TIME WARP

My sermon today is about Methuselah.

Footnote, if there can be a footnote in a talk. This will be in straight English .No dialect, Irish or Italian, so I can avoid attack from the political correctors.

Methuselah is famous because he lived for some 900 years. He was mentioned in a song by the Gershwin brothers because of his longevity. As a Biblical character, Methuselah gets but a few verses. Hardly fitting for someone who lived so long. Genesis comes at the beginning of the Bible. So it could cover a time before the invention of fire and the wheel. In their various forms, fire and wheels account for just about every kind of machine that now keeps our civilization moving. Think about it.

Footnote two. Why no the before fire and a the before wheel? Well, if it were the fire, it would mean a particular campfire or conflagration. The wheel means the first wheel, which continues to roll after all these eons.

Footnote three. Pretty unusual to have another footnote so soon. This one is to note that I just checked out the Bible before continuing to write.

It turns out Methuselah is mentioned only in verses 21, 22, 25 and 26 of the fifth chapter of Genesis. And there is not one single quotation from him. All that fame, and not one word out of his mouth. But we learn from our perusal of chapter 5 that Methuselah was 187 years old when he fathered Lemech. Then he lived another 782 years and died at the age of 969.

But, and here might be a surprise for all you who are not familiar with the Bible, there were some other long-lived people in that early Biblical age. To avoid a lengthy quotation, let me just run down those listed in chapter 5.

Adam, the first man, the husband of Eve, lived 930 years and fathered Seth when he was 130. Seth, who lived to be 815 years old, fathered Enosh at 105. And Enosh lived to be 905. There were some pretty old fathers that followed, but let’s just mention how old they were when they died. Kenan, 804; Mahalalel, 830; Jared, 800; Enoch – not to be confused with Enosh – a measly 365; then and only then Methuselah; Lemech, 777, then Noah who was 500 years old when he fathered Shem, Ham and Japeth.

Passing through those days, led to months and months and months, and years and years and years, and decades and decades and decades, not to mention centuries, and centuries, and centuries, and centuries, and centuries, and centuries, and centuries, and centuries and centuries. I think that is nine centuries. That’s a long time!

If there was no overlap, those long lives add up to some six thousand two hundred years before Noah. Obviously, many of those fathers and sons were alive at the same time, so we don’t really know from the Bible how long a time elapsed from Adam to Noah.

We do learn, however, that Methuselah lived the longest. That must account for why even today people still refer to him. Okay, some people refer to him. It has been a while, I confess, since I heard Methuselah mentioned.

Footnote four. Some folks might find it hard to believe that people lived that long back then. I’ll get to that later.

Genesis is the first book of the Bible. It was written a long time after Adam and his descendants just enumerated. So those early figures must have lived boring lives until some of them invented things to make life a bit easier, as did fire and the wheel. Hacking scars in the ground to plant seeds and herding animals left a lot of time for thinking. Thought, of course, must be reason those early people found out what seeds were. Maybe meat as food was discovered when, after killing that charging bull, something had to be done with the carcass.

Footnote five. I digress.

Living so long must have had one common accomplishment. And that was wisdom. Wisdom meant people could figure out what was going on around them.

But time means a lot of idle time, and idle time plays into the Devil’s hands. We’ve all heard that. Chapter 6 of Genesis pretty well explains what happened.

“When men had begun to be plentiful on earth, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God, looking at the daughters of men, saw they were pleasing, so they married as many as they chose.”

Footnote six. This is a nice way of saying that there was too much fooling around.

Yahweh – which is the Hebrew name for the Lord – said he would not be disgraced by the behavior of the men he had created. So He said man’s “life shall last no more than a hundred and twenty years.”

Besides that, Yahweh brought the Flood. That was the big one. Noah saved mankind and the animal kingdom by building the ark, at the Lord’s suggestion. And the rest is history, as we are wont to say.

Now, before I have to get to another footnote, let it be noted that the Old Testament goes way, way back. And from that time on it would seem that the Lord’s limit on human life holds true. Officially, according to that sage we call the Internet, the oldest person ever in recent times lived 122 years and 164 days. She was a French woman who died in 1997. The next was 119 years and 97 days. Several managed 116 years. All were women.

What does that tell you, men?

The next time you hear someone mention Methuselah, just remember his name has endured, only because he lived a few years longer than many others. Of course, one point or one run or whatever measure, means some athlete or team becomes famous.

Footnote seven. The rest are also-rans.