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.
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?
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