Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, October 13, 2024

You all know the story of Adam and Eve.  They live in the Garden of Eden.  The deal is, they get to live in this paradise, but they are not, definitely not, to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge.  God told Adam he would die if he ate that fruit.  But Adam and Eve disobeyed.  They ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge.  And – surprise! – God didn’t put them to death.  Instead, he expelled them from the Garden of Eden.  He visited other consequences on them, too, but he did not kill them.  We might say he gave them a new deal.  Pretty surprising. 

You all know the story of Noah in the Bible.  God is so fed up with humankind that He sends a flood to wash the world clean.  Everyone and everything is killed except for Noah, his family, and two of each of kind of animal.  When it is over, God is horrified by what He (or She) has done.  God promises – surprise! – never, ever to do this again.  Whatever deal God had with humans before the flood, God now has a different deal  It’s  another new  deal.  

The Bible is full of stories: Adam and Eve, the Flood, Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors, Moses in the basket and Moses and the Ten Commandments, Daniel in the Lion’s Den, Ruth and Boaz, David and Goliath, David and Bathsheba, Joshua at the Gates of Jericho, Jonah and the Whale, the Manna from Heaven, the Loaves and the Fishes, Lazarus Raised from the Dead, the Crucifixion and the Empty Tomb: stories, lots and lots of stories.

Some of the stories are tragic, some comic, some just plain weird  Some of them purport to tell history, like the parting of the Red Sea or the Babylonian captivity of the Israelites.  Some, especially in the New Testament, are timeless parables, like the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son. 

All the stories seem to have something to do with our relationship to God: what God expects of us, and what happens to people who don’t live up to God’s expectations.

Many of the stories are about people who have stopped paying attention to God and who are brought up sharp by God.  God, apparently, intervenes to express God’s displeasure in some dramatic ways. 

Some are stories about God helping to rescue people in difficult circumstances.  Some are stories about people who thought they were doing what God asked only to find that God, apparently, is asking them to do something completely different. 

You can read these stories one at a time and that’s what most of us do most of the time.  But you can also try to fit them into one big story.  It’s the one big story that’s on my mind this morning.  The one big story: we don’t talk about that as often as we do the many little stories.

I want to pause here to say that I do not ask you to believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God.  I do not ask you to believe that every word of it is the literal truth.  I don’t believe that.  But I do think the Bible is an extraordinary account (or really a collection of accounts) of people trying to seek the truth and to be faithful to God to the best of their understanding.  So, what’s the big story that runs through all the stories? 

When you try to see the stories as fitting into one big story, the striking things is how often the story changes abruptly.  We seem to be headed in one direction and then, whoops, we’re headed in another quite different direction. 

Adam and Eve, Noah: these aren’t the only times we see an abrupt shift in the big story, a change in the basic deal. 

— Following the Flood, we follow the stories of Abraham and subsequent patriarchs  — Isaac, Jacob, Joseph.  The Israelites, and the Israelites alone, become God’s Chosen People.  We follow them through their wanderings and their captivity in Egypt.  It seems like God has abandoned his people.  And then we get their amazing escape, the Exodus, the parting of the Red Sea. 

— The story changes again, pretty dramatically, with Moses and the Ten Commandments.  Once again, God’s Chosen People haven’t been very faithful, haven’t been paying attention.  They are lost in the wilderness.   Again, God tries something new.  He gives them a kind of cheat sheet in the form of two rock tablets.  Simple.  Clear.  Thou Shalt!  Thou Shalt Not!  It’s another new deal.  Get it?

Got It!  The Bible story continues with that Mosaic Law the framework for quite a while.  In this portion of the story, sometimes people remember, sometimes they abide by the rules, but more often they don’t.  Still, that’s the deal.  Obey the law.

Or: that’s the deal until it isn’t.  We get a dramatically new deal with the coming of Jesus, another abrupt turn in the story.  Jesus says “I come not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.”  And then we’re surprised, even shocked, when he’s crucified.  Now, no more God’s Chosen People.  Now the deal is for everyone.  An epoch of law gives way to an epoch of loving God and loving your neighbor.  It’s a more demanding deal but probably a better one.

It’s a zig-zag story.  It just isn’t the case that the Bible presents us with God’s expectations as never-changing.  So what’s going on here with all these new deals?

Some theologians, especially some Bible literalist evangelicals who are penecostals or charismatics (not my people!) have a fancy way of talking about these abrupt shifts in the story about what God expects of us.  They call each of the new deals a “dispensation.”  Some of these theologians list as many as seven dispensations, seven different deals between God and human beings.  But however you count, when you look at the big story in the Bible, it’s hard not to see some very abrupt shifts — zig-zags — each one a new deal.

Many people who talk this way, about “dispensations” want us to believe we are in the next-to-last of these dispensations.  They want us to believe that there is one more to come and they know exactly what that deal will look like.  I’m far from persuaded they know what they are talking about.

When I look at the Bible as a story with some very abrupt changes of direction, here’s what catches my attention..

One is that because the deal keeps changing, it is a little risky to go backwards to some moment in the Bible and say, “that’s what God expects of us because that’s what God expected of Adam and Eve.”  Or “because that’s what God expected of Abraham.” Or “because that’s what God expected of Moses.”  The rules in Leviticus may have been appropriate then, but now we have a whole new deal.  God’s expectations keep changing.  At least in the Bible telling, God keeps changing her mind. 

Another thing that fascinates me about seeing the Bible’s big zig-zag story is that it shows us God is acting in history.  Bible isn’t a story of God setting things up one way and letting the whole thing run just the way She expected.  God seems to be surprised at what human beings do – or disappointed might often be the better word –, and so deals with this by changing the deal.  There simply isn’t one deal for all time. 

Some of us are parents, and maybe this behavior sounds familiar.  A child of ours strays from our expectations.  We try one thing, then we try another, and another.  Our approach is not fixed.  I don’t myself know whether God is ever surprised.  I don’t pretend to understand God, and I don’t think any other human truly does.   I’m just saying that this is how the Bible presents God:  as surprised, and therefore as trying something new, and then something new again.  

A third thing I find fascinating in all this is that no human being sees these abrupt changes coming.  No one accurately foresees what God is about to do.  Adam and Eve didn’t, Noah didn’t, Isaac didn’t Joseph didn’t, Moses didn’t. 

Now you might be thinking that the coming of Jesus at least was foretold   There are prophecies in Isaiah aren’t there, that told us to expect the Messiah.  Sure, I guess.  That’s the way some of the Gospels tell the story.  But for me, that’s not very convincing.  In truth, Jesus was a big surprise to everybody:

· He certainly was a surprise to Mary and Joseph,

· a surprise to the Disciples,

· a surprise to the Pharisees and Sadducees,

· a surprise to Herod and Pilate,

· a surprise to Paul.

· I’d say, a surprise to everyone. 

And if Jesus was a surprise, then we don’t know what’s going to happen next.  We have to keep listening to God.  God is still talking to us, and that’s something Quakers understand unusually well. 

God has been acting in history the Bible tells us.  For all we know, God is still acting in history.  And maybe God has another surprise for us. 

One of most important things that has drawn me to Quaker worship is that Quakers work from the assumption that God has more to say to us.  We are confident that we can hear God, now, in the present, if we will still our hearts and listen.  That’s why we gather for worship in the way we do. 

So stay tuned, I tell myself.  That’s an essential part of the big story.   

Also posted on River View Friend