THE FLOOD
Genesis 9, Sacrifice and Promise
HAMACO Lesson #5, 2/8/09
We ended last Sunday by reading that after Noah and his family disembarked, they sacrificed burnt offerings from the animals they brought off the ark. This was pleasing to God and he said, “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.” That was the end of the “J” version of the story. Today we will read the final part of the “P” story from chapter nine, verses one through fourteen.
In the concept we discussed at length last Sunday, God in his sorrow repented—in (Jurgen Moltmann’s wording), “for what he has apparently made wrongly”. God’s act of repentance was to destroy everything living on the earth. But as we read today, something other than destruction is happening. It isn’t intended to negate God’s sorrow or repentance, because that is our example to follow when we err, but to bind him with the promise that was best stated earlier in chapter 8, “But God remembered Noah…”? We said then that this was a verse of great importance; maybe the most meaningful verse in the whole saga; and what we read today explains and magnifies its meaning. Granted, that isn’t what we remember about the flood. We remember the ark itself; the animals boarding two by two; the faithfulness of Noah; the number of days it rained; God’s promise never again to destroy the earth, and maybe most vividly, the rainbow which we are told was the sign of God’s first covenant with humankind. I’ll resist the temptation to comment on these events because in essence they represent little more than the structure that supports what is of ultimate significance: that “God remembered Noah…” I don’t mean to imply that they aren’t important; I’m sure they are! But God’s remembering Noah is the deepest theological intention of the flood story. For God’s remembering is what continually fuels his covenant and, thus, our hope.
“But God remembered Noah…” Let’s look at just what that statement can mean for us. First of all, according to the flood story, we reasoning creatures who ask the meaning of our lives are given charge of and responsibility for the rest. There is no understanding why; we simply acknowledge that all is by God’s grace and that alone. Those who can’t accept that premise, and there are many, perhaps most, regard this story as little more than a child’s tale. Evidently such people existed then too or more would have taken seriously God’s grace and found shelter in the ark which is a metaphor for salvation. That humankind didn’t heed God’s warnings doesn’t mean he didn’t speak! Just that they chose not to hear. Sometimes we use deafness as an elective, a fatal one as the story reveals. That seems to have been common wisdom in the Old Testament. Proverbs 28:9 says, “If anyone turns a deaf ear to the law, even his prayers are detestable.” To turn a deaf ear is to choose not to hear God speaking, which, of course, dooms the possibility of our doing his will. Failure to hear and failure to “go thou and do likewise” makes prayer futile as witnessed by Noah’s neighbors.
Now let’s look at the second derivative of God’s remembering: as long as there is even one righteous person, God will be there to walk with him or her through “the valley of the shadow of death” as he was for Noah. I don’t use this beautiful phrase from the 23rd Psalm because most Christians dwell morbidly on death. I use it because it helps clarify this epic story of grace which has lived in all societies, through all generations, for as long as we can measure. It tells us that when we, individually, do face our own “valley of the shadow of death”, we can remember Noah’s story and be assured that nobody but God, and nothing but his fidelity is ultimately important. Christians believe that God never forgets the righteous; for “God remembered Noah”. We know, in Moltmann’s words that, “God suffers the world in its contradictions, and endures it in his long-suffering, instead of annihilating it” “…God remembered Noah”; this, is a promise available to all, but as each faces death, it is our own particular promise from the God in whom we trust.
Third, and for me best of all, there are new beginnings. Let’s play that “what if” game again. Take, for instance, all the interesting numbers in this story, the forty days of rain, animals boarding two by two, the 150 days that the whole earth was submerged, etc.; what if they are nothing other than parts of a word picture contrasting Noah’s righteousness with the curse of his neighbor’s violence and corruption? Looking at it this way relieves us from asking the question, “How could God do this to all these people?” So in my opinion, this is what the story intends. Otherwise, why, as I said earlier in the series did, “The narrative tell us nothing of the victims, other than that they had become violent and corrupted. 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.” Consequently, it isn’t likely they are the focus of the story. Rather this is a story about us; it is a story about God; and it is a story about grace and how it works its way out in the lives of all who believe. To paint this picture properly then, it was necessary to contrast righteousness with the consequence of its opposite—evil. Paul rightly said, “The wages of sin is death…” but in the flood story nobody says that, yet we actually see it acted out.
Reading these words, “But God remembered Noah…”, reminds us that two thousand years later a thief hung on a cross, rightly convicted of crimes he admitted. Dying, he turned in agony to Jesus who was hanging on a cross beside him and made a most humble request, and as it turns out, a saving one: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” For without hesitation “Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:42-43) Because God remembered Noah, he remembered that guilty thief, and he remembers we who are just as guilty. So we, too, are invited, like the thief to say “Jesus, remember me.”
More than interesting; it is of great comfort to observe that Noah, by virtue of what we know of his post-flood years, the thief on the cross, by virtue of his own admission of guilt, and even we, who are hardly innocent either, all have a deep need to be remembered. Some are more open to admitting it than others, but we all want desperately to be remembered. Presidents carefully construct and work to preserve their legacies. Doctors allow procedures they pioneer to be named after them; the wealthy give large amounts of money in order to have streets, parks, monuments and buildings named in their honor. And those of us who can’t do those things hope at least our children will remember us. And even our children want to be remembered—in the will!
But the passing of two or three generations, except on rare occasions, will wipe away all but an occasional fleeting curiosity about us, and in the end, all memory of us or what we did, or even who we were will pass—at least in this life. But God will remember, for he remembered Noah.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
THE FLOOD
Genesis 8, Dry Land Again, Now What
HAMACO Lesson #4, 2/1/09
Read Chapter 8 in sections (“J” and then “P”) as we did last week. “J” sections are vv 1-5 and 14-19. “P” sections are vv 6-13 and 20-22.
I want to use our lesson this week to clarify a seemingly preposterous statement I made during last week’s lesson. I think it is important that I explain it more thoroughly. That the statement was controversial (even shocking to some) and I didn’t take the time to explain myself fully was an error on my part. Hopefully there again will be time at the end for questions or comments.
I’ll re-read the verse in question now (6:6) and what I think it means. The text says, “The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.” Most other translations read, ‘The Lord was sorry’ or ‘it repenteth him’ instead of ‘The Lord was grieved’. The phrase, ‘It repenteth him’ means that it caused God to feel the need to repent for what he had done. All three, in fact, create a word picture of God looking at humankind grown evil, being sorry he had created them, and feeling the need to repent. They lead us to one of two inescapable inferences: either God made a mistake by creating us or he is showing us, through this story, what to do when we err! Just as when we realize we have made a mistake, God wished he hadn’t done it; he even tried to undo the damage by giving Noah 120 years to persuade us to change the way we live, but that didn’t work either. So again I will say that this phrase, exactly as it is written in the Bible, can mean only that the way humans evolved made God sorry and caused him to repent for creating them. Let me make some hopefully clarifying points about such language as this.
First, it is impossible to take these words, “was grieved”, “was sorry” and “it repenteth him”, literally, and come to any conclusion other than a mistake was made by the one who said he wanted to repent; and that was God, by his own admission. Certainly that is the meaning when we say, “I am sorry” or “I must repent”; we did something we wished we hadn’t done. So why would those same words, in the Bible and attributed to God, mean something different? Probably, the answer is that all of our lives we have been conditioned to assign to God superlative powers by saying things like, “God can do anything”. But if descriptions like “God can do anything” are right, why can’t he make a mistake if he wants to? My point is there are infinitely more questions about God than there are answers. For his ways aren’t our ways, as he plainly told us so often.
Secondly, there are three descriptions of God that are often used by Christian thinkers and writers. He is omnipotent, which means he is all-powerful and can do anything; he is omniscient, meaning he knows everything, present, past and future; and he is omnipresent, which means he is everywhere at all times throughout time as we know it. While well meaning, any attempt to describe God, even in such consummate terms, is a mistake. They just don’t do him justice. God is much more that we can describe.
So what is the point? Oftentimes we must simply accept or believe what we don’t understand. Either we must sometimes accept as true what we cannot yet believe; (Remember the old Negro spiritual, “Further Along” that says, “We’ll understand it, all bye and bye?”); or we must believe what we just can’t accept. There is a great line in Mitch Albom’s popular book Tuesdays with Morrie, where He writes, “Sometimes you cannot believe what you see; you have to believe what you feel.” In Mark, chapter nine, a father brings his son to Jesus to be healed of seizures. Humbly and deferentially the father says to Jesus, “But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” ‘If you can’?” said Jesus. "Everything is possible for him who believes." Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, “I do believe; help thou my unbelief!” That father, due to no other virtue than his humility, hit upon something we latter day sophisticates often don’t understand. We just can’t know much about God; so he asks us to believe.
A third insight: the author of one of the truly great Bible commentaries, William Barclay, once wrote, “If a man wishes to teach people about things they do not understand, he must begin from things which they do understand.” Let’s see if this was God’s modus operandi in this story. I don’t know about you, but if there is anything I fully understand, it is about making mistakes. I’ve made some grievous ones! So how could this story help me with that? Let’s play a game, one we’ve all played before. Let’s play “What if”.
What if God just made up the story of a flood (and obviously it came from somewhere); and what if the story shows God taking ultimate responsibility for the problem (as it does); and what if he does this despite the fact that it wasn’t really him, but humankind that fouled things up (if you remember, he did say we had become violent and corrupted); and what if we today, reading the story, paint ourselves into it, and as participants, up on the stage so to speak, we see more clearly God confessing that he made the mistake, that he is sorry, and that he needs to repent?
This is hardly an uncommon occurrence. For instance, have you ever been in a situation where a mistake has been made and it could be your fault but it also could be the other person’s fault? The question, then, is who is going to get the blame. So you get all tense and defensive, but just as you’ve mentally formed your best argument, the other person quickly says, “I’m sorry; I was wrong. Please forgive me”. Most of us would feel a little embarrassment and quickly say, “No, it was my mistake. I’m the one who should be sorry.” What we don’t say is, “Well, you should be sorry”; it was your mistake.” We, as Christians, try to be more gracious than that. And where do you think the grace exhibited by both parties in this scenario comes from? When God wishes to teach people about things they do not understand (like grace), he, too, begins from things they do understand, like this story of a killing flood.
And finally, does this not show us that the only one we can change is ourself. Obviously, that was the conclusion God came to. Others may change, but only if that is their desire; not because we’ve preached down to them (my mother used to say, ‘browbeat), or criticized and blamed them for the mistakes they made.
But let’s pursue further this seeming conclusion by God that the only one he could change was himself. This is important because it adds something to the story in addition to what I said in the first lesson: “This isn’t a story about a flood. It is a story about us.” Now consider the possibility that the story isn’t even about us as much as it is about God himself. Could it be that the flood changes God; that he changes his ways after the flood? Let’s re-read verse twenty-one. “The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.” This seems to contradict the writer of Hebrews who says (in 13:8): “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” If we take this story seriously, it clearly states that God changed.
Or maybe it says the way we perceive God can change with the flood story.
Genesis 8, Dry Land Again, Now What
HAMACO Lesson #4, 2/1/09
Read Chapter 8 in sections (“J” and then “P”) as we did last week. “J” sections are vv 1-5 and 14-19. “P” sections are vv 6-13 and 20-22.
I want to use our lesson this week to clarify a seemingly preposterous statement I made during last week’s lesson. I think it is important that I explain it more thoroughly. That the statement was controversial (even shocking to some) and I didn’t take the time to explain myself fully was an error on my part. Hopefully there again will be time at the end for questions or comments.
I’ll re-read the verse in question now (6:6) and what I think it means. The text says, “The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.” Most other translations read, ‘The Lord was sorry’ or ‘it repenteth him’ instead of ‘The Lord was grieved’. The phrase, ‘It repenteth him’ means that it caused God to feel the need to repent for what he had done. All three, in fact, create a word picture of God looking at humankind grown evil, being sorry he had created them, and feeling the need to repent. They lead us to one of two inescapable inferences: either God made a mistake by creating us or he is showing us, through this story, what to do when we err! Just as when we realize we have made a mistake, God wished he hadn’t done it; he even tried to undo the damage by giving Noah 120 years to persuade us to change the way we live, but that didn’t work either. So again I will say that this phrase, exactly as it is written in the Bible, can mean only that the way humans evolved made God sorry and caused him to repent for creating them. Let me make some hopefully clarifying points about such language as this.
First, it is impossible to take these words, “was grieved”, “was sorry” and “it repenteth him”, literally, and come to any conclusion other than a mistake was made by the one who said he wanted to repent; and that was God, by his own admission. Certainly that is the meaning when we say, “I am sorry” or “I must repent”; we did something we wished we hadn’t done. So why would those same words, in the Bible and attributed to God, mean something different? Probably, the answer is that all of our lives we have been conditioned to assign to God superlative powers by saying things like, “God can do anything”. But if descriptions like “God can do anything” are right, why can’t he make a mistake if he wants to? My point is there are infinitely more questions about God than there are answers. For his ways aren’t our ways, as he plainly told us so often.
Secondly, there are three descriptions of God that are often used by Christian thinkers and writers. He is omnipotent, which means he is all-powerful and can do anything; he is omniscient, meaning he knows everything, present, past and future; and he is omnipresent, which means he is everywhere at all times throughout time as we know it. While well meaning, any attempt to describe God, even in such consummate terms, is a mistake. They just don’t do him justice. God is much more that we can describe.
So what is the point? Oftentimes we must simply accept or believe what we don’t understand. Either we must sometimes accept as true what we cannot yet believe; (Remember the old Negro spiritual, “Further Along” that says, “We’ll understand it, all bye and bye?”); or we must believe what we just can’t accept. There is a great line in Mitch Albom’s popular book Tuesdays with Morrie, where He writes, “Sometimes you cannot believe what you see; you have to believe what you feel.” In Mark, chapter nine, a father brings his son to Jesus to be healed of seizures. Humbly and deferentially the father says to Jesus, “But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” ‘If you can’?” said Jesus. "Everything is possible for him who believes." Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, “I do believe; help thou my unbelief!” That father, due to no other virtue than his humility, hit upon something we latter day sophisticates often don’t understand. We just can’t know much about God; so he asks us to believe.
A third insight: the author of one of the truly great Bible commentaries, William Barclay, once wrote, “If a man wishes to teach people about things they do not understand, he must begin from things which they do understand.” Let’s see if this was God’s modus operandi in this story. I don’t know about you, but if there is anything I fully understand, it is about making mistakes. I’ve made some grievous ones! So how could this story help me with that? Let’s play a game, one we’ve all played before. Let’s play “What if”.
What if God just made up the story of a flood (and obviously it came from somewhere); and what if the story shows God taking ultimate responsibility for the problem (as it does); and what if he does this despite the fact that it wasn’t really him, but humankind that fouled things up (if you remember, he did say we had become violent and corrupted); and what if we today, reading the story, paint ourselves into it, and as participants, up on the stage so to speak, we see more clearly God confessing that he made the mistake, that he is sorry, and that he needs to repent?
This is hardly an uncommon occurrence. For instance, have you ever been in a situation where a mistake has been made and it could be your fault but it also could be the other person’s fault? The question, then, is who is going to get the blame. So you get all tense and defensive, but just as you’ve mentally formed your best argument, the other person quickly says, “I’m sorry; I was wrong. Please forgive me”. Most of us would feel a little embarrassment and quickly say, “No, it was my mistake. I’m the one who should be sorry.” What we don’t say is, “Well, you should be sorry”; it was your mistake.” We, as Christians, try to be more gracious than that. And where do you think the grace exhibited by both parties in this scenario comes from? When God wishes to teach people about things they do not understand (like grace), he, too, begins from things they do understand, like this story of a killing flood.
And finally, does this not show us that the only one we can change is ourself. Obviously, that was the conclusion God came to. Others may change, but only if that is their desire; not because we’ve preached down to them (my mother used to say, ‘browbeat), or criticized and blamed them for the mistakes they made.
But let’s pursue further this seeming conclusion by God that the only one he could change was himself. This is important because it adds something to the story in addition to what I said in the first lesson: “This isn’t a story about a flood. It is a story about us.” Now consider the possibility that the story isn’t even about us as much as it is about God himself. Could it be that the flood changes God; that he changes his ways after the flood? Let’s re-read verse twenty-one. “The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.” This seems to contradict the writer of Hebrews who says (in 13:8): “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” If we take this story seriously, it clearly states that God changed.
Or maybe it says the way we perceive God can change with the flood story.
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