During June we looked at Creation Stories during worship and supplemented that theme with weekly Text Studies. I try to approach these stories from a couple of different angles, because I believe each of them hold meaning for us. First, it is self-evident that there are multiple sources from which these stories have come to us. A quick example is how the creation story in Genesis 1 refers to God with the common term for God, Elohim, while the second story in Genesis 2-3 uses the phrase YHWH Elohim. If those term uses were random, we might just say that it is happenstance, that any writer might use one term or the other when referring to God. But, at least in those first two chapters, the uses are consistent enough to where it seems evident that the stories were given from two different sources, with different ways of speaking of God.
Beyond making these initial observations – which, I think, is simply a matter of intellectual honesty – and drawing the conclusion that we are looking at two different sources – which, I think, is simply logical – lie some great conversations. Biblical scholars have made educated guesses about who these communities are, when they wrote the texts, what lay behind the oral tradition and writing of the texts, and so on. These are matters that I’ve learned to call “going behind the text” and can be dismissed as a lot of guesswork, but here’s why it is important. The communities who wrote these texts – fully inspired in their service to God, I believe – are embedded in time and space. That is to say, they are more like us than not. They wonder how the world can be so harmonious and consistent in its seasons and fruitfulness one day, so full of thorns and thistles, with crop failures and drought another day. They wonder what it means to believe in a God of love, when times are challenging. They wonder if God’s power is unlimited or subject to human participation or whether life is really a matter of randomness after all. The reason I draw attention to the sources of these creation stories is because I find them more meaningful when we recognize our kinship with those communities who cultivated and gave us these stories.
At the same time, the creation stories have meaning in themselves, apart from the questions about their sources. To hear the story in Genesis 1 as a song is fascinating. The first verse has seven words (in Hebrew), the second has fourteen, the word for ‘earth/ground’ appears 21 times, the name of God appears 35 times, and the whole thing is situated within the rhythm of seven days, one week. That points to a very deliberate manner of writing, more poetic than prosaic, a fitting way of saying something beautiful beautifully. The second story, where God gets down and dirty by making the human and animals out of the ground, where God walks in the garden in the cool of the evening, where God can’t seem to find Adam, and where it all falls apart, has a kind of raw beauty of its own. It is not poetic, but more mythic and reads like a fable. There is a talking serpent, after all. What a fascinating view of God this story offers, a God who can be genuinely disappointed, angry, but still compassionate toward the human community, who can’t leave well enough alone. This story also has powerful meaning in itself.
And so, in July we will turn to Migrant Stories, beginning with this weekend’s reading of Genesis 12:1-9. It is fascinating that the whole history of the Hebrew people as an elected people starts with this story of Abraham. God’s first word to Abraham is the command, “Go.” Our Migrant stories begin with the progeniture of God’s people pulling up roots and being displaced. My guess – guess! – is that there was a pretty robust conversation throughout the Hebrew tradition over whether their life with God was essentially one of constant movement with nowhere to lay their head, or a settled people for whom the Conquest stories of Joshua showed their true colors. And, honestly, that seems to be an ongoing question for the human community. Think of the great migration stories as human beings made their way from Africa to various continents, or crossed the Bering Strait into North America. Think of migrant farmers, called “essential workers” one day, and “aliens” the next. Think of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, or a truck full of desperate migrants left to die in the heat of the desert. Throughout every place and every time, the earth has been full of migrant stories. At the same time, we value having a place we call “home.” This juxtaposition of settled/unsettled, at home and on the go, makes us very similar to the communities who render the Migrant Stories of Genesis. I encourage you to find kinship with them as they lead us through migrations based on a desire to live better, or drought, or oppression, or violence. Their world is our world in that respect, so we listen for how God is present in our kind of world.
See you in worship,
Mark of St. Mark
No comments:
Post a Comment