Tag Archives: Genesis 9:8-17

Language, Mark, Teaching

Mark 1:9-15 – The path to the LORD requires testing

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In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

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This is the Gospel selection from the Episcopal Lectionary for the first Sunday in Lent, Year B. It will next be read aloud in church by a priest on Sunday, February 18, 2018. It is important as the testimony of Simon Peter, through Mark, who was a disciple of John the Baptizer and Jesus, who knew that both of those holy guides had endured extreme tests of piety before beginning ministries that served God.

This reading is accompanied by the reading from Genesis (9:8-17) that tells of God’s covenant with Noah, and all life forms that survived the Great Flood, that committed, “never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” The sign of that covenant would forevermore be the rainbow.

The accompanying Epistle is from Peter’s first letter to the churches of Asia Minor (modern Turkey), where Peter related the presence of the Holy Spirit as a covenant similar to that made between God and Noah. Peter wrote, “And baptism, which [the Great Flood] prefigured, now saves you– not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” This then becomes metaphor that makes the rainbow be seen as the baptism of the Holy Spirit, connecting one on earth to the right hand Spirit of God in heaven. Through a rainbow God speaks, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

As a lesson for the first Sunday of Lent, Peter is saying (through Mark) that one must first hear the voice of God, which streaks across the sky like lightning, arcing down to those who take the time beg for forgiveness of the sins recognized as of their own doings. Second, THE LENTEN MESSAGE is one who hears this voice and is immediately driven by the Spirit out into the wilderness, where one’s sincere repentance is tested. Third, as a result of having successfully overcome the addictive temptations of an evil world, one becomes a minister for God, as the embodiment of Jesus Christ.

Those three steps are the demands required by God of all who seek the reward of heaven and eternal bliss. That means no steps can be avoided and no steps can be assigned to a surrogate.

If it was easy to get into heaven, people would just live anyway they pleased and then add at the end an, “Oh by the way God, I am sorry for all the fun I had being a sinner” apology. There would be no need for heaven because being reborn back on Earth [reincarnation] would be the best reward possible [except the losing all your possessions part].

In the story of Noah and the Great Flood, Noah was the last descendant of the great Patriarchs, who at the age of 500, when his grandfather Methuselah reached the end of his life, the flooding rains came. Prior, he heard the voice of God tell him to prepare for a world-wide flood, where he had to build a large boat in the middle of dry land. He did that and was ridiculed by sinful human beings who saw that as unnecessary work.  They mocked Noah for listening to a voice they could not hear. Thus, the prerequisite for baptism by the Holy Spirit (the Great Flood) is to follow one’s heart, with a desire to make God happy, rather than follow the crowd down the path to oblivion.

One has to see the work of building an ark as a test of devotion.  Noah building an ark to God’s specifications is then a model for the forty days and nights Jesus spent in the wilderness.  Both Noah and Jesus had a plan, although nothing is written that details the plan God gave Jesus.

The forty days and forty nights of rain, followed by 150 days that the high waters prevailed, are saying that Noah and his family spent time on turbulent seas being tested after they had proved their faith by building the ark.  Their faith saved them, although the voyage took them to an unknown land.  A similar test came to Jesus after he spent forty days in a bone dry dessert – the test of his ministry.

When Mark wrote that Jesus, “was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him,” was not Noah on the ark with pairs of wild beasts, of every kind? Was the ark not kept afloat by angels, just as the needs of Jesus were met? Did not Moses pray to God for water to be found in dry land of the Sinai, with God delivering?  Likewise, Noah (who was not a sailor) and Jesus (who was not like John the Baptist) had faith, but stayed in constant communication with the LORD, through prayer.

A test of faith might only officially be over forty days and forty nights, but if one is crying out in the wilderness for the test to finally be over, then one is not ready for that test. One is not “up the creek without a paddle,” one is drowning in a Great Flood without an ark. Jesus aced his test because he already had made a lifelong covenant with the LORD. Satan cannot temp one with that holy survival kit handy. However, Satan has a way of finding a way to tempt the common survivalist, one who does not pray, thus cannot hear the voice of God within.

When Peter wrote in his letter, “Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God” (1 Peter 3:18), he was basically saying a Christian has to hear the voice of God warning one of a coming Great Flood; but rather than that voice saying to build an ark for survival, one must be reborn as Jesus Christ. That is the only way to survive a forty day test of faith. Christ within cleanses one of the fear and guilt of sin, turning the unrighteous righteous.  Christ within brings one to God.

Being one with God and reborn as Christ means Lent is not a New Year’s resolution (i.e.: an empty promise made to oneself). Lent is the test ride of a new YOU, a YOU that has fallen in love with God and become married into a new commitment and devotion that serves only God.

Lent is not a prescribed period of time when one is forced to comply with unwanted limitations. Lent is personal time spent asking God to write His laws on one’s heart, and explain those laws through the Holy Spirit’s knowledge, so that one finds only joy and happiness from the most barren of existences.

Lent is having one’s eyes opened, to see the illusion that the worldly domain really is and to come to the realization that no illusion – no dream – is worthy of sacrificing eternal bliss to gain.  Heaven is the reality we escaped, but need to return to.  However, when our souls fell to earth, we fell asleep and dreamt, thinking vivid dreams are real.  Jesus is the call to wake up and return to heaven.

When one sees Peter having told Mark that Jesus went to Galilee proclaiming the Gospel at the beginning of his ministry, it is easy to overlook how he said, “After John was arrested.” John the Baptizer held Jesus in his arms in the flooding waters of the Jordan River, so he too heard the voice of God speak. John also was baptized by the Holy Spirit at that time, so the rainbow arched into him, making him ready for his test in the wilderness that became a Roman prison.

John the Baptist would give up his life for his faith in God. So too would Jesus. So too would the Apostles of Jesus. Therefore, Lent is not about being forced to do without something (sacrificing one thing), while still holding onto all the other addictions that seem impossible to let go [where is your cell phone now?].  Lent is a test of one’s readiness to turn away from a world that offers illusions that suggest it is okay to sin, if everyone else is sinning.  Instead, one must be prepared “to be arrested” … stopped … willing to sacrifice the brain in one’s head (even have that head served on a silver platter), in order to ask others to do the same.

Jesus never forbade anyone from making Fat Tuesday a theme for a life, 365 days a year serving self, grabbing onto all the physical pleasures one desires. Free will means free to sin, because sins of ego are only possible in the earthly domain.  Doing as one pleases is what makes a worldly existence seem like a vacation for some; while others rue the day they were born, because the life they have been reborn into does what it pleases with them. Living for today is blindly walking the path of reincarnation; but, like the saying goes, “You can pay me now or pay me later, but pay you will.”

That world existed when God told Noah, “Enough is enough.  Get ready, because I am washing the slate clean.” Peter wrote of those past sinners as being those, “who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently,” to no avail.

The ruler of the world is Satan, who cares nothing about humanity. Satan tempts for the purpose of trickery. He desires to steal souls from God, and he uses the illusions of the world to get humanity to do wicked things. God promised not to wash the filth of humanity off the face of the earth with another Great Flood. Instead, the rainbow he would send would be called Jesus.

Jesus brought salvation to the world, just as Noah was told how to build an ark. However, the idea of an ark did not save Noah and the wild beasts he took with him; in the same way, the idea of Jesus saving people does not prepare them to be tested, as ready to be saved.

Lent is about a willing test that one has been prepared to take.  It is like forty days of study prior to the SATs or GREs or GMATs or any other difficult test of one’s preparedness  [name your hardest standardized test here].

Lent is like seven years of hard-nosed collegiate study, so one can begin a career that makes all the hard work worthwhile.  Children seldom prepare for such tests without a good father figure making demands on their preparation, telling them to use their talents wisely.  Likewise, Lent comes when one has heard the voice of God speak out loud and say, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Lent is not a test of survival skills. Lent is a test of one’s readiness to give up one’s life for God, so Jesus can return and spread the Word through your body, causing your mouth to say, “Repent, and believe in the good news.”

You may now turn over your exam sheet and let the test begin NOW.

Genesis, Language, Teaching

Genesis 9:8-17 – The covenant of no more great floods

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God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

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In this reading it is important to understand that “the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations” means every creature that has God’s breath of life within them – Man and animal. It is easy to think this is a covenant between God and Noah [thus Man only] to never again destroy humanity by a great flood [a universal inundation by water], but it includes “every living creature” that coexists on earth with Man. It says nothing about granting eternal life to all that breathe air upon the earth, as mortality was still in place [including fish that breathe in water, unaffected by floods, with their own lives naturally limited in scope]. Therefore, it is important to see the value of such a covenant that a great flood would not be repeated as a form of sacrifice separating a soul from its flesh.

Sacrifice must be seen as the issue of a covenant. God willed this sacrifice. It was not voluntary. Still, in light of Cain and Abel being priests who made sacrifices of other living things, where fire was the transformative symbolism of death that pleased God [or didn’t, as far as plants being burned], those sacrifices were individual and yearly. The Great Flood was global and all-encompassing, brought about by the relationship between God the Father and Mother Earth, the two essences that were joined in all life forms possessing souls.

The key to this reading is the promise of a rainbow, such that God told Noah, “I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” The promise to Noah and the animals of the land and air is one between God and the earth. God promised to never again cause the earth to become submerged, as a way for flesh to be destroyed.

Here, the symbolism of flesh equals the essence of earth. The symbolism of water is emotional outpouring, in a physical sense. Water is the union of hydrogen (2 atoms) and oxygen (1 atom) – earth and ether, symbolizing body and spirit. God had become upset by the way His elohim corrupted the earth, causing monsters and giants to arise from the interbreeding of lesser gods with female human beings, which acted harshly as demigods towards the creatures God had commanded His gods to create: the living creatures that culminated with male and female Man.

This means the symbolism of the rainbow in the clouds must be seen as the life breath (souls) rising from those killed in the inundation, ascending from the earth, along with the evaporating molecules of water. The clouds were the same as the smoke from burning altars, but this was caused by God, thus reflected as evaporation being pierced by the light of God’s sun. The rainbow is then symbolic of sacrifice that is pleasing to God.

Relative to the Greek mythological goddess name Iris, who was the personification of the rainbow; she was a messenger of the elohim (gods).

According to Hesiod, she had the duty to carry a vessel of water from the River Styx [the river of the underworld] whenever a god had made a solemn oath. That water would be used [drank] if the god lied, rendering him or her unconscious for a year. [Source: Encyclopedia Britannica] Thus, from this mythology it can be seen that the beauty of a rainbow is a distraction, when the deeper meaning is it is both a symbol of death and a promise. The souls separated from their flesh in the Great Flood included many born of lesser gods, which had forced the earth to cover the world with floods to appease God the Father. Those demigods were forced into an oath of submission to YHWH, when born of fallen angels [a great lie].

When one sees this reading being paired with those for the first Sunday in Lent, in the Year B, the element of sacrifice must also be seen as the test of one’s commitment to serve God eternally. The reading ends with Jesus immediately being driven into the wilderness for forty days and nights [the same duration of the Great Flood]. However, more than the test of an oath by the waters of death brought by Iris [the temptation of Satan], the deeper meaning comes from the creation of something pleasing to God – the formation in the sky that is the bow from earth to heaven.

In the accompanying Gospel selection from Mark is written, “as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove.” This can be seen as metaphor for the symbolism of Iris, the goddess of the earth – Iris the rainbow nymph. The words used to state “coming out of the water” [“euthys anabainōn ek tou hydatos”] are less about Jesus remaining in water and standing up [a statement of his flesh] and much more about “immediately ascending from the water” [a statement of his soul]. The soul of Jesus became a sacrifice from symbolic death [baptism] that immediately released his soul to God. The soul of Jesus became the stuff of rainbows.

The presence of Jesus in water, along with John, places focus on the Greek word “ebaptisthē,” where the word states Jesus was “submerged” or “dipped underwater.” His presence in water deep enough to be submerged in becomes metaphor for the Great Flood, when many souls were separated from their flesh. The presence of water also stands out as the element used in ritual cleansing by Jews. Sins were viewed as dirt upon the flesh that needed to be bathed away. The souls of Jews, however, still felt the presence of their sins, which led to John bringing forth baptism by water, to be symbolic of death of the old [the filthy from sins], so that soul [it an eternal elohim] has died of flesh with the promise never to sin again. The joy of baptism by water brought with it an oath to serve God with a renewed soul, which was the symbolism of a promise made at a time when overwhelmed with emotions [the rainbow’s appearance]. Baptism by John was then fulfilling God’s promise that destroying flood waters would never again separate a soul from its flesh [saying all animals that breathe air have souls], as true death; it was more symbolic death by dunking, creating a soul in need to realize a need to promise self-service to God, which must then be fulfilled.

It is here that one must realize that Noah, his family, and the selection of animals-in-pairs had all been spared the death of the Great Flood. While the rest of the earth was destroyed by water, with their souls rising from the flood waters creating a rainbow of future promise for the earth [having been rid of evil], the family of those who had already made oaths to serve God, symbolically dying of self-ego in advance of mortal death, which they fulfilled was a parallel in selectivity that must be seen in the Jews. They were a race of people descended from Noah, through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. John the Baptizer was a Jew, as was Jesus, both in this lineage of selected children of God. However, the promises of all those lines of Man, who were offered the covenant of forgiveness, through an oath to God in exchange for eternal life [a Covenant made with Moses], time and again they had failed on their oaths and were forced to drink from the River Styx and suffer death [symbolic sleep]. Thus, ritual washing away of sins had fallen to the state of misery that led people to form a line to the River Jordan for a more spiritually symbolic cleansing.

Jesus would enter those waters with John, which should be seen as a parallel to Peter writing “a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water.” Just as Noah and his sons and family [with animals] were not souls in flesh that had failed in their oaths to God, so too were John and Jesus. While the Jews lining the shores of the Jordan were admitting their souls had failed to serve God wholly, both the souls of John and Jesus ascended at that time. As John baptized Jesus with water, Jesus baptized John with the Holy Spirit. So, the dove of God’s promise fell upon them both, like a peaceful symbol of land having been found amid the flood waters [an allusion to the dove bringing back a twig as a sign land had surfaced from the depths].

The impact of this selection from Genesis is that the first covenant between God and a line of selected children had been set. Previously, the Patriarchs, from Adam to Lamech, had lived among a sinful world that grew more and more sinful every year. The monsters of sin had to be sacrificed so the normal Man [male and female they were made] could be led by the priests that would be descended from the Patriarchs, without fear of monsters and giants seeming as powerful as the gods. The promise of God was that no more floods would come to destroy evil in the world. That promise meant Noah would serve God by beginning a lineage of priests who would henceforth lead mankind to the One God, in order for Man to find eternal life, each as an elohim [the storyline of the Holy Bible after the flood]. This means the rainbow was set as the symbol of God that death could truly become an oath of commitment that a soul would keep. However, the only way to keep that promise was by becoming one of the lineage of God, as more than a child of God.

Committing to the promise would evermore mean having one’s soul ascend to being a Son of God [male and female He makes them].