First Sunday in Lent

Genesis 9:8-17

8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 "As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, 10 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. 11 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."

12 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: 13 I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 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. 16 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." 17 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."

  We hear it as a children’s story, a sort of meandering zoo on the water,  a boat brimming full of every sort of animal, as Noah and his family just sort of happily explore the high seas with lions and tigers and bears oh my on board for the journey.  And there is good reason for this.  There is no doubt that Noah and his Arcy Arcy is probably one of the first stories that we learned as children and that we, in turn, teach the little ones around us.  And why not?  There is much to captivate the child’s imagination here.  Whose mind has not run wild trying to picture all those animals living together? Or the tremendous relief that must have greeted that first ray of sunlight?  Or who has not been soothed by the vision of a rainbow and remember this great promise of God? 

And it is not that there is anything wrong with any of this.  Focusing on the whimsical details is not an intentional distortion of the story, but neither is it the complete telling.  Suffice it to say that, in the children’s telling of it, in the pg version, we tend to leave out a few crucial details, details that would certainly bump the rating up a few notches.   So, if you will allow me, let me now present: Noah and the Great Flood: the Director’s Cut.   Yes, typically, we tend to pick up the story midstream, massive rain drops beginning to fall, rivers beginning to swell and Noah scrambling around to finish building his arc.  But let’s go back a few verses and make a proper beginning of the story.  Before this is a story about animals and floods it is a story about God and a world spinning off its axis with cruel intent and malicious behavior.  You see, not too long after God has created, God looks down at humanity, the supposed crown jewel of the cosmos, and see that there is nothing in them that is good, seeing that all they value is power, violence and control, God is grieved to the divine core.  God actually regrets what God has called into being.  This creation that God once named “good” has now taken a decided turn for the other direction.  And this, this makes God regret what God has done.  This is an incredible moment of divine pathos, a moment of divine feeling that should shake us down to our cells.  For if we tend to think of God as distant, as somehow above being affected by what is happening down here on the ground, we are going to need to let go of that understanding of God.  For what we have here is a God who is deeply involved, entirely impacted by all that which God has created.  This God cares more than the human mind can grasp, and in this caring, in this deep parental concern, God sees that things have gone terribly wrong.   And so, just as God once called creation out of chaos, just as God once hovered above the waters, so now God will use the water to make a clean start.  The goodness of the creation, with the exception of eight people and a patch-work flock of animals, will have to be rewritten, so far from the original plan have things gotten and so quickly; the creation will return to the chaos from which it came, only with the hope that the creation may be able to again live, again breathe, again be something that God could call good.   

And so Noah, his family and his expanded circle of pets endure this terrible flood.  This flood that is intended to wipe the earth clean, and they survive so that God may have a way to begin again.  Amidst the incredible pain, the deep sense of loss that God has endured, we see still the greater commitment that God has for the creation.  God has resolved that God will never again do what has been done.  God has now taken an option off the table for the way that God will relate to the world.  No more will God’s sorrow lead to such incredible destruction.  But we have to ask the question, does anything really change after this display of divine pain and this promise that God makes to the whole of creation?  Does humanity learn its lesson; learn to live with more love, more trust, more gentleness? That’s a complicated question, but it has a simple and troubling answer: no, and there are centuries of war, starvation and petty squabbles to attest to this fact. For even Noah, the one who walked in God’s righteousness will, by the end of the story, end up drunk, naked and ashamed.    And the incredible thing is this: God knows and observes this, and yet God makes this divine promise all the same.  In spite of the overwhelming evidence, God not only maintains divine commitment, but rather intensifies it. Just prior to our reading, God observes that the human heart will remain what it is: full of fear, greed and mistrust, and yet God will not punish humanity in the way of this great flood.  While humanity might stubbornly remain what it is, God, for the sake divine relationship, for the sake those whom God created out of love, God will undergo a change.  God will respond to this disaster and see that another way, a way that will cost God something, must be the way forward.  What wondrous love, indeed. 

And, no doubt, we can try and let ourselves off the hook, try and distance ourselves from this vision of absolute judgment and absolute love, to explain away the pain and fear that this text implies about who we are in front of God,  but we do not need to.  For Lent, if it is anything, is a season to be honest: a season to be honest about ourselves and honest about the God who loves you.  Yes, though there is darkness in all of us, this darkness has not kept God from getting to you, from loving you completely and forgiving you unconditionally.  Even as we make look to the rainbows and see there an imprint of divine mercy, there is yet a more complete, more total place to look, and it is the waters of our own baptism.  For there, in that holy Flood, as St. Peter writes, is the sure knowledge that God, in Christ, has forgiven all sin and has raised you in your spirits to the realms above.  The power of chaos, of sin, of darkness no longer owns you.  And what is more, so much more, there is no circumstance, no pain, no sorrow, no wild place in which this is not true.  For the Christ whose death and life was poured over you in baptism is the same Christ who battled the accuser out in the lonely places,  the same Christ who conquered hell forever by his descent and glorious resurrection.  Yes, it is this Christ, this Christ who has overcome sin and the grave who was poured over you and who now lives in you.  In this holy flood, you have been reclaimed, renewed and  restored.  The God of absolute love, the God whom we now see journeying to the cross, the God who would rather suffer and grieve than ever lose you, this God has given you the gift of new life in the waters of baptism.  This God has joined you to his very self, and that is where things begin to get interesting.  For in this joining, in this mercy and tender forgiveness, you are joined to all those whom God loves,  meaning that those whom we once considered enemies are now brothers and sisters to be served: the lonely and the poor, the sad and the struggling, these belong to God, also, and do not be surprised when you are thrown at their feet in service.  For you have been raised up out of the great flood.  Dry land is now beneath you, and God’s promise to you is written in the skies.  The freedom of God’s unending mercy names you, now and forever, and there is a world that needs you.  What, then, are you waiting for?  In Jesus’ name, amen.