Genesis 4:17-22, 25- 6:4, Matthew 5: 43-48, Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko (Readings below)

“You don’t have anything if you don’t have the stories.”

Every culture of the earth has its stories: Myths that explain how the world came into being and that describe the relationship between the Creator of the world and creation and especially us, humankind. Leslie Silko was writing about the Pueblo people in the Other Reading this morning, but what she said of her tribe is true of tribes from every time and place the world around, and it positively is true of the Israelites.

The stories that we read in Genesis this morning are part of the pre-history stories of Israel that we’ve been exploring over the last month. But the reading today is unlike the other four we’ve covered so far: creation 1, creation 2, Adam & Eve & Cain & Abel. Today’s reading is not just a single story wrapped up all tidy in a chapter. Today’s reading is a chunk from 3 different chapters, originating from 3 different traditions with 3 distinct areas of interest, but clustered together to connect the idyllic first days of creation with the ruinous days that led to the Flood.

The first section is the conclusion of the story of Cain from chapter 4, and, like the story of Adam & Eve, it is from the time of King Solomon, roughly some 3,000 years ago. Today’s story tells us what happened to Cain after he killed his brother and was banished by God to the land of Nod, and it also lets us know what happened to the folks back home, after losing both their sons.

Now, in case you’ve not caught any of my sermons this month, or you kicked your coffee cup at a critical point, let me catch you up on a couple of things. As I hope you know by now, I take the Bible seriously, but not literally. Which means I can read these stories and look for how God was working in and through the lives of the people in them, without having to get caught up in questions like “Where did Cain’s wife come from?” Helllooooo — - this is a creation myth! Not a history lesson! It’s a theological proclamation, not a scientific text! And when you read the Bible this way, especially these chapters, you don’t have to get all bent and twisted with questions about Cain’s wife, giants or missing dinosaurs.

But you know, there are entire websites dedicated to explaining ‘mysteries’ like that, which is a remarkable expenditure of energy, and gigabytes. This is how I see it: The Bible is true. It doesn’t need to be factual, for goodness sake. Just let the story tell the story and then let the story inform your life. Okay, enough of that. Let’s get back to Genesis.

The point of a creation narrative is to explain why things are how they are, and this little chunk of Genesis 4 has a lot of explaining to do. It tells us about how cities began, as well as the origins of nomadic herding people. This section also reveals the identity of the first musicians and artisans. Then, after a quick outline of the seven generations of Cain, we are told that his parents had another son after Abel died, a boy they named Seth who started a whole new line of descendants. We learn that it was during his life that the people began to worship the God they knew as Yahweh. Now that’s a lot of information about the origins of the people of Israel, in just a few short verses at the end of Genesis 4.

The next chapter was compiled by the priests who were taken into exile in Babylon along with perhaps several thousand people when the armies of Nebuchadnezzar conquered Israel & destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem some 350 years after King Solomon died.

Throughout the Old Testament, it’s easy to identify the priests’ additions to the scriptures – they were into lists, among other things. We saw their 7 days of creation, and today we have the list of their 10 generations from Adam to Noah. This is the first list of begattings we find in the Bible, but certainly it is not the last.

We are told that the mythological ancestors of Israel lived to be almost a 1,000 years old, just short of a perfect millennium, as would befit an imperfect human creature. While the numbers are impressive, biblical scholars don’t think they are about age so much as they are about their numerological significance. Nobody knows what they mean anymore, it just looks like those folks lived a very, very, very, very long life, and during that time, all those guys fathered innumerable children. Numerology aside, the point of this chapter seems to be to tell us that many years had passed since the first days of creation and there were a lot of people in the world.

Which brings us to the really whacky 3rd story in the reading from Genesis 6. In something that sounds like an episode from “The X-Files”, (and in fact was an episode in “X-files”) the sons of God came to earth and took beautiful daughters of man to be their wives, much to God’s dismay. The result of these dreadful relations was the Nephilim, a Hebrew word that is interpreted in several ways: Fallen Ones, giants, heroes of yore, men of renown.

These 4 verses are unlike anything else in the Bible – and I have to tell you I spent the better part of a day doing research on this chapter. I read stuff from the most academic to the most imaginative trying to figure out where this came from, why it was included in the bible, and what could possibly have inspired it. The answer I came up with was much less complicated than I ever thought. Turns out this story comes pretty much straight from the mythology of the Canaanites, the people who lived in the land where the tribe of the Hebrews settled. I figure that it was included in the book of Genesis because it was such a wild story and they probably thought that God would have needed to have a really good excuse for the flood – and wow — can you think of any better reason to destroy the earth, than to get rid of all these hybrid human/God/giant thingees? Obviously, the world had gotten badly out of hand. The perfection of God’s creation was being sullied not only by the mistake-prone human creatures, but the iniquitous divine beings who dropped in really messed things up!

Next week, we’ll consider how God dealt with the disorder the earth had become, but today I want to dial it back little and take a look at the stories in a slightly different way.

The first five chapters of Genesis tell us of Creator, and of creation, and of human beings, and how those human beings used their free will and challenged God at every turn. They tell us of the beginnings of community structures and the arts, and that violence has virtually always been a part of the human condition. Yet through all of it, God was with us, hoping for the best from us, while being frequently disappointed by us.

Like the Pueblo people, the people of Israel lived by their stories. Their identity and their understanding of God was wrapped up in them. That’s why it was so important for the Priests to gather these stories together when the people were in exile. They needed to remember who they were and what was important: that God was still with them.

But you know, after a while, the people stopped hearing the stories. We stopped hearing the stories. Sometimes we don’t hear the stories because they seem old and odd and like they have nothing to do with us anymore. And sometimes we don’t hear the stories because we simply stop telling them.

Remember I told you that you can recognize the priestly stories in the Hebrew Scriptures because they liked lists? Well they also liked rules. Further into the Bible in the book of Leviticus you discover that they wrote down a lot of rules: rules for health and safety, rules for community order, rules for economic stability, rules for how to worship God. A lot of those rules were pretty good at the time. They kept people healthy (eating pork back then was pretty risky business) and they made sure that the most vulnerable people in the community were taken care of and that any anti-social behavior was dealt with clearly and quickly, so as to keep society on an even keel.

Over time, the rules began to be told more than the stories. The stories – and their meaning – were gradually set aside. They weren’t totally forgotten, of course, they were just not told as often or in the same way, so little things were lost — like the significance of the ages of those 10 generations; and big things got lost, too – like the heart of the whole story: God’s abiding love and hope for us which was obscured by laws demanding particular sacrifices. So we need to tell the old stories as best we can, and a couple of thousand years ago, I think God decided that we needed to hear some new stories, stories that people of another time & place could hear. Stories like those about a carpenter in Nazareth and the stories he told. The stories of the gospels.

Jesus told his disciples: “You have heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor, but hate your enemy’”. That would be one of those Priestly rules I was talking about. “But truly I tell you, love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. This will show that you are children of God.” Jesus kicked open a rule and retold the story in a way that connected the people back to God’s first hope for them and for creation. More than that, Jesus kicked open all the rules and he retold the stories in new and different ways and ultimately, Jesus lived a story that connected all of us back to God’s first hope for us and for creation.

The creation stories of Genesis are intriguing. They give us glimpses into a far-off culture and a very different world-view. They give us a look into our collective Judeo-Christian unconscious mind, full of archetypes and symbols. They give us a way of relating to the world that goes past our mind and into our very being, as Joseph Campbell says. We need these stories.

We need these stories, but we can’t be limited by them either. The folks who need to defend these stories as fact sadly miss the point. The stories aren’t about facts, they are about God and they are about us. That is what Jesus was trying to say, and how he was trying to live. Through his life and his words he connected us back to the stories, and then he showed us the way into God’s future, a future where our enemies can become our neighbors and our world can become Eden once again.

May we listen to the stories with open minds and faithful hearts and follow on that journey. Amen.
  

Genesis 4:17-22, 25- 6:4  (PFE & Adler translations)

Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and gave birth to Enoch. Cain built a city where they lived, and named it after their son Enoch. Enoch begot Irad; and Irad begot Mehujael; and Mehujael begot Methushael; and Methushael begot Lamech.

Lamech had two wives; one was named Adah, and the other, Zillah. Adah gave birth to Jabal, the ancestor of those who live in tents and raise livestock. His brother was Jubal, the ancestor of all those who play the harp and the flute. Zillah gave birth to Tubal-Cain, the forebear of black­smiths and coppersmiths. His sister was Naamah.

Eve and Adam again had relations with each other, and she gave birth to a another child, whom she called Seth, "One Who Is Given" – for she said, "God has granted me another child in the place of Abel, whom Cain killed."

Seth had a son, who was named Enosh, "Mortal" It was at this time that people began invoking the Name of Our God.

5:1This is the record of the generations of humankind.

When God created humankind,

they were made to be like God.

They were created female and male, given a blessing,

and named "Humankind" on the day they were created.

When Adam had lived 130 years, he and Eve had a child who was like them, made in their image, whose name was Seth. After Seth was born, Adam lived another 800 years and fathered other daughters and sons. Adam was 930 years old when he died.

Seth was 105 when Enosh was born. After Enosh was born, Seth lived another 807 years and had other daughters and sons. Seth was 912 years old when he died.

Enosh was 90 when Kenan was born. After Kenan was born, Enosh lived another 815 years and had other daughters and sons. Enosh was 905 years old when he died.

Kenan was 70 years old when Mahalalel was born. After Mahalalel was born, Kenan lived another 840 years and had other daughters and sons. Kenan was 910 years old when he died.

Mahalalel was 65 years old when Jared was born. After Jared was born, Mahalalel lived another 830 years and had other daughters and sons. Mahalalel was 895 years old when he died.

Jared was 162 years old when Enoch was born. After Enoch was born, Jared lived another 800 years and had other daughters and sons. Jared was 962 years old when he died.

Enoch was 65 years old when Methuselah was born. After Methuse­lah was born, Enoch walked in accord with God for another 300 years and had other daughters and sons. In all, Enoch lived 365 years. Enoch walked in accord with God, and then he was no more, for God had taken him.

Methuselah was 187 years old when Lamech was born. After La­mech was born, Methuselah lived another 782 years and had other daughters and sons. Methuselah was 969 years old when he died.

When Lamech was 182 years old, he begot a son. Lamech called him Noah, or "Relief," saying, "He will comfort our sorrow from our toil, and our painful struggle to make a living from the soil, which Our God has cursed." After Noah was born, Lamech lived another 595 years and had other daughters and sons. Lamech was 777 years old when he died.

When Noah was 500 years old, Shem, Ham and Japheth were born.

6:1  And it happened as humankind began to multiply over the earth and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were comely, and they took themselves wives howsoever they chose.

And our God said, “My breath shall not abide in the human forever, for he is but flesh, let his days be 120 years."

The Nephilim were then on the earth, and afterward as well, the sons of God having come to bed with the daughters of man who bore them children: they are the heroes of yore, the men of renown.

Matthew 5: 43-48

“You have heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor – but hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. This will prove that you are children of God. For God makes the sun rise on bad and good alike; God‘s rain falls on the just and the unjust. If you love those who love you, what merit is there in that? Don’t tax collectors do as much? And if you greet only your sisters and brothers, what is so praiseworthy about that? Don’t Gentiles do as much? Therefore be perfect, as Abba God in heaven is perfect.”

The Other Readingby Leslie Marmon Silko

Ceremony

I will tell you something about stories,
[he said]
They aren't just for entertainment.
Don't be fooled
They are all we have, you see,
all we have to fight off illness and death.

You don't have anything
if you don't have the stories.

Their evil is mighty
but it can't stand up to our stories.
So they try to destroy the stories
let the stories be confused or forgotten
They would like that
They would be happy
Because we would be defenseless then.