The Scriptures read were Genesis chapters 1 to 3, Psalm 1, and Matthew 1.
Beginning of the year, beginning of the Old and New Testaments with the first Psalm thrown in.
I'm reading an unfamiliar translation which is probably good since all the readings are so familiar. I gotta say Eugene Peterson does a really good job with Genesis 1. Very terse language, just like the Hebrew. God doesn't say, "Let there be light." It's more like "Light: be!" Peterson makes it even briefer but it does the job.
There really isn't any detail to how things just be. Do they blink into existence like the things Jeannie would conjure up in the old I Dream of Jeannie sitcom? Or do they build up over millennia or epochs? (The Hebrew word for "day" is just as elastic as the English one.) The Bible doesn't say. Because it's not a science textbook. It's not about the how of creation; it's about the who. God did the creating. The "how," the tremendous number of details and specific processes involved, is not the point. God did it. As C.S. Lewis said, science is like the notes to a poem, the footnotes pointing out the meter and giving the etymology of the words, all the background stuff. The Bible is the poem itself.
And it's all got meaning and purpose. It's not an incredibly convenient series of accidents. We were created in God's image, both male and female. (There's a clue there.) Created in the image of a God about whom, at this point, all we know is that he is creative. Extravagantly so. Lots of stuff coming from him, every form of life imaginable. And we're supposed to take care of this world where we're planted. We're to rule as God's regents. Rule, but not misrule as we soon see.
Chapter 1 gives us an overview. Chapter 2 is a close-up. God gets his hands dirty, making us from the dirt. And he shows off all the other creatures to man, like any other artist, enjoying the pleasure his creations give others. But the job isn't quite finished. Man isn't meant to be alone. But he's the image of God, so he's perfect, right? Not quite. God puts the man under, harvests some stem cells or whatever and voila! Woman. That's more like it, Adam says. My other half. So maybe the image of God is not one person but at least two. In love. Living in harmony like 2 parts of the same body. So if people united in love is the image of God, what does that say about God? Is he only one person? Spoilers!
It was too good to last. The snake in the grass spoils everything. If you're a parent chapter 3 rings true. 3 kids doing what you told them not to. There's the instigator, the patsy (the one who gets talked into it by the smarter kid) and the lookout. And the cookie in the cookie jar, the forbidden fruit? A shortcut to being like a grownup. Do this and you'll be like Daddy. They're like kids getting into the liquor cabinet. They're not old enough to handle this. Innocence is lost and the world looks different. And here comes Dad!
Everybody is shifting the blame. It was his idea. She made me do it. Everybody out of the pool, says Dad. Because you betrayed my trust, there are gonna be some new rules from now on. Things are not going to be so easy around here. And don't even think about immortality. You're not ready for that yet.
So world created, paradise planted, whole thing ruined in a recognizably human manner, all in 3 short chapters. The story's off at a gallop.
Psalm 1. I really hate paraphrases of the psalms. All the beauty is sacrificed for meaning. Least successful part of Peterson's translation so far. But his introductions are great and he's right: the psalms are prayers. They are not the perfect poems of perfect people. So I shall give him the benefit of the doubt.
Matthew 1. I got through 3 chapters of Genesis without a hint of "begats" and then right at the start of Matthew: wham! 42 generations of people with hard to pronounce names. But there are some mighty interesting folks here if you've read ahead in the OT. Tamar, who dressed as a prostitute and got pregnant by her father-in-law because he broke his promise to his son's widow. And we have Solomon, born to David by the wife of Uriah. Matthew draws attention to the fact that Bathsheba was the wife of another man, whom David had killed. This is Jesus' lineage. God not only becomes a man but he is born to ordinary flawed people with messy and embarrassing family stories.
And Mary is almost another. Joseph was going to break things off quietly before the angel came to him in a dream. How long an interval was there between Joseph finding out about Mary's pregnancy and the dream? How did Mary feel while her whole marriage and reputation were up in the air? How much flack and how many winks and rude jokes did Joseph have to endure after he decided to stand by his pregnant fiancee?
Jesus is born and the ball is rolling. In Genesis we see humans start to wreck God's world and in Matthew we see God's plan to restore and redeem it get underway. To be continued...
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