“The LORD saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the LORD said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created – people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’” Genesis 6: 5-7
Sometimes I “deal with” this story by juxtaposing Genesis with the flood stories of Mesopotamia, like the one in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Abraham came from Mesopotamia and would have brought this flood story with him, the one in which Enlil the storm god floods the world because there are too many noisy humans in it. When the Hebrew people tell this story, they tell of a different God. Yahweh would not act so petulantly; Yahweh would only destroy the world if Yahweh’s heart were broken because humankind proved to be only evil and violent. And note that it’s a broken heart, not righteous rage.
Something deep within me is moved each time I read of God’s grief and regret. We affect God. God is so invested in us that what we do touches God so profoundly that God reacts. This is not some self-sufficient, unchangeable perfection. This is One who craves relationship, who opens up within God’s own self a space of vulnerability, a possibility for intimacy and for pain. This All Powerful God forfeits some measure of power to the people God creates. The Bible is always a story of relationship; can God and humankind find a way to be in true relationship? God wants this. God has given God’s heart to it. God will give Christ to it. God incarnate will suffer and die rather than betray the bond between God and humanity.
The flood story seems so very different to me from the story of the cross. Here in Genesis, God seems to act out of pain with immense violence; in the cross God bears immense violence and pain for the sake of love.
How do we understand this change? Do you see a change? I’ve been reading the conversation recorded in Bill Moyers Genesis. The chapter on the flood is called “Apocalypse” and seven men and women debate the meaning of the flood story. I know there are lots of animals we can paint onto the walls and that rainbows are pretty, but why in the world do we put this story into nurseries? Has anybody read the story? Do we ever think about what it means?
I don’t want to sum this up in one blog. I want to live with this story for a while and see where it takes me. So, here it is, Genesis 6:5 through Genesis 9:17. Will you read it and ponder it with me?
And for extra credit in the kingdom of God (smile): I keep thinking of the way God is portrayed in the book of Hosea, a minor prophet near the end of the Old Testament. Take this flood story, Hosea, and the cross. How do you understand God? Maybe that’s what I’ll write about next week.
Grace and peace to you. May the Spirit be at work in you as you live with these words of Scripture, and may we all rest in God.
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Thanks for the suggestion to read Hosea. It was indeed an interesting "side trot" to the flood story.
ReplyDeleteWithin our current culture (western postmodernism) we have a particularly difficult time with the flood passage because it so challenges our concept of fairness with its seemingly arbitrary and general destruction. We will be challenged like this again and again in the OT (wait until we get to the more specific destruction described in Joshua!).
When I read Hosea, I am struck by the relationship of Hosea and his prostitute wife as mirror to God and "his people". These are parallel concepts of covenant relationships. What is unique to our faith is that we worship a god who searches us out, individually and as a people. Our God initiates a covenant relationship with us individually and as a people. This interweaving of the personal and the corporate relationship with God seems almost purposely confused in the writing of Hosea.
"When that day comes I will make a treaty on her behalf with the wild animals, with the birds of heaven and the creeping things of the earth; I will break bow, sword and battle in the country, and make her sleep secure. I will betroth you to myself for ever, betroth you with integrity and justice, with tenderness and love; I will betroth you to myself with faithfulness, and you will come to know YHWH...
...I will love Unloved; I will say to No-People-of-Mine, 'You are my people', and he will answer, 'You are my God'."
It is this covenent relationship that binds much of these writings together. Jesus, the messiah, is the fullfillment of this promise -"you will come to know YHWH." Without that as the "background" story, the flood is nothing more than an act of arbitrary carnage and Jesus is just another visionary who ran afoul of the political power of his time. Perhaps the difficulty is that we think too highly of ourselves and not enough of God.