In the fifth chapter Reza starts with this story that I want to share with you now.  It’s the story of Atrahasis and parts of it might sound familiar to you.

When the Gods, instead of humans, did the work and bore the loads, dug the canals and cleared the channels, dredged the marshes and plowed the fields, they groaned amongst themselves and grumbled over the masses of excavated soil.  The labor was heavy, the misery too much.  So they set fire to their tools, set fire to their spades.  And off they went, one and all, to the gate of the great God Enlil the counselor of the gods.

“We have to put a stop to the digging,” they cried.  “The load is excessive.  It is killing us!  The labor is heavy, the misery too much!”

Enlil consulted Mami, midwife of the gods. “You are the womb-goddess,” he said. “Create a mortal that he may bear the yoke.  Let humans bear the load of the gods.”

So Mami, with the help of the wise god Enki, mixed clay with blood and created seven males and seven females.  She gave them picks and spades, and led them, two by two, down to earth to relieve the gods of their labor.

Six hundred and six hundred years passed, and the earth became too wide and the people too numerous.  The land was as noisy as a bellowing bull.  And the gods grew restless at the racket.

“The noise of mankind has become too much,” Enlil snapped. “I am losing sleep.”

A divine assembly of the gods was convened, and there it was decided by all to make a great flood that would wipe humanity from the face of the earth so that the gods could finally be free of the clamor.

Now, down on the earth, there was a pious man named Atrahasis, whose ear was open to his own god, Enki.  He would speak with Enki, and Enki would speak with him.

In a dream, Enki came to Atrahasis and made his voice heard.  “Dismantle your house and build a boat,” the wise god Enki warned. “Leave all your possessions and put aboard the seed of all living things.  Draw out the boat that you will make on a circular plan.  Let her length and breadth be equal.  Make upper decks and lower decks.”

So Atrahasis built a boat and loaded it with the seed of all living things.  He put on board his kith and kin.  He put on board the birds flying in the heavens.  He put on board cattle from the open county, wild beasts from the open country, wild animals from the steppes.  Two by two they entered the boat.  Then Atrahasis too, entered the boat and shut the door.

When the first light of dawn appeared, a black cloud rose from the base of the sky.  Everything light turned into darkness.  The tempest arose like a battle force.  Anzu, the storm god – the lion-headed eagle – tore at the sky with his talons.

Then the flood came.  Like a wild ass screaming, the winds howled.  The darkness was total; there was no sun.  no man could see his fellow, no people could be distinguished from the sky.  Even the gods were afraid of the deluge.  They withdrew to heaven, where they cowered like dogs crouched by a wall.

For seven days and seven nights the torrent, the storm, the flood came on.  The tempest overwhelmed the land.  Bodies clogged the river like dragonflies.  When the seventh day arrived, the storm, which had struggled like a woman in labor, blew itself out.  The sea became calm and the flood-plain flat as a roof.

The boat came to rest atop Mount Nimush and Atrahasis exited.  He released a dove.  The dove came back, for no perching place was visible to it.  He released a swallow.  The swallow came back, for no perching place was visible to it.  He released a raven.  The raven did not come back.  So Atrahasis and his kith and kin, and the birds of the heavens, and the cattle from the open country, and the wild beasts from the open country, and the wild animals from the steppes came out of the boat.  And there he made a sacrifice of thanks to Enki his god.

But when Enlil smelled the sacrifice and saw the boat, he was furious.  Once again, he called the divine assembly to order. “We, all of us, agreed together on an oath.  No form of life should have escaped.  How did any man survive the catastrophe?”

Enki, the wise, spoke. “I did it, in defiance of you!  It was I who made sure life was preserved.”

The gods were humbled by Enki’s words.  They wept and were filled with regret.  Mami, the midwife of the gods, cried, “How could I have spoken such evil in the gods’ assembly?  I myself gave birth to them; they are my own people.”

So Enlil and Enki came to a compromise. “Instead of imposing a flood, let a lion come up and diminish the people.  Instead of imposing a flood, let a wolf come up and diminish the people.  Instead of imposing a flood, let famine lessen the land.  Let war and plague savage the population.”

The divine compromise reached, Enki came down to the boat and took Atrahasis by the hand.  He took his wife by the hand.  He touched their foreheads and made a declaration.

“Henceforth, this man and this woman shall be as we gods are.”

Now, this was a long story, I know, but I wanted to share it in its entirety so that you could compare and contrast it with the obvious parallel of Noah and the ark. 

If you’re like I was, I’m sure you’re thinking, ok so this writing of Atrahasis and the flood totally plagiarized from the Old Testament.  The only problem with that is that Atrahasis was written about four thousand years ago, while Noah and the Ark was written roughly three thousand years ago.

In fact, flood epics are prevalent throughout many different religions and cultures in the world.  Atrahasis may be the first we know about, but it definitely isn’t the only. 

In the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh the hero is Utnapishtim and that was written about 1200 BCE.  In 300 BCE Babyloniaka of Berossus was composed and our Noah in that story is called Xisuthros.

In his book Reza goes on to explain that, “flood epics can be found in Egypt, Babylon, Greece, India, Europe, East Asia, North and South America, and Australia.”

Now why do I tell you this?  Is it to say that the Bible isn’t original and we should throw out the story of Noah because like Alex has told us time and again, it probably didn’t happen and instead is just a story.  No, not quite.  In fact, I think that this is an example of how I think our stories, our gospel needs to be shared.

Each of these stories of the flood are different.  They have differences in not just characters: the human, the gods, etc., but they also have differences in reasoning for the flood, outcome after the flood, who learned a lesson, what was that lesson, and so on.  “Each,” as Reza puts it, “reworked to reflect the particular culture and religion of the storyteller.”

In this way, the story of the great flood stays alive.  At this point, I don’t think it matters if the great flood actually flooded the whole earth, or what someone would have considered the earth before they could actually travel the expanse of it or check the internet to see if it was happening everywhere, or if it never happened and was just a story that people have told for over 4000 years.  Because the story was alive. 

It could move and change and shift, keeping the central ideas, but adjusting and evolving for the audience that it was being told to.  This, in fact, was how our Holy Stories were before they were written down in the Old Testament. 

The stories of creation, Babel, Noah, Joseph, Moses, and so on.  They were oral stories.  Told time and again, through the generations, shifting and changing with each generation’s retelling, truly living among the people’s lives.

This is why Genesis 1 and 2 are two separate creation stories.  Because they are branches of whatever the original story was, each spoken through generations who needed or saw their God as different things. 

Genesis 1 is an all-powerful God who speaks everything into existence and Genesis 2 is an intimate God who breathes life into the nostrils of the first human.  What other stories of creation could have been in the branching creation story tree?

Of course, this all stopped when we canonized our scriptures.  When we put a hard front and hard end on the stories and scriptures that we thought encapsulated our story with God.  This by itself is something that I have struggled with mightily for many years now, since before seminary. 

If we believe that scriptures are God breathed are we then saying that God has finished breathing?  Or are we saying that God can only breathe through these specific texts?

The side effect that I don’t think was anticipated through the canonization of the scriptures was the isolation of the church.  By no longer allowing the holy stories to permeate through culture and difference, we made a singular version the “correct one” and told anyone who didn’t fit with that version of the story that they had to get in line with it or they weren’t welcome.

Essentially we shifted from allowing the story to come to you, allowing the story to shift and change and bend, to saying that no, it’s you who has to come to the story, it’s you who has to shift and change and bend.

This deviated even further into the culture of Christianity.  To the point where there is specifically Christian music, and books, and movies, and dating sites, and on and on we go, further isolating ourselves from the world in the name of Christianity.  Thinking that those genres are the only canonically Godly ones.

We are isolating ourselves and saying, I’ve found the story, I’m part of it, and if you want to be part of the holy story you have to do things the right way like me.  What I mean, is that we have not only deviated from the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians, but done a complete 180. 

Paul states that for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of the good news of Jesus he will be all things to all people.  He will be a chameleon.  A Jew to Jews, someone under the law or outside the law depending on who he is talking with, weak to the weak, and so on. 

And we can see him enact some of this plan in Acts.  When Paul speaks to the Athenians he uses something they know.  He speaks about an alter that they already have in their city.  “To an unknown God”. 

You see the Athenians were very pious.  They were polytheistic, meaning that they believed in many Gods, but they also didn’t believe that they know the totality of those Gods.  So in order to not offend a God that they had forgotten or a God that they didn’t know about, they made this alter and made sacrifices to an “unknown God”. 

Paul uses this alter to say, the God that you say you don’t know, I know, and let me tell you all about him!  He went to them, saw where they were, and included them in the story.

The 1 Corinthians passage is even stronger than this though.  Paul calling himself and us to be all things to all people is less of a call for attempting to become whoever you’re trying to reach and more, in my eyes, a call of empathy. 

It’s not calling you to try and mirror culture or clothing or vocabulary or likes and dislikes even.  It’s a deeper calling.

It’s a call to see where someone is, to feel with them, to embrace their life and struggle and success.  It’s a call to walk a mile in their shoes, to understand who they are and how they are and why they are… Because it’s through this that you may, as Paul puts it, “win” someone.

It’s through truly connecting with them that you can invite them to see what you see.  That you’re part of the Holy Story of God, the story that hasn’t ended with John’s letter of Revelation, a story that permeates all of history and extends throughout the universe, a story that says that God is always moving and shifting and bending and reaching. 

Yes, you are part of the Holy Story of God and you always have been.  God reaches to you, God comes to you, God envelops you, God breathes through you…

and it is when we see everyone this way that we will truly see that God’s Holy Story cannot be contained in a mere 66 books, but God’s Big Overwhelming Holy Story is beyond those pages, beyond our genres, beyond our divisions, calling us to be more than we are, to throw off the labels that we put on ourselves and others, to truly see each person as a brother and sister, and to embrace that they too are part of God’s Holy Story. 

It is our calling to see ourselves and all others as part of the story.  Allow that story to come to each person.  See that each person is another page in our story book… and that our story isn’t completed until all the pages are included. 

Amen.