Genesis 3.1-8, 21-24; Romans 7.13-25
By the rivers of Babylon … hearts broken, and there we wept … no music left in us … all is gone …
Like all good parents, they wondered what their children would believe.
Will our children opt for the gods of Babylon? Will the power of Babylon win them over?
What can we say?
What good does it do to talk about ancient military victories when our armies are no more?
What good does it do to talk about kings and queens when, in the end, all of their palace politics brought us nothing but sorrow?
What good does it do to talk about the beauty of the temple when that temple lies in ruins?
What good does it do to talk about Yahweh when we languish here in a strange land, the laughing stock of the nations … they look upon us with haughty eyes and ask, Where is your god now?
What can we believe about God, life and hope, faith and love? What can we tell our children? What do we tell ourselves?
Crisis of faith prompted big questions!
And from that crisis of faith flow the words of Genesis.
The ancient writers and poets, taken into Exile crafted the first chapter of Genesis, and then put the whole book together … to express the deepest faith in God … a faith beyond their own personal story … a faith larger than the moment … larger than Babylon … larger than Israel and Judah … larger than tears and sorrow … a god their children can believe in … a god worthy of their time … a god for the best of times, and most importantly, a god for the worst of times.
The ancient writers crafted and assembled a collection of documents that were to become the foundation of Judah’s hope for a new day … the Hebrew Bible … the Bible that Jesus studied, loved and memorized … the Bible that guided Paul the Apostle and his work … the Bible early Christians quoted to one another, and the words they used in prayer and worship … the Hebrew Bible … what we commonly call the Old Testament …
To answer the big questions:
Is there a story bigger than our own story of sorrow and defeat?
Is there a god bigger than the gods of Israel and Judah … our gods failed, but perhaps we failed to really understand God?
Is there a god bigger than the gods of Babylon, the gods of Alexander the great, and the gods of the Roman Empire and their mighty armies?
Is there a god our children can believe in and trust?
The writers and thinkers and theologians penned Genesis 1, In the beginning … before Abraham and Sarah, before Israel and Judah, before Assyrian and Babylon … before everything and anything, God.
And there is darkness all about … plenty of darkness, and chaos, too … dark waters and darker night.
But God says, Let there be light.
A gentle light for the night - moon and stars … bright light for the day, the sun, golden and warm.
In the darkness, light …
The biggest story of all …
But the Hebrews are no one’s fool … light there is, the light of God, and the light of hope, the light of God’s mercy, the light of love … lots of light … but still the darkness.
Death and sorrow, war and hatred … we have a million ways of hurting ourselves, hurting those we love … a million ways for destroying what God made … a million ways to make it dark even when God creates the light.
So the ancient writers told the story of Genesis 3 … a clever creature comes along and raises questions about the trustworthiness of God …
That’s always the question, isn’t it?
Can God be trusted?
The ancient writers sometimes wondered … just like we do.
Abraham and Sarah wondered if God would deliver on the promise on a son.
Jeremiah the prophet accused God of betrayal.
Job accused God of cruelty.
Jesus hanging on the cross wonders if God has abandoned him?
And in such moments, danger …
The Book of Genesis lays it all out - Judah tries to figure out: What happened to us? Why did we get here, in Babylon, drowning in our own tears?
WHAT went wrong?
We overreached our grasp, they said … we ate the fruit of the tree that rightly belongs only to God.
We wanted more … we loved armies and kings, power and glory; we despised enemies, thought we were better than everyone else, thought we had god on our side.
But it all fell apart …
Judah had to rewrite its own story …
And part of the story - things that destroy …
We thought god would always protect the Holy City and preserve the throne of David … but, no, we were wrong … God is very different than what we thought.
Judah had to come up with a new story to fit the times and build a road to the future … the past was gone; long gone. No since crying over spilled beer, as they say … no sense looking back - look what happens to Lot’s wife … no, the only way out of this is the way forward, new ideas, new ways of doing things … the old is gone; gone forever … and that’s okay … because God is taking us to new places … it hurts to go where God is taking us, but we have to go where God leads.
A local church was having some issues, so they invited a consultant who, they hoped, could help them find new purpose.
The consultant arrived in January, when the Ladies Association was beginning a new year - new officers and a new program booklet for the next twelve months, listing times and places, programs and people, luncheons and dinners and Bible Studies.
And it was their fortieth year.
In the fellowship hall, laid out on a table, all the program booklets from the last forty years - an impressive sight - red booklets, green booklets, yellow booklets and blue.
The consultant picked up the first booklet - an old mimeographed booklet stapled together with red construction paper - and began to read the names of the leaders and the programs for the year to come. The consultant was impressed.
So the consultant read the second booklet … then the third, the 10th booklet, the 25th, and then the last booklet, the 40th booklet on the table … she was shocked to see that in the last 40 years, nothing had changed - same programs, same schedule, same topics, same restaurants - and many of the names were the same, too.
Judah had to face a painful truth:
We didn’t change!
Our god grew smaller and smaller every year for us … and we grew smaller, too.
Our prophets warned us, but we put ‘em in prison, we drove them out, we killed them. We stopped thinking, we stopped growing.
Judah learned a hard lesson - those who will not CHOOSE the future, are HAMMERED by the future when it arrives … for Judah, the future looked like an enemy, a Babylonian soldier, but God said to the people, Even Babylon is my servant.
In the Genesis story, Adam and Eve are driven from the Garden, just like Judah driven from Jerusalem - there’s no going back … angels on the east side of the Garden bar the way with flaming swords.
There’s no going back to Eden, no going back to Egypt, no going back to Jerusalem.
But there’s a clue in the text: fertile land OUTSIDE the garden! Good earth!
We will make it, and so will our children.
God’s people need the greater story … of a god much greater than we could ever imagine.
The creator-god, the god of heaven and earth - greater than our own story, greater than Israel and Judah, greater than David and Solomon … greater than the temple … greater than Calvary Presbyterian Church, greater than the United States of America … greater than all the nations of the world and all the religions of world … greater even than Christianity itself.
As long as God remains big for us, we will be big, too … big in courage, to face the future … with creativity, to find new ways of serving the LORD … and love … love for one another, no matter what … love that transcends boundaries of race and creed … love greater than we could ever imagine.
Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven, to earth come down; fix in us thy humble dwelling; all thy faithful mercies crown!
Jesus thou art all compassion, pure, unbounded love thou art; visit us with thy salvation; enter every trembling heart.
Amen and Amen!
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