A Morning Service for the 2nd Sunday before Lent 2022

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February 18, 2022

Beware, beware, beware - there’s danger about. Danger from too much knowledge, and too little sense, too much learning and too little understanding, too much talk and too little thought. Danger from a thousand years of mistranslation and biased interpretation. Watch out there’s Genesis about.

A Morning Service for the 2nd Sunday before Lent 2022

HYMN – Thou whose almighty word – NEH466 – Moscow

1 THOU whose almighty word

Chaos and darkness heard,

And took their flight;

Hear us, we humbly pray,

And where the gospel day

Sheds not its glorious ray

Let there be light.

2 Thou who didst come to bring

On thy redeeming wing

Healing and sight,

Health to the sick in mind,

Sight to the inly blind,

O now to all mankind

Let there be light.

3 Spirit of truth and love,

Life-giving, holy Dove,

Speed forth thy flight;

Move on the water’s face,

Bearing the lamp of grace,

And in earth’s darkest place

Let there be light.

4 Blessèd and holy Three,

Glorious Trinity,

Wisdom, Love, Might,

Boundless as ocean’s tide

Rolling in fullest pride,

Through the world far and wide

Let there be light.

PRAYER OF PREPARATION
Almighty God,
to whom all hearts are open,
all desires known,
and from whom no secrets are hidden:
cleanse the thoughts of our hearts
by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,
that we may perfectly love you,
and worthily magnify your holy name;
through Christ our Lord. Amen

PRAYERS OF PENITENCE
God the Father forgives us in Christ and heals us by the Holy Spirit.
Let us therefore put away all anger and bitterness, all slander and malice,
and confess our sins to God our redeemer. cf. Ephesians 4.30,32

Almighty God, our heavenly Father,
we have sinned against you
and against our neighbour,
through our own fault,
in thought, and word, and deed,
and in what we have left undone.
We are truly sorry and repent of all our sins.
For your Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake,
forgive us all that is past;
and grant that we may serve you in newness of life
to the glory of your name. Amen.

May the God of love and power
forgive you and free you from your sins,
heal and strengthen you by his Spirit
and raise you to new life in Christ our Lord. Amen

THE COLLECT

Almighty God,

you have created the heavens and the earth

and made us in your own image:

teach us to discern your hand in all your works

and your likeness in all your children;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,

who with you and the Holy Spirit reigns supreme over all things,

now and for ever. Amen

FIRST READING – Genesis 2.4b-9,15-25

In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” So out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.”

Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.

HYMN – Morning has broken like the first morning NEH 237 – Bunessan

1. Morning has broken like the first morning

Blackbird has spoken like the first bird

Praise for the singing

Praise for the morning

Praise for them springing

fresh from the Word.

2.Sweet the rain’s new fall,

sunlit from heaven

Like the first dewfall on the first grass

Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden

Sprung in completeness where his feet pass.

3. Mine is the sunlight

Mine is the morning

Born of the one light Eden saw play

Praise with elation, praise ev’ry morning

God’s recreation of the new day.

GOSPEL – Luke 8.22-25

One day he got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” So they put out, and while they were sailing he fell asleep. A windstorm swept down on the lake, and the boat was filling with water, and they were in danger. They went to him and woke him up, shouting, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” And he woke up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves; they ceased, and there was a calm. He said to them, “Where is your faith?” They were afraid and amazed, and said to one another, “Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?”

SERMON

Beware, beware, beware – there’s danger about. Danger from too much knowledge, and too little sense, too much learning and too little understanding, too much talk and too little thought. Danger from a thousand years of mistranslation and biased interpretation. Watch out there’s Genesis about. Add to that the stilling of the storm and you have two very strong visual images, two very evocative scenes.

The story of the stilling of the storm is important at many levels, but it is more powerfully told in St Mark – so I’ll wait until it comes to his turn again.

So that leaves the passage from Genesis which is hardly any easier; this morning we heard the beginning of the story, but we all know its ending; forbidden fruit and the boot. No part of the Old Testament has, over the years, been more abused and forced to fit preconceived cultural assumptions than the story of Adam and Eve. We can blame Milton and Paradise lost for some of it, the male dominance of previous centuries for some more of it, and the strange belief that our English Bibles are unerringly accurate renditions of the words of God, for the rest of it.

Let’s blow away some of the more obvious misconceptions clung to by even modern preachers and translators. The woman’s creation did not mark her as inherently inferior to the man, she was not a wicked temptress, neither was she morally weaker than the man; she was not seen as the root of all mankind’s troubles; God’s judgement upon her did not place her in a position of subservience to the man; she was not ‘cursed’.

It is true the story was originally written from a male perspective and within a patriarchal society, yet it makes room for the celebration of woman, for sensitive and poignant comment upon her trials and tribulations. You will not find the devil in Genesis either, there is no warring of heavenly powers and no fallen angels, (the snake was a snake, not a demi-god in snake’s clothing) – there wasn’t even an apple mentioned in the garden of Eden, I digress but you get the drift. I could go on ad infinitum – but I won’t there’s no time. But there is one mistranslation I will tackle. Because it is so endemic it will stand as a cautionary tale.

Ask anyone how the Bible’s first woman was created, and they will tell you that God formed her from one of Adam’s ribs – we heard it this morning. The Hebrew word translated almost universally as rib is Tsela it occurs 41 times in the Old Testament, and it is translated as beam, board, chamber, side chamber corner, halting, leaf, plank, and most commonly by far, as ‘side’ – the side of a hill, the side of a temple or an altar.

Only in Chapter 2 of Genesis is Tsela translated as a person’s rib. If we use instead the more usual meaning we have the woman being built by God from the man’s side. His exclamation on seeing her now makes sense, ‘This one, this time, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!’ She is indeed flesh from his flesh not just bone of his bones, note too the plural ‘bones’ – bone of my bones – not just a measly rib.

The scandal of the rib is only one of a legion of such errors. Of themselves they would not be such a problem, were it not for how they had been used in the 2,000 years of Christian history. Used to justify a culture where, for example, women have been relegated to the status of the weaker sex, accused of possessing a fundamental moral flaw, their claims to any property or rights subverted to the nearest male relative, or worse, their husband.

The historically literal reading, or misreading, of this creation story has overwhelmed the subtleties of the original and its careful placing after the account of the first seven days. It is only within the context of God’s good creation can this story of mankind’s place be understood. It is indeed a story with a sad ending, but not a hopeless one, it still speaks of God’s care and love for man and woman.

The story is a triumph of Hebrew prose, carefully balanced and interconnected. There are, for example, 16 words used to describe the creation of man, and 16 for the creation of woman. Word plays abound, man is ‘adam and the ground which formed him is ‘adamah, when he sees the woman he takes for himself a new name – ish and calls her ishshah – now he knows his identity, found in hers.

Such are the subtleties of the original. It is an amazing paradox that just as the words have been given the status of the words of God, their beauty and depth of meaning have been subverted and corrupted. Moslems so respect their scriptures that translations are frowned upon; you can see their point.

Enough of this rambling polemic against sloppy biblical theology. What do we do with this ancient and beautiful story, from another age, another culture, another language?

We now know so much about our created and evolved world, what mysteries are there left that might need such a story? What can it still say to us? It was intended to describe the human condition, is it still true? Do we recognise a world where there are choices, where there is danger as well as safety, good possibilities and bad outcomes? Do we recognise a world where there is vocation, freedom and prohibition?

A vocation to tend and care for the garden – a vocation to work, to share in God’s creation, as independent, self-aware beings, given freedom. ‘You may eat from every tree in the garden’, elemental sustenance, there is freedom to harvest; but along with freedom was also given…. prohibition, our freedom has boundaries.

Such a world is recognisable to me. And, along with it the consequences of failure to follow the insights the story has to offer – the spoiling of vocation, the failure to fulfil the possibilities of freedom, and the disobedient crossing of the boundaries. Such a world is one where God may still be found walking in the cool of the garden, but it is also one where we continually hope to hide from him.

If such a world feels familiar we should accept the timeless truth of the noblest of stories…. that God is intimately concerned with our creation and our best happiness, that he expects us to honour our vocation, explore our freedom and respect the boundaries.

The failure of Adam and Eve is essentially the same failure as that of the disciples in that boat, a failure of faith, faith in a providing God. A God who provides, though, on his terms.

That is how things are for men and women, no less now in the age of genetic manipulation and global warming, than when Genesis was written, perhaps even more so: the stakes are even higher. If this garden becomes barred to us, where are we to go?

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH

Let us declare our faith in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ:

Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures;
he was buried; he was raised to life on the third day
in accordance with the scriptures;
afterwards he appeared to his followers,
and to all the apostles: this we have received,
and this we believe. Amen. 1 Corinthians 15.3-7

HYMN – Jesus calls us o’er the tumult NEH200 – St Andrew

1 Jesus calls us! O’er the tumult

Of our life’s wild restless sea

Day by day his voice is sounding,

Saying, ‘Christian follow me’:

2 As of old Saint Andrew heard it

By the Galilean lake,

Turned from home and toil and kindred,

Leaving all for his dear sake.

3 Jesus calls us from the worship

Of the vain world’s golden store,

From each idol that would keep us,

Saying, ‘Christian, love me more’.

4 In our joys and in our sorrows,

Days of toil and hours of ease,

Still he calls, in cares and pleasures,

‘Christian, love me more than these’.

5 Jesus calls us! By thy mercies,

Saviour, may we hear thy call,

Give our hearts to thy obedience,

Serve and love thee best of all.

INTERCESSIONS – John Wilkinson

Heavenly Father, sometimes our lives are so full of worries that we forget how you look after us through every aspect of our lives. When worries begin to spiral out of control, help us to turn them into conversations with you, confident that you will calm our anxiety and give us hope for the future.