Once Upon a Time...

Rev. Amanda Kemery

Inspired: Origin Stories

Scripture: Genesis 32:22-30

Based on the book Inspired, by Rachel Held Evans

Once upon a time there was a family. Some relatives were connected by genetics, some simply by years of proximity and shared adventures. This family sat down for a meal. The long dining room table was set with linens and fine silverware. The food was decadent and the conversation flowing.

A young girl, Amanda, about 7 years old, watched in quiet wonder as the conversation bounced from one side of the table to the other in a beautiful yet unpredictable rhythm. The energy hummed. The food was enjoyed.

But then, ever so subtly, a small noise interrupted the voices: the soft thud of a fork hitting the carpeted floor. And everything stopped. Eyes widened with anticipation—or was it dread?—except for the person at the far end of the table. My uncle. He grinned, eyes twinkling with whimsical mischief. A head shook in silent admonition, while others began repositioning their hands, preparing for what was sure to come next.

Amanda watched with shocked delight as every adult at the table picked up a piece of silverware and hurled it over the dining room table, over the dogs begging by chair legs, and over the space between the table and the door to the kitchen. Every piece of silver clanged onto the linoleum floor in a cacophony worthy of a standing ovation.

“Party!” everyone yelled. And they laughed and clapped, and went on eating, despite being short one utensil. And the young girl just smiled in amazement as she gazed upon her family. Not surprised or confused, because this was not the first time nor was it the last that she would witness a family “party”. The ceremonial throwing of the silverware. She was not surprised or confused, but she was full of joy. And while she may not be able to name it yet, she was also full of gratitude for this loud, weird, and laughter-filled family.

Origin Stories

This is one of my origin stories. It’s a story that tells me about who I am, where I came from, and what the world is like. That’s what any good origin story does. Now, I imagine my origin story leaves you with some questions. You need some context... the origin of the origin story.

When I ask my family about how this ritual started, they can’t pinpoint a specific incident. But as far as they can remember, it started at the kitchen table, not the dining room table. It did in fact start with my uncle, probably at a normal family dinner. Someone dropped a utensil, and to make them feel better, or maybe to poke a little fun, he dropped one too. And then everyone joined in.

Why do they yell “party” after? No one remembers. But it became important to the process. The noise too is key—the sound of the silverware hitting the floor. So when this happened in the carpeted dining room, you couldn’t just drop your silverware; you had to throw your silverware into the kitchen so that it made the right noise.

My family looks very different from the family that sat around that dining room table in the early nineties. But if you drop a piece of silverware at any table around these people, brace yourself, because a party is coming.

Now even with that context, my origin story may still leave you with questions.

• Does it matter that we don’t remember why we call it a party?

  
  

• Can a party happen in any setting? What about a restaurant? What about during appetizer hour?

  
  

• Was the original intent of this ritual one of care and empathy, my uncle sharing and deflecting from the embarrassment of a dropped fork?

  
  

• Or was the original intent more of mockery, highlighting an innocent mistake and escalating it into a full-blown drama?

  
  

Biblical Origin Stories

Origin stories invite these kinds of questions. And the origin stories in our holy scriptures are no different. Our Bible is FULL of origin stories that tell us who we are, where we come from, and what the world is like. As we read and learn from and enjoy these stories, it’s helpful to know the context, because knowing when these stories were written, who wrote them, and why, is foundational for understanding them.

These stories also leave us with questions that we don’t always have the answers to. And sometimes these questions, unfortunately, can lead to a crisis of faith.

• What do we do with a creation story that sounds more like a fairy tale than an account that backs up what we know scientifically about the formation of our planet?

  
  

• How do we make sense of the family drama and violence in these stories?

  
  

• What do we do with the fact that the Bible contradicts itself time after time after time?

  
  

• How do we relate to a book that has been, and continues to be, weaponized to harass and exclude—a book that has been used to foster hate and intolerance, to incite violence and harm?

  
  

Our relationship with the Bible, and our lived human experience, will inevitably spark a crisis of faith. The good news is, as Rachel Held Evans points out, is that our Bible was forged from a crisis of faith.

Of course, the stories, poems and proverbs had been passed down for generations through oral tradition, but scholars believe that most of the Old Testament scripture was written beginning with the reign of King David, through the Babylonian invasion of Judah, and into the wake of the Babylonian exile when Israel was grappling with occupation from that mighty empire. The trauma of the exile shaped and changed and challenged the people of Israel.

This catastrophic event threw everything they thought they knew and believed into doubt. Were their collective sins to blame? Would repentance fix it? Had God abandoned them? Would their children forget their people’s most cherished values?

Much like today, you can imagine that this emotional suffering produced some great literature. They didn’t have their land. They didn’t have their king. They didn’t have their temple. But they did have their stories. They had their songs and they had their traditions. And these stories—these origin stories—helped the people grapple with their current reality and remember the nature of the God they knew.

Take the story of Adam and Eve—we often consider it an origin story for humanity, but many scholars consider it an origin story of Israel, a symbolic representation of their pattern of habitation, disobedience, and exile set in a primeval time. And while we’ve put the biblical creation stories at the center of our squabbles over science and politics, those things were not on the minds of the writers. Jewish scribes were seeking to assure an oppressed and scattered people that they were still loved by God.

The book of Genesis does not set out to answer questions about the scientific origins of our universe; it seeks to speak to a crisis of faith. It seeks to remind the people who they are, where they came from, and what the world is like.

And where is God in all of it? These questions raised by a people’s crisis of faith are as pressing as ever. And for them, as is true for us, the Spirit speaks the language of stories, calling a lost and searching people to gather together and remember.

Collective Remembering

We remember.

And it is this collective remembering, Evans reminds us, that produced the Bible—a book as complicated and dynamic as our relationship with God.

Look at the story of Jacob. At a pivotal point in his life, as he is preparing to reckon with his past and is wondering what his future holds—as he is in the wilderness between one bad situation and another—Jacob encounters the very presence of God. He doesn’t realize it at first, but when he does he demands a blessing. And God delivers it in the form of a name change. From now on he’ll be known as Israel, which means “he struggles with God”.

In the end, the fight concludes, and Jacob walks away with a limp after an injury to his hip. He goes on to make peace with his brother and his twelve sons become the 12 tribes of Israel. Evans says that “the significance of this story of family origins to the people of Israel cannot be overstated, for it demonstrates how the dynamic, personal, back-and-forth relationship between God and God’s people is embedded in their identity, their very name—Israel, ‘because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome’”.

Israel’s identity is rooted in this origin story: the story of a wandering and wondering people who struggle with their faith, a people who wrestle with God and emerge with both a blessing and a limp.

Evans reminds us that when it comes to Scripture, we have not been invited to adopt strict literalism or even safe disinterested liberalism. We have not been invited to an academic fraternity; we’ve been invited to a wrestling match—a dynamic, centuries-long conversation with God and God’s people that has been unfolding since the beginning, one story at a time.

Our stories remind us of who we are. And while that means we must admit our stubborn and petulant tendencies, it also means that we are seen and loved by God no matter what. Our stories remind us that we come from a people that struggled just like we do. And our stories remind us that while the world is harsh and scary, God offers us something different—we are reminded that God is with us, God is for us, and God will never leave us.

These are our stories, and it’s our job to wrestle with these stories until we find a blessing.

The Meaning of the Mess

When I think about the story of my family parties, I have to wrestle with the fact that they happen far less than they used to. I have to wrestle with the fact that if I am going to carry on the tradition, I might make some people uncomfortable, and have to risk some questions and embarrassed looks of my own.

But to wrestle with and remember this story reminds me that I come from a family that wasn’t afraid to depart from the expected decorum of the dinner table. I come from a family that enjoyed one another’s company, a family that lingered over the dinner table unconcerned about when or how the dishes were going to get clean. I come from a family that showed their love through laughter and a little bit of mischief.

We make sense of who we are and the world around us in our origin stories. When my daughter goes to bed at night and wants a story, it’s always a princess story that she requests. And because I’m usually sleepier than she is, my creativity falters and the princess in the story usually has the exact same kind of day that she had. The princess has adventures with the king and queen and her friends. The princess faces dragons and other villains. And the princess returns home safe to her bed.

Now if we put on our hardened fundamentalist hat, or our measured skepticism hat, we may render these bedtime stories untrue because of their mythical and embellished nature. But we don’t tell stories of dragons to prove that they existed; we tell stories of dragons to remind ourselves they can be defeated.

We may be finding ourselves in a crisis of faith at the moment—if not in God, in humanity. The world seems to be becoming a darker and darker place at the hands of the empire. Some have forgotten who we are and who we were created to be. We’ve forgotten that our God is a God of the underdogs, not of the empire.

And in this time of crisis, we must remember our stories. Truth is not revealed in isolated verses skewed to serve our own purposes. Truth is revealed and inspired in community. Evans puts it this way: "Our relational God gave us a relational text that reminds us that being people of faith isn’t as much about being right as it is about being part of a community in restored and restorative relationship with God".

As we navigate the countless crises that face us, we must remember and wrestle with our stories, present and past. We must remember and wrestle so that we may be emboldened to continue writing new ones, together. And we can. Because we can always come back—back to our origin stories of a God that is good. Every story points us back to a good God that calls us beloved.