I madly said I’d write a Monday blog on Genesis throughout Bible Month. I’ve no commentaries and no Bible and I’m writing this on a bus shaking me about as the driver speeds along country lanes near Skelton on Ure! So here goes for a first try.
A weekly theology blog written by Methodist theologians last week had Tom Stuckey, former President of Conference challenge us that we need to rediscover the mercy and grace of God and put it back at the heart of our programme. It seems to me the first chapters of Genesis (and maybe the whole of Scripture) are about the goodness of a creator and the human tendency to make a mess of everything but the grace of the creator cannot quite let us go. As the old hymn said “who is a pardoning God like thee, and who has grace so rich and free?” We never sing that now! Hymns and Psalms number 38. I think!
The bridge over the river by the racecourse in Ripon on the Boroughbridge Road is very narrow. The sign says “give way to vehicles leaving the bridge.” What happens? People push, ignore the sign, want to do other than the guidelines suggest.
There are, of course, two accounts of creation in Genesis. In Genesis 1 God creates a perfect world in six periods of time and on the seventh day he rests. Behold, it was very good. In Genesis 2 God puts a man and a woman into the world, into the paradise of a garden we can only begin to imagine how wonderful it all was. But here begins the problem… he gives us freedom, he gives us responsibility (look after the world) and he gives us boundaries (you can have all of this but not that fruit on that tree over there…)
What do we do? Because we have free will we will push God’s boundaries… it will be fine if we have what we are told we cannot have. We will get away with it. There will be forces, serpents in the world who will persuade us go on it will be fine. Then when we are caught we blame the woman! I could write about Donald Trump here but I won’t!
I see three points in the first eleven chapters of Genesis where God could easily give up on us. Adam and Eve are banished to the land of Nod, away from the place God abides, and they are made to work, but they are not destroyed. Note. That’s point one.
Point two comes in chapter six I think. We have Cain and Abel and then all sorts with the sons and daughters of men and there are these verses: God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.”
End of the story? Six chapters only? Humanity a bad idea? Memories of that perfect world grieving God’s heart? No. We have this verse: Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. The world is corrupt but again God cannot quite let go. Noah and his family and two of every kind of animals sail in the ark to escape a flood and at the end of the voyage God makes a covenant with a remnant that never again will he destroy the earth.
Sadly the story doesn’t end there and despite a past that isn’t pretty God’s people don’t learn. After temptation and corruption there comes in chapter eleven a thirst for power. Let us build a tower so that we can become like God. Babel is the result. One of the books I’m reading about Genesis suggests it is not just an ancient text but our story. Think about the news today. Law breaking, corrupt business (Trump Tower!) and an obsession to lord it over others and be God over them. So as God confused the world by mixing up languages there is confusion today, isn’t there? One race has become fragmented and we are threatened by difference.
There was a chilling Doctor Who episode at the weekend. A future society where everyone looked the same and thought the same. A situation where they were being eaten by some creature alphabetically. The doctor at the end tries to save the main character by taking her away in his tardis. It’s then you are hit by the fact society is all white and the doctor is black. And he’s told “we cannot go with you sir, you are not one of us.”
Creation, rebellion, divine regret he made any human, a rainbow, a quest for power, confusion. A doof doof at the end of chapter eleven… like Eastenders… From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
But we remember after eleven long chapters the grace of God and we are set up for a new beginning. This is the account of Terah’s family line. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth. Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milkah; she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milkah and Iskah. Now Sarai was childless because she was not able to conceive.
Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Haran.” The family literally “sat down there.”
What will happen next? Well let’s watch Terah’s son, shall we? And let’s listen for the guiding hand of God. Next week!
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