Living Wisdom for a New Normal - Session 3

God the Liberator, and We the … Willing to be Liberated?

 

Reading The Story (Exodus to Deuteronomy):

Now that we have come to see that in this life we live inexorably in covenant with God because God is determined to live in covenant with us, we pick up the story of the people of Israel through whom we learn – and grow into – this reality.

 

For better and worse the people of Israel become embedded in Egypt.  Better: as a family and a people, in Egypt they survive the drought that decimates their land, and find a home where they prosper.  Worse: as they prosper, the Egyptians begin to hate them, dis-empower them, and adopt a genocidal policy of ordering Egyptian mid-wives to kill baby boys born to Hebrew women.

The mid-wives disobey.  One baby boy in particular is secretly adopted into the pharaoh’s household.  He is named Moses, who as he grows up rises to a place of authority in the Egyptian imperial service.  

In his work he sees his people suffer, and one day sees an Egyptian supervisor beat a Hebrew slave to death.  Moses kills the Egyptian officer, the king hears of it, and Moses flees Egypt to the Sinai wilderness and the land of Midian.  He gets a job as a shepherd, and settles down there.  The end?

The Hebrew people, still in slavery in Egypt, start crying out for help.  Their cry goes up to God, God remembers his old promise to their ancestor Abraham, and God opens his heart to them. 

One day out in the wilderness Moses sees something curious – a bush on fire, not burning up.  He goes to see it and hears the voice of God coming from it.  “I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  I have seen the people’s distress and heard their cry; I will save them.  I will free them from Egypt and lead them to a good place.  You will go to the pharaoh, tell him to let the people go, and lead the people out of Egypt through the wilderness to the promised land.”

Moses very reluctantly agrees.  Back in Egypt he has a hard time convincing the pharaoh to let the people go – which the pharaoh agrees to only after God through Moses sends ten plagues upon the Egyptians. 

Moses also has a hard time convincing the people to go – to cross through the Red Sea, overcome their fear of Egyptian power, enter the wilderness, and trust God to lead them and feed them as they need.  Many times the people are ready to go back to Egypt; at least there they knew their place and were fed.  Even Moses is ready at times to give up in fear that God will leave him to lead the people by himself, and Moses forces God to give him clear signs of his commitment to stay with them. 

God and Moses persevere in helping the people leave Egypt behind and commit to the journey to the promised land.  At Mt Sinai – God’s mountain in the wilderness, they are given Ten Commandments as a foundation for a way of life more open and loving to God and to other people than any way of life they had seen or experienced in Egypt.  Along the way there is lots of other instruction about how to liver well in their new home – laws for worshipping God, respecting the rights and property of others, curtailing greed, and being open to outsiders and marginalized people of all kinds.  It’s a blueprint for a new normal meant to set them apart in the world as a new kind of people with a new and good way of living on Earth.  The end?

Having a Conversation:

1. About the story

The story of the exodus (escaping from enslavement, and journeying through the wilderness to the promised land) is the foundational story / experience that more than anything else constantly shapes the Hebrew people’s sense of themselves, God, and what it means to be God’s people.

In conversation we saw it as a hopeful story with its vision of the promised land and God helping Moses to lead the people there and teach them need to learn along the way.  And we saw it as a hard – maybe almost hopeless story – because … forty years!?  That ‘s a long time to be on the way and learning hard lessons.  We were not sure hoe we would handle having to commit to that.

2. About the people called to let themselves be liberated

One possible focus of conversation we kind of ignored – or avoided – is the question of enslavement:

·        - how it happened that Egypt, at first the people’s salvation and a comfortable place to be, ends up enslaving them and turning them into a far lesser people than they are meant to be

·        - how and why it is hard for them to commit to liberation, and to break the ties and attachment they have to their captors and their own enslavement

·        - how this resonates with us today

Perhaps we know all this well enough already?  And wanted to talk about something more hopeful?  Something less regrettable than attachment to enslavement? 

Maybe the question of who is a true and good leader is a more live question and concern today?

3. About Moses who led the people out of enslavement and into a journey of liberation

Much of the conversation was about Moses and the authority of a leader like him:

·        - How does he know what is true and what is illusion along the way?  Is his sense of authority and his proof of what is true, internal in his own spirit, or external in signs and proofs?

·        - In his prayer / conversations with God, does Moses ask God to prove himself according to  Moses’ criteria?  Or does Moses let himself be changed by God, and have particular parts of his own spirit affirmed and strengthened by contact with God? 

·        - In his life Moses is familiar with both the Hebrew and the Egyptian experience; at times he is also rejected and unwanted by both the Egyptian and the Hebrew.  How is this significant in his being able to envision and lead the way towards liberation?

·        - Are there any Moses’s around us today – or ahead of us, calling us to follow to freedom?  How do we know them?  How do we know the voice and vision of true liberation?

·        - Does Moses ever claim to really know God in a thorough, secure way?  Or is Moses’ knowledge of God always a bit insecure, partial, full of doubt?  (Note how God refuses right from the start [Ex 3:13-14] to give a clear name that would give Moses the power to control God; how Moses has feelings and times of deep doubt and anxiety all along; and how when he asks to see God, is allowed not to see God’s face but only God’s back [Ex 33:12-23] …and somehow this partiality of knowledge is not only enough, but maybe exactly what is needed for him to be the leader and liberator he is.)

Jesus ... friend of the poor ... new norm for a new normal (Sun, Nov 22, 2020)

Sunday was Reign of Christ Sunday (or Christ the King Sunday), a recent addition to the Christian calendar.  It was instituted by the Roman Catholic Church in 1925 to try to stem the rising tide of nationalism and secularism, by focusing the attention of Christians on the kingdom of God instead of our own, potentially more idolatrous kingdoms.

The idea of Christ as King is not new.  Jesus talked about the coming of the kingdom of God, and all through the Gospels people ask when and how he will become King, what place they will have in the kingdom, and what will happen to those who opposed his kingship.

In today’s reading near the end of the Gospel of Matthew, it sounds like Jesus is saying, “Okay.  You want to know about the kingdom?  You imagine me coming on clouds of glory, with power to usher in God’s kingdom on all the Earth?  Okay … here’s how to picture it …if you really must know … and really you should.” 

Scripture reading:  Matthew 25:31-46 

“When the Son of Man [the servant of God at the end of the age, an image they all understood, it was part of their worldview] comes, and all his angels with him, to sit on the throne and judge all the Earth – [again what they expected would happen, and how it would happen] – he will divide the peoples and the nations of Earth into two groups…”

Ah yes, we love “two groups,” don’t we?  I imagine Jesus’ disciples’ eyes lighting up – yes! At last we’ll see it, and find out which of us makes the cut.  I imagine the Pharisees standing nearby, thinking – hoping – that now at last Jesus will have to fess up and say that – yes, in spite of all his arguments with them – when it really comes down top it in the crunch, really all their strict moralism and ritual purity will count for something at the end – will count in their favour.

And the other folks there?  The poor, the outcast, the lepers who always seemed to follow Jesus, standing around the edge of the crowd?  I wonder if from where they’re standing, they feel hopeful about anything at all in the picture Jesus is about to paint.

“He will put the righteous people at his right hand …,” Jesus goes on to see [Yes!  Little fist pump on the part of the Pharisees] … “and the others at his left [Shoot!  I just knew it, the lepers and sinners and ne’er-do-well’s mutter; when nit come down to the crunch, that’s how it always turns out].

“Then the king will say to those on his right – the place of favour – ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, come in to enjoy the kingdom prepared before the creation of the world, because … [oh yes, here will come the recitation of our high moral standing, the Pharisees think!] … because when I was hungry and thirsty, you fed me and gave me drink; when I was a stranger and homeless, you welcomed me in; naked, you clothed me; sick, you took care of me; and in prison, you visited me.”

What?  What are you talking about, the Pharisees wonder?  I don’t remember … when did I … when did we ever see you in any way like that, and do that for you?  If we had, we would have.  But we didn’t … so we didn’t.

“ ‘Well, the king will reply,’ Jesus says, “whenever you did it for one of the least of my brothers and sisters” – [nodding his head maybe to folks at the edge of the crowd] – “you did it for me.”

And as all eyes shift to the poor, and the outcast and the sinners at the outside of the circle, it slowly dawns on folks to wonder what right and left side they’re looking at – is it “their right” or “his right” that is the right-hand crowd in the kingdom.  We sometimes get that confused.  And backward.

“And then the king will say to those on his left” – [those who maybe thought they were in the right] – “Go away!  Go to whatever is prepared for the devil and his angels.  Because all that stuff I said about the folks on my right hand?  What they did and how they loved me and cared for me in the least of my brothers and sisters?  You did none of it.”

But … we really tried to be good.  We were good people – the good guys.  We did all the right things.  Kept ourselves pure.  Punished sin.  Preached morality.  Excluded the unrighteous.  Taught the law, commandment by commandment.

“ ‘Yes, you did,’ the king replies,” says Jesus, “’and whenever you did not show simple, straightforward, heart-felt, self-giving love to the least of my brothers and sisters, you did not show it to me.  It was you – not me—who made the choice.’”

Meditation 

Before the reading, a song that Karen sang in our online worship was “This is the day that God has made! Rejoice, and be exceeding glad!”

Maybe this is the day.  Maybe any day – every day – is a day he appears, sitting on the throne – or somewhere -- to judge and divide people and nations into right- and left-hand camps.  On one hand, those welcomed by God into the kingdom of blessing and joy prepared from before creation began, and the others let go to something else.

There was one day earlier this week, that may have been one of those days for me.

For a few days Japhia was suffering increasing nausea – a flare-up of a chronic disorder she’s suffered for a number of years and that’s led to some extended hospitalizations.  Over the weekend and into Monday we did what we could at home to turn things around, but by Monday afternoon – around 3:00 or 3:30 it was so bad we called an ambulance and she went in to the ER for whatever treatment and assessment they would do there.

As the ambulance pulled away and I stayed behind – with COVID-19 no visitors are allowed in the ER, I felt distraught, exhausted, lonely, powerless.  Back in the house I tried to focus, get my bearings, feel some solid ground under my feet again, and wait.

Have you ever felt like that lately?  Alone, anxious, and powerless?  Waiting for something good to happen, having no way of making it happen, and not even knowing if it can?

 

A few minutes later – maybe 10 or 15 – a text appeared on my phone.  “Is it okay if we come over to hang out?  We have a viewing and have to be out for a couple of hours.”

It was from Japhia’s daughter.  She, her husband, and their two kids are trying to sell their home, and they needed a place to be for a couple of hours – not an easy thing to find on a cold day in the midst of a pandemic with not many other family with space to offer within easy driving distance.

We’re only a few minutes’ drive away.  But I texted back, “Sorry. Not up for company right now.”  No room right now in the inn.

Later I relented.  Repented of my habit of withdrawal and isolation in times of stress and anxiety.  I considered their need for a comfortable place to hang out.  How we easily could have handled it safely with a park and a playground just two doors down.

Considered too that welcoming them in and helping them out was probably good for me at that point.  It would stretch me a bit, and be just what the doctor ordered.  Just what the king was offering my broken and sorrowful and lonely soul as a way to be revived in meeting the needs of others.

I texted back – an hour or more later, and said come on over if it would still be helpful.

But later was too late. They’d already found other places to be.  Were getting on with life and having a good time.  I didn’t hear back from them.

 

It’s easy these days to be despondent about where we are in the pandemic.  To be depressed about being restricted again with Christmas coming on.  To be angry at COVID-19, angry at confusing government directions, angry at people whose carelessness or selfishness seem to make the rest of us suffer.  To get lost and morose in our powerlessness.

Here at Fifty, for instance – and probably it’s the same in most other churches – we can’t have a Christmas Eve service in our sanctuary.  We won’t be preparing and serving our annual second-Sunday-in-December dinner at the Wesley Centre.  Nor collecting and carting down a carload of gifts and donations for the Wesley Urban Ministries Holiday Store.

At home, we can’t have the big family get-togethers.  We might not see Grandma or Grandpa if they’re in a long-term care home.  Can’t invite the neighbours over.  Can’t enjoy the crush and rush of packed Christmas shopping.

It seems we’re having to give up Christmas.  It’s being taken from us. The Grinch has won, and we won’t be celebrating the coming of Jesus, the Christ, to be among us – at least not as we’re used to.

But I wonder … if the restrictions that we’re being asked to accept, are themselves a kind of Christmas gift we’re being asked to offer each other this year because of the pandemic.  That wearing a mask, staying distant and restricting our contacts is one way of saying to family, friend and stranger, “I love you.  I want you to be well.  I’ll keep my distance and let you feel safe from whatever you may fear from me.  Merry Christmas!”

Strange gift, wrapped in a mask and offered at a 2-meter distance.  But this year maybe one of the more meaningful ways we can share the good news of “peace on earth and good will to all whom God loves.”

And then of course, just as we begin to accept the situation, and maybe start to sink into a malaise of isolation as the best there can be, there is still also the text on the phone, the knock on the door, the tug on the heart strings, the call to our spirit that may be just what the doctor has ordered – what the king might also be sending as a way most needed this year into the kingdom of blessing, the kingdom of love and joy together with others – especially with others of his brothers and sisters who are less, and have less than we do.

Food bank usage is up across the region.  I’m told the Grimsby Benevolent Fund Store and their community services are busier than ever.  Hunger, loneliness and depression are on the rise.  As are opioid use, and abuse and violence within homes and families.

And I can’t begin to tell you what kinds of needs speak to you, or what kinds of responses are yours to act out.  Each of us has our own way of feeling the lure of the Christ when he comes to us in our own time of brokenness, in the company and maybe in the guise of others of his brothers and sisters broken in other ways than us.  And each of us has our own ways and means of responding –our own way of opening our door, opening our heart and our hands, opening time in our schedule, opening our wallet.

Because really isn’t that what a Judge who was born among the poor and lowly, who walked and ate all his life with sinners, who lifted up the poor and welcomed the excluded, and who died between unwanted thieves is looking for – and wanting to lift up, and celebrate, and give his blessing to—among the peoples and nations of the world?

Is it too early to wish you a blessed Christmas?  And to pray you have chances to receive and to care for the King in whatever way he reaches out to you through the least of the others he may want you to meet? 

 

Closing prayer

Loving and holy One, 

for coming and showing us

the way of your kingdom’s coming,

we give you thanks.

 

For the poor and the homeless,

for the hungry and thirsty,

for the naked and the abandoned,

for the sorrowing and dying,

for the oppressed and imprisoned,

for the beaten and abused,

for the fearful  … we pray

 

And for the ways you invite each of us

in your own way,

and in our own ways

to reach out  … to open up …

and to enter in with you and with others to the joy of your kingdom

we give you thanks.    

Amen.

 

 

Still Crazy (or kickin'? or here? or whatever?) after all these years (Sunday, Nov 20, 2020)

 Anniversary Sunday at Fifty United Church (Nov, 15, 2020) 

Introduction 

Anniversary Sunday at Fifty is always the third Sunday in November, to mark the purchase on Nov 20, 1820 of title to the land on which our church is built.

Even though we hold title, we acknowledge this church is built on land that was the traditional territory of the Anishinabewaki, the Attiwonderon, and the Haudenosaunee peoples.  This land was ceded to the British Crown in 1792 by Treaty Three with the Mississauga Nation as part of the Between-the-Lakes Purchase. 

We remember the First Nations who were here centuries before our arrival, the ways they cared for the land, and they way they used it respectfully for the good of all.  We give thanks for them, confess our part in their sorrows, and feel both call and desire to learn to be as brothers and sisters with them in this land and in God’s good will.

 

 Scripture reading:  Psalm 122

This week I was imagining the gathering of Fifty Church on Nov 18, 1821 right here to worship God on the first anniversary of their purchase of title to this lot.  How happy they must have been.  And tired.  And hopeful.

Do you think there was a luncheon after worship?  All the community was probably invited.

And in worship, what text might have been read?  What would the sermon that day be about?  Maybe this … Psalm 122:

 I was glad when they said to me,
    “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
Our feet are standing
    within your gates, O Jerusalem.

Jerusalem—built as a city
    that is bound firmly together.
To it the tribes of the Lord go up,
    …to give thanks to the name of the Lord.
For there the thrones for judgment are set up,
    the thrones of the house of David.

 

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
    “May they prosper who love you.
Peace be within your walls,
    and security within your towers.”
For the sake of all my family and companions
    I will say, “Peace be within you.”
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
    I will seek your good.

Meditation 

What a day Nov 18, 1821 must have been.  Almost as wonderful as Nov 20 the year before when the papers were signed and title to the land was officially handed over.

This group of settlers had arrived in the area only 25 years earlier – a band of United Empire Loyalists fleeing what seemed to them the deteriorating situation in the newly formed United States of America.  They had backed the wrong side in the War of Independence, lost all they had and were no longer welcome there.  So, in the 1790’s they fled north and some came to the west shore of Lake Ontario to settle on land only a few years earlier ceded to the British Crown in a treaty with the Mississauga Nation – part of the Between the Lakes Purchase. 

It was good land.  The families started clearing and ploughing it, sowing crops and building homes, and putting down roots.  Community began to form.  Methodist circuit riders made the rounds of the area, and in 1796 a group of families began meeting at the Fifty – beside Fifty Creek – for worship and Christian education.  They met in homes, in the open, maybe sometimes in a barn, until 25 years later they were meeting on this land purchased for this purpose.

Why did they do it?

I can think of a few reasons.

Having a church – or any religious gathering place – as part of your community, and religion as part of your life is something people do.  It’s part of being human.  Being a human being means being in touch with, and in relationship with the divine that is at one and the same time beyond us and part of us.

Isn’t that one of the reasons you’re watching this service today?  Even when we can’t meet in person in real time together in a building, there’s something in us that wants to connect, and be connected with a Higher Power, with the Mystery beyond us that holds all life together in love, with God.

We do it in part in a magic kind of way – like an amulet or a charm we might carry, to do what we can to ensure God’s special blessing on us, on our families and on our community – especially in times of transition and change, in times of uncertainty, anxiety and unknowing.  The Loyalists who came here from the states to the south were entering a new normal as unknown and unsettling as the new normal we are facing and trying to guess at and find our way into today.  In a time like this you want something bigger, stronger and wiser than you are, on your side.

But it’s also just to have a good effect on where you are, on the community you are building, and on the life of the community you share with others around you.  It’s the salt of the earth and light of the world thing – to do what you can to bring God, God’s word of life and God’s Spirit of love to bear on the life of the place where you are.  And buying land to build a church on in the midst of the community was one way of helping to make that mission and that dream more real and a permanent part of the community’s life.

And Fifty certainly has been that – with the tradition of compassionate and wise civic leaders that have emerged from this congregation, the community-enhancing and healing projects that have taken place inside these walls, or after having been hatched in meetings inside the building have been taken out into the community, and in the ways the message preached here has inspired all kinds of enlightened mission and outreach to the world beyond.

When the people of Fifty bought this land in 1820, they planted a light in this community and made a place for it to shine that has not been lost, and has not dimmed over the years – over the centuries.  They were – and we are still – salt and light for the community around us.

The danger, of course, is that where there is light there is also shadow.  And when you become overly convinced of your own light -- and just your own light, you might just not see the light that is in and that comes through o thers.

One of the bitter fruits harvested almost right away from the Between the Lakes Purchase of 1792 was the Mohawk Institute built in Brantford just 36 years later in 1828 – 8 years after the purchase of this land by Fifty Church.  The school in Brantford was built by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England and the Parts Adjacent in America -- with what felt like the best of intentions at the time.  It was later turned over to the Anglican Church in Canada, and by the time it was closed in June 1970 it was the oldest continually operated Anglican residential school in the country.

The shadow of that endeavour was long.  It went deep into the souls of many people and communities – of the First Nations’ children and families whose lives were irrevocably touched and shaped by it, and of the settlers whose faith led them to create it and maintain it.

Which makes me glad, though, not sad that the Methodists of the Fifty bought this land, built a church here, and that it’s still here after all these years.

Because church, a church building and church worship is not just what we come to, to be blessed and to seek God’s special favour on our lives.  Nor is it just a place from which we try to shine a light into a darkened world, and reach out in love and for good – at least, we pray, for good – in the lives of others.

Church, a church building and church worship is also what we come to, to face our own shadow.  To find the courage to enter into it and own it.  To name our demons.  To confess our sins and shortcomings, both intentional and unintentional.

And through that to be led by God – by God’s Word both within and beyond us, by God’s Spirit both within and beyond us – to new life.  To new understandings.  To new ways of being and relating to others.  To a new normal.  To whatever the new normal is that we and the world need to find and help fashion together.

It’s good we’re here.  It’s good you can be connected by watching this service, and however else you connect with God for the unfolding of whatever new normal we need.

A new normal is what the Loyalist settlers were living towards when they came here in the 1790’s and bought this land for their church in 1820.

A new normal is what we’re looking for again in 2020 on so many levels and in so many areas.

It seems we may be “still crazy – or crazy again, or maybe just still kickin' – after all these years.”  At least we’re smart enough to be crazy together, and here together, and still kickin' together with the help of God.

Living Wisdom for a New (and any old) Normal

Session 3: The wisdom of covenants

It’s story-time.

Imagine a place where you liked to be – maybe when you were a child – when someone read you a story – a bed-time story, a fairy tale, a fantasy book, or a classic series.  Or maybe a place you like to be now, when you curl in to watch a movie you’ve been wanting to see, or even one you’ve seen 100 times and are happy to make it 101. 

Let that space gather around you and enfold you now, whether it’s snug in bed ready to sleep, curled into a big armchair by the fire, or even nestled as a little kid on a parent’s or grandparent’s lap looking at the pictures while they read the words …

… and let this story be the story this time.

The story of life on Earth (as told in The Book of Genesis)

Prelude:  The big picture (Genesis 1)

Once upon a time, all the powers of the cosmos were swirling around in great disorder like a big sea all at odds with itself.  And when it was time to begin, God began to breathe holy Spirit like a wind over the sea.  God began to speak Word to the sea.  Step by breathing and speaking step, God brought all the powers and forces that are, into good order.  In the great vastness of it all, God made Earth to be a place of harmoniously teeming, bursting life – plant, animal and every other kind of life.  And from among all the creatures, humanity was called forth to bear God’s imprint and to take responsibility for Earth.

And now … we turn to hear the story on the ground, and how things work out in real life (Genesis 2-50).

Chapter 1 -- Adam and Eve: The Garden Covenant (Genesis 2-6)

On Earth God plants a garden, places Adam and then Eve in it, and says, “This is the place I have made.  I have made it to provide all you need.  I will stay near, and we shall visit and walk and talk together in the cool of the evening.  And your job?  It's this:  take care of the Garden, tend it, keep it well, guard it.” 

It is a wonderful working relationship – a comfortable covenant for all concerned.

Until Adam and Eve begin stepping and reaching beyond the bounds of their place within it. 

In the Garden they reach out to taste of the knowledge of good and evil, to be wise in themselves.  Immediately this breaks their relationship of trust with God.  They feel shame and try to hide – even from themselves – but they are found out, and with innocence gone they find themselves thrust from the Garden and in the real world.

When their first child arrives, Eve is grateful to God but in a flash moves from gratitude to grasping, naming their son Cain, meaning “I have gotten a son.”  Another son comes and with the seed of possession and entitlement sown, when Cain one day isn’t affirmed as his brother is, jealousy sets in, rage grows, murder is committed, and banishment follows.  The family is broken, and only when Eve has her third son does she learn to stop at gratitude, naming him “Seth” meaning “I have been given.”

It is too late to undo what was done, though, and as their descendants spread over the Earth, generation after generation gives in more and more to the impulse and desire to be like super-beings doing whatever they want to, until …

 

Chapter Two – Noah and His Family: The Rescue-Boat Covenant (Genesis 6-11)

… by the time of the days of Noah, humanity is so wicked upon the face of Earth that God regrets ever having made them and putting them in charge.  God decides to send a Flood to drown and wash them all away – them and all the other creatures of the sixth day of creation, to start Earth over again without the scourge of humanity.

Except there is one man Noah, who is getting it right.  God invites Noah into his confidence, telling him to build a boat big enough for him, his wife, their three sons and their wives, and for enough of all the animals to start life over again after the Flood.

Noah builds the boat and gets his family and two of every animal on board.  God sends rain to flood the Earth long enough to drown and wash everyone and everything else away.   

When it is over Noah leads his family and the animals out to re-start everything in the way it is meant to be.  Noah gives thanks to God, and God – somewhat alarmed to see just how close he has come to obliterating all life on Earth – says he will never do that again.  It’s a new covenant: from now on, God vows, he will protect rather than risk Earth’s life, no matter what humanity does, and it is the job of Noah and his descendants now to help keep it all good.

Things look good.  Noah plants, including grapes.  When it’s time he harvests the grapes and makes wine.  He starts drinking.  And before long … ends up lying dead-drunk and naked in front of his sons.  Boundary violations and shame are once again -- and still -- part of the story.

Things go downhill – or rather up the steps – as humanity grows more and more grandiose until they are all working to build a great tower in the city of Babel, to reach up to the heavens so they can storm the courts of the gods and get all divine power into their hands.

God sees what humanity is doing.  God will not send another flood; God won’t break his promise.  So, creative spirit that God is, God mixes up the language the people are speaking, making it impossible for them to finish the tower together.  Frustrated in their scheme to be as gods, people scatter to all corners of the world and to their own little kingdoms.

And God, for his part, begins a new chapter …

 

Chapter Three – Abraham, Sarah and Family: The People of God Covenant (Genesis 12-50)

… in which God chooses one little family from among them all, to make a difference for good in the mess that humanity once again has brought upon Earth.

Abraham and Sarah are wanderers.  Abraham’s father was a wanderer who at one point packed up his family, left the big city of Ur – a centre of civilization – and took them to live in some far-off place.  So when God comes to Abraham and calls him to do much the same thing and go even farther, Abraham says yes. 

God says he will lead Abraham to a place to live (even though he can’t see it yet), will give him a great family (even though his wife Sarah is barren and they are old), and that through Abraham’s family God will bless and heal all the world (even though they’re leaving the world they have known).

Nonetheless, Abraham, his wife Sarah and their nephew Lot set off.

The way is not easy. 

When they get to the land God shows them, Lot takes all the best land for himself.  And in his self-centredness makes a mess of it. 

Abraham and Sarah start to doubt God’s promise of a family, but eventually God gives them a son, Isaac.  Isaac in turn, has two sons, Esau and Jacob.  Things are looking up.

But then Jacob, the younger son (and mom’s favourite) cheats Isaac out of his inheritance, takes off, spends a lifetime skating his way through questionable situations, and it takes decades for the two to be reconciled – only after Esau outlives his anger, and Jacob is broken of his spirit of entitlement.

Jacob goes on to have twelve sons.  God’s plan seems on track.  Except, like his mother did with him, Jacob favours the youngest of his sons, Joseph, sparking the jealousy of Joseph’s eleven brothers who sell him off to some slavers passing by, who take Joseph to Egypt and sell him as a slave to the pharaoh. 

Joseph, with God’s help though, is up to the challenge.  He rises through the ranks to become the pharaoh’s chief administrator of internal resources.  So when severe drought hits the land where Joseph’s father and brothers are still living – barely – he is able to arrange for them to emigrate to Egypt.  He sets them up in a new place, helps them be accepted, and they not only survive, they begin to thrive.

If this were a fairly tale, this would be where they all go on to live happily ever after. 

But this is not a fairy tale.  It's the story of how God calls humanity to care for Earth and help keep it good.  

So as the book ends and the sun sets on Joseph, his brothers, and their father Jacob, they realize they are doing okay but now are far from home – far from where God intends them to be.  And with no clear idea how they will get to the place God has for them in the world, to be the blessing God desires them to be for the world.

 

QUESTIONS:

About the story

What kind of story is this?  Sad?  Happy?  A tragedy?  A comedy?  Why?

Is it true to life?  Honest and real?  Helpful in understanding life and the world?

When you look at the three chapters to this story (caring for the garden; building an ark to rescue life as we've known it; and travelling to a place we don't know, to bear fruit in ways we can't imagine yet, to be a blessing to a world we're not even really part of), what chapter are we in right now at this moment of history?

About the characters

Are there any heroes?  Are there villains?  Why and how are they heroes or villains?

 

About the people: they all seem weak, temptable and distractable.  Not surprising, when you realize that – according to legend – when the Jewish rabbis and scholars discerned together what books of tradition belonged in the canon as Scripture, and which might be nice books to read but not to be regarded as Scripture, one of the criteria they used was that if any book had people in it “without dirty hands,” it could not be counted as Scripture.  It just wasn’t honest enough.

How does this affect our notion of “good people” and “bad people”?  

How does this affect our view of ourselves?

 

And about God: in the Genesis story God also is not “perfect.”  In the Flood chapter, for instance, there is an interesting moment when after the Flood is over and Earth begins to emerge from under the receding waters, all messy and muddy with all kinds of dead and decaying matter all around, and the story seems to picture God repenting of the decision to send the Flood, saying he will never do this again, that it came too close to ending everything, and that from that moment on he will maintain the life and life cycles of Earth no matter what humanity does.

How does this affect our image of God? 

Is this God more or less attractive?  Easier or harder to love and relate to?

 

And back to the idea of heroes: 

Given the interplay of humanity and God in this story, and the way both seem to learn and find “next steps” as the story unfolds, might it be that “the hero” of the story of life on Earth is neither humanity nor God, but the interplay, the relationship, the covenant that exists and is attended to, between them?

And that “the villain” of the story and of life on Earth is the times and ways when the covenant, the interplay, and the dialogue between humanity and God is broken, ignored or forgotten?

If so, what do we do with this understanding?

It’s suggested by some ethicists and moral philosophers that we choose constantly between two ways of deciding how to live, and of forming establishing personal identity and meaning:

•  covenantal or contractual interdependence, focused on finding meaning through accepting responsibility, and on establishing identity through and in relationship with others (other people, other creatures, past generations, future generations, earth itself – what the First Nations call “all my relations”) --  with the important question is,  “given my place in this system/structure/community/network of relationships today, what am I called and able to do for the well-being of all?
• personal desire, entitlement and actualization, focused on creating identity and proving worth in and through achievement, hierarchic success, accumulation and material or personal advancement – with the important question being “what do I want in life, and how can I achieve, earn or otherwise get it?”

How do the different characters in the story live out (or into) either of these ways? 

How do we live these out today?  What is the effect of either path – for us?  For others?  For Earth?

Within the covenantal path, what specific “relations” (of what the First Nations call “all their relations”) are important to include in our sense of responsibility today, in order to help life on Earth be and remain good?

Within the personal desire path, how do we measure success and define happiness or blessedness?

 

CLOSING THOUGHT

What’s one of your favourite stories (fairy tale, Bible story, story from another traditions, TV show, movie, song …)?  Why?

(As I thought about this, I realized that the movie-version trilogy of The Bourne series (Identity, Supremacy, Ultimatum) is a story I could watch any time anywhere at the drop of a hat – either just a few minutes, or the whole series at one go.  I guess that makes it one of “my stories.”

What about you?  What’s one of “your stories”?  And why?