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Saturday, June 7

Today’s Readings: Psalm 144; Genesis 9:18-29; Matthew 21:12-22; Romans 4:1-12; Psalm 32

Everyone once in a while I run across a story in the Bible that gets me upset and makes my blood boil. Today’s story from Genesis contains one of those stories. Let me tell you why it pushes every last one of my buttons. In the story, Noah goes out and gets hammered. He then proceeds to pass out naked in his tent. His son, Ham, innocently enters Noah’s tent and sees his father in his delicate condition. Ham leaves and tells his brothers who then proceed to back into Noah’s tent and drop a covering over Noah so no one else will see him exposed. Now if you were to objectively read the story – as if for the very first time - who would you say screwed up? I personally would say Noah. After all, he was the person who went out and overindulged. But in today’s story, who is the one who actually gets into trouble? Ham. Who cares that Ham’s viewing was totally accidental! To makes things worse, not only does Ham get in trouble, but Noah (the overindulgent oaf) has the nerve to go one step further and lay a curse on Ham and his descendants, the Canaanites. That curse seems more than a little hypocritical to me. I guess Noah never heard the saying, “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”. So given the fact that the story pushes all of my buttons, with what can I walk away from the story? Well, many would classify the story as an etymology story – a story that explains a piece of the world. In this case, it was used by the Israelites to explain the lot of the Canaanites. Unfortunately etymology stories go one step further: they moralize the reason for the outcome – the people did good so they were rewarded with [fill in the blank here]; or the people did bad so they were punished with [fill in the blank here]. Today’s story serves as a lesson to remind me of the dangers of doing that. Do you ever find yourself doing that? Find yourself, say, at a family reunion when someone asks about frumpy old Uncle Al and you say, “Well, poor old Al has had a rough old go of it. If he would have quit his drinking years ago, he wouldn’t have brought this on himself.” Or someone else asks where cousin Suzy is, and you find yourself saying, “Suzy would have loved to be here but she’s at home taking care of her three little ones. She might have been here if she would have stayed in school and not gotten mixed up with that good-for-nothing Bob.” Next find you find yourself creating an etymology story of your own designed not simply to explain something but moralize the outcome as well, stop and challenge yourself to see if you can re-write the story line and this time include a little room for God’s love and grace in it. Til next time…

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