Covered

The Apostle Paul, in 2 Timothy 4, spoke off a man who had caused him great harm. The text reads like this: Alexander the metalworker did me a great deal of harm. The Lord will repay him for what he has done. I wonder if it is not uncommon that we each have someone whose name we could insert in the place of Alexander. Paul’s emphasis is not, however, on his own pain. Rather he is concerned about the damage this man could do to the message of Christ. What are we to do with the harm, sometimes, great, that we feel from others?

Reading in Ezekiel 14 this past week, three men are identified who the Lord God says that even if their presence and their righteousness was in the city, it would save them but no one else. Those three are Noah, Daniel and Job. I was surprised, not by the mention of two of the three. Daniel makes sense given his youthful resolve to honor God in a foreign land. What courage and strength was exhibited. Job of course also makes sense. What he endured is just below the suffering of our Lord and Savior. I know a modern day Job and I often get off the phone marveling at his faithfulness and perseverance, a man who would speak honestly about his failures at the same time. It was Noah that surprised me. Surprised not because his story is one marked by a lack of faithfulness or courage. To the contrary. I just think I would have expected to read the name Abraham or Moses instead. Seeing his name, I was prompted, I believe, by the Spirit of God to go back to Genesis and read about him. I cannot imagine the perseverance and strength it required to persist in building an ark when rain had never been in the forecast. I had to reread whether Noah was mocked by people or if that was embellishment from my Sunday school days. I couldn’t find anything but I cannot imagine, knowing human tendencies, that something to that effect didn't happen.

Here is where I landed in his story. In chapter 9, sometime after the flood had come and gone, Noah planted a vineyard. And one night he enjoyed the fruit of his labor…perhaps a bit too much. He ends up drunk; but not only drunk, he is lying in his tent naked. Ham, one of his sons, sees his father’s nakedness and points it out to his brothers. Troubled, the other two boys, Shem and Japheth, take a garment, place it on their shoulders and proceed to enter the tent backward to avoid seeing their father’s nakedness and to cover him. Essentially, end of story, though Noah awoke and was not all to happy with Ham.

What’s the point of this story? Why is it included in the biblical narrative? What are we to consider from it?  When Adam and Eve sinned and were eventually banished from the garden, God did something that would point forward. The last creative act within the garden was the work of a seamstress. With the shedding of blood, God created clothing to cover the nakedness of the first couple. This act would point to a future time when again sacrificial blood would be shed for the sake of others. But recall what Adam and Eve felt when they sinned, their nakedness now visible to their eyes and to the eye’s of each other. They hid because of their fear and shame. God, in his mercy, chose to cover it. And thousands of years later, Jesus would do the same. He would cover our shame.

Ham did not cover his father’s shame. He pointed it out much like what I recently did. I sat down beside a man who I hadn’t seen in a while. We have a long history dating back to college. He proceeded to tell me how he had had a couple of meals with my “Alexander.” Without hesitation, I proceeded to tell him how much harm that man had caused me and I continued to “uncover his nakedness.” It came out of me so quickly. It felt justified. I left that conversation and quickly felt convicted (at least some indication of God’s life within). I had not covered the shame of another. I had relished in exposing it. The pain this individual had caused me gave me reason to launch into a one-minute tirade about this person harmful style of relating. I was naming the person, like Paul, but not to protect the gospel, unlike Paul. How ungodlike. I can do that more often than I’d care to admit and I suspect you know of what I speak.

Perhaps this story is here to help us see ourselves and to then consider the two options we have. We can either expose the shameful nakedness of another, enjoying bringing someone down, especially when we have felt harmed, or we can be God’s agents of mercy, intent on covering up another’s shame and failure. God have mercy on us and make us more like You.

Kent