Genesis 11: 10-32; Luke 3: 23-38; Bilbo’s Poem by J.R.R. Tolkien

A long time ago in a sermon far, far away, I started preaching on the prehistory stories of Genesis. For eight weeks now, I’ve been exploring these earliest scriptures of Judaism and Christianity by simply asking the question “Why?” Why was this story told and why was it included in the scriptures? And I have also taken bit of a whack at “So what?” Are these just old stories — interesting (or otherwise) — or do they have something that can help us grow in our faith and in our relationship with God, and maybe even with each other?

Of course I like to think that they can do that, but the Genesis reading today is enough to really give us pause. It is, after all, another list of begettings and life spans, for gosh sakes. That’s the kind of stuff that makes most of us want to slam the Bible shut and look for more exciting — or at least relevant — reading material. You know what I mean? How many of you began to glaze over this morning during the readings?

There’s no denying it: If you didn’t know what this section was really about, you would be highly likely to give up at this point. This truly is the problem for people who decide to just sit down & read the Bible because they think they should – they get lost in the begats! But this is where I’ve really had some fun with these scriptures for, as Bilbo would say, “All that is gold does not glitter.” There is a whole lot of tarnished gold in today’s reading, which I will get to by circling back and reviewing the terrain we’ve already covered.

In the first chapter of Genesis, God created the heavens and the earth – the whole universe really. Heaven, earth, sun/ moon/ stars, plants, birds/ fish/ animals, and human beings. All were created in the 6 days before God rested on the 7^th, and God said it was good.

And then we met Adam & Eve, and Cain & Abel, the archetypal human beings. Over several chapters we witnessed their actions and listened in on their thought processes that effectively separated them first from God, and then from each other.

Then we read about all the people multiplying and going forth out into the world, spreading all over the planet. In the 10 very long-lived generations from Adam to Noah (960 years!) a lot of people came into the world, and pretty much made a mess of it. And God was so disappointed with us that He was sorely tempted to end this earthly venture entirely, which is where the Flood came in. But somewhere along the way, God decided that this earthly experiment was too interesting and too dear to be done away with. So human beings (and the rest of the critters of the world) were given another chance at life, despite the reality that human beings were going to be very slow to grow into the relationships God hoped for us when She blew Spirit into those mud beings. We continued in our willful selfish ways: disrespecting one another and disobeying God…yet still wanting to connect with each other and wanting to be embraced by God.

And in today’s reading we have the descendants of Shem, one of Noah’s good boys (as opposed to Ham, the very bad son whose descendants were all the enemies of Israel). Again there are 10 generations, moving from Shem, the archetypal son of Noah, to some very specific (and familiar!) people of Semitic lore: Abraham, the Father of Nations, both Jewish and Moslem, and his wife Sarah, the Mother of those Nations — who is described here as being barren – as if the family tree was doomed to stop. (But of course that’s not how the story ends, since we have 99.8% of the Bible yet to follow.) So if you hold it out here and squint, you can see that these first eleven chapters of Genesis take us from the most universal perspective of creation to a distinctly narrow, tribal story.

As I’ve explained each week, these texts were assembled and created by the Israelites’ priests during the Babylonian exile some 2600 years ago. Some of the texts are old, old stories – like Adam & Eve and Cain & Abel and the Nephilim and the Flood. Other stories were written by the priests to assure the people that God had not abandoned them there in exile and that they were a people chosen by God for a special sacred relationship and that exile was not the last word…for again in the words of Bilbo Baggins, “Not all those who wander are lost.”

Now I know that a number of people struggle with these stories — some because the stories seem so absurd they want just to relegate them to the mythology dustbin or ignore them altogether. And other folks struggle with these stories because, while they don’t make rational sense … “if we don’t accept them as fact what can we believe?”

As you’ve heard me say before, I take the Bible seriously, but not literally. I do not believe these stories like they are facts. I believe these stories like they are true. They hold truths about humankind, they hold truths about me and about you and our world, every bit as much as they did waaay back when, back in those days of exile. But they were not written to be scientific explanations. They were theological statements about God and humanity. These stories were powerful and they were empowering, and they still are even today, despite the efforts of the modern world to dismiss them. As Bilbo noted, “The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by frost.”
 As I hope you’ve noticed by now, Bilbo Baggin’s poem is not just prophetic verse about Aragorn who would become king of Middle Earth. Bilbo’s creator, J.R.R. Tolkien, was a remarkably ingenious Christian theologian who witnessed the horrors of trench warfare in World War One. Underlying the incredible story of the battle for Middle Earth, The Lord of the Rings is a theological tome…much to the dismay of both stuff-shirt Christians and wild-haired pagans alike. I find Bilbo’s poem to be the perfect bridge between the reading from Luke and the one from Genesis… a bridge that I’ll get to in a moment, but first, we need to do a quick review of some Hebrew numerology.

3 is a number that represents ‘several’, not simply the number between 2 and 4. It is a number that represent completeness, like the Trinity.

10 is an ideal number: hence 10 generations from Adam to Noah and Shem to Abraham.

40 is a big number of great significance: 40 days & nights of Flood, 40 years in the wilderness with Moses, and Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness.

But 7… 7 is a perfect number…going back to the 7 days of creation. And 77 is a pluperfect number, a super perfect number. It’s how many times Jesus says we are to forgive each other. And it’s how many generations that connect Jesus of Nazareth to Adam of Eden, making him of course, the son of God. And here is the Bilbo bridge that connects the readings and Jesus to Adam:

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

[Jerusalem/civilization]

A light from the shadows shall spring; [Abram & Jesus]
Renewed shall be blade that was broken, [God’s people]
The crownless again shall be king.[Jesus & us folks]

Biblical genealogies are never just random lists. They are constructed with remarkable care and intent, and if you have the patience to play detective, there is a lot there to discover!

Now I know that only some of you have not been able to be here every week, and not all of the sermons are posted on the web yet. And frankly there is so much in these texts that I never got to tell you about… so I thought I’d give you a chance to ask some of the questions that you may have about theses stories – their origin, their meaning, how they’ve been used…

 

…Our Christian faith is rooted in the creation stories of Judaism, stories that were never ever ‘just’ stories, but stories that delivered a clear and intentional proclamation of faith in the God who creates us, who loves us and who will not let us go. These are stories of hope. These are stories that hold meaning and value even in this scientific age. These are our stories to use or misuse as we choose. May we ‘Choose wisely’. Amen.

 

Genesis 11: 10-32 (Robert Alter trans.)

This is the lineage of Shem: Shem was a hundred years old when he begot Arpachshad two years after the Flood. And Shem lived after begetting Arpachshad five hundred years and he begot sons and daugh­ters.

And Arpachshad lived thirty-five years and he begot Shelah. And Arpachshad lived after begetting Shelah four hundred and three years and he begot sons and daughters.

And Shelah lived thirty years and he begot Eber. And Shelah lived after begetting Eber four hundred and three years and he begot sons and daughters.

And Eber lived thirty­-four years and he begot Peleg. And Eber lived after begetting Peleg four hundred and thirty years and he begot sons and daughters.

And Peleg lived thirty years and he begot Reu. And Peleg lived after begetting Reu two hundred and nine years and he begot sons and daughters.

And Reu lived thirty-two years and he begot Serug. And Reu lived after begetting Serug two hundred and seven years and he begot sons and daughters.

And Serug lived thirty years and he begot Nahor. And Serug lived after begetting Nahor two hundred years and he begot sons and daughters.

And Nahor lived twenty-nine years and he begot Terah. And Nahor lived after begetting Terah one hundred and nineteen years and he begot sons and daughters.

And Terah lived seventy years and he begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

And this is the lineage of Terah: Terah begot Abram, Nahor, and Haran and Haran begot Lot. And Haran died in the lifetime of Terah his father in the land of his birth, Ur of the Chaldees. And Abram and Nahor took themselves wives. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai and the name of Nahor's wife was Milcah daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah and the father of Iscah. And Sarai was barren, she had no child. And Terah took Abram his son and Lot son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, the wife of his son Abram, and he set out with them from Ur of the Chaldees toward the land of Canaan, and they came to Haran and settled there. And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years, and Terah died in Haran,

 

Luke 3: 23-38(NRSV)

Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work. He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli, son of Matthat, son of Levi, son of Melchi, son of Jannai, son of Joseph, son of Mattathias, son of Amos, son of Nahum, son of Esli, son of Naggai, son of Maath, son of Mattathias, son of Semein, son of Josech, son of Joda, son of Joanan, son of Rhesa, son of Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, son of Neri, son of Melchi, son of Addi, son of Cosam, son of Elmadam, son of Er, son of Joshua, son of Eliezer, son of Jorim, son of Matthat, son of Levi, son of Simeon, son of Judah, son of Joseph, son of Jonam, son of Eliakim, son of Melea, son of Menna, son of Mattatha, son of Nathan, son of David, son of Jesse, son of Obed, son of Boaz, son of Sala, son of Nahshon, son of Amminadab, son of Admin, son of Arni, son of Hezron, son of Perez, son of Judah, son of Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham, son of Terah, son of Nahor, son of Serug, son of Reu, son of Peleg, son of Eber, son of Shelah, son of Cainan, son of Arpachshad, son of Shem, son of Noah, son of Lamech, son of Methuselah, son of Enoch, son of Jared, son of Mahalaleel, son of Cainan, son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God.

 

The Other Reading by J.R.R. Tolkien

Song of Aragornby Bilbo Baggins

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.