accustomed to seeing an event happening anywhere in the world immediately on television and then reading about it the next morning in the newspapers. The flood story didn't happen that way. There was no reporter embedded in the ark! The flood supposedly happened centuries before it was written about, and what we have is not even the first written account. So no, it wasn’t a first hand account by a member of the Noah family after the ark landed; and no, Moses probably didn’t write it later as was (and still is) thought by many. It was almost certainly written as we now read it during the dark days of the Babylonian captivity, sometime in the sixth century B.C. What is important, though, is the hope it offers in the face of the seeming disappearance of God. The Hebrews felt abandoned and vulnerable because of their displacement, by being enslaved, and by the destruction of the Temple which, for them, was their “refuge”, the place where God lived—God’s own house. I mean if God couldn’t defend his own house, why not find a God who could. Thus was the temptation—thus is the temptation. In modern vernacular that might sound like this: “If God can’t help me get what I want, I will resort to the money God (to which I have access) or the power God (to which I do as well!”)

Now let's spend some time on verses five through eight. These are the operative verses if we are to glean information helpful to us as we live today.

(These verses, five through eight, come from the “J” version) 5) The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The KJV renders it thus, “and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”. Our imagination, someone once said, is our creativity. It seems less than likely that God gave us a creative imagination and then curtailed it. We either have imagination or we don’t. There is no half-imagination. So maybe man did create evil, using his God-given imagination. But then we come to verse 6:
6) “The Lord was grieved” (KJV: “And it repented the Lord”, or it saddened him; made him sorry), that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.” This passage, saying, ‘The Lord was grieved’ and, ‘his heart was filled with pain’ instantly grips us in solidarity with God. It owes this pathos, its emotive power to identify, to what is called anthropological characterization. ‘Anthropological’ means describing something, in this case God, in human terms; he was ‘grieved’, ‘was sorry’, ‘filled with pain’; he even has a heart. And how else are we to know God? He gave us no other receptors than human ones. Or did he? We can hardly speak of the indwelling Holy Spirit as human, can we?
Anyway, to Moltmann this “grieving”, necessitating “repentance” is seen as a conflict within God himself. You say, “Come on Phil, a conflict within God?” Let me ask you this: is it any different than Jesus, God on the cross, crying to God, the God in heaven, “Why have you forsaken me?” God forsaking God? How can we understand this except as a conflict within God himself? We are reading today from an Old Testament expression of God’s suffering that will eventually take on human qualities as it is lived out on the cross. The bottom line, though, seems to be that when we sin, God suffers—thus, “the suffering servant”. That is why, when we hurt one another, it is to God that we must first confess and repent; not to our victim. This, “Well if I’ve hurt you I’m sorry” quasi apology won’t do. Only under the aegis of God’s forgiveness can we approach our victims honestly with genuine repentance.
7) So the Lord said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved (KJV: “it repenteth me”) that I have made them." Why the animals, birds and creatures? Aren’t they innocent victims? Maybe. But we must accept that when we choose to foul our nest, we aren’t the only ones who suffer. The innocent suffer too. And if there are ‘innocent victims’ (and there is a large body of theological and philosophical writing saying they don’t, in fact, exist), they are our responsibility, not God’s. William Sloan Coffin says it best: “So when in anguish over…human violence done to innocent victims, we ask of God, ‘How could you let that happen?’ It’s well to remember that God at that very moment is asking the exact same question of us.”
8) But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
“But”… will God’s mercy triumph over his justice?