Genesis 9:8-17
The Gospel of Noah
James Sledge February
18, 2018
My
mother-in-law collects Noah’s arks, and she gave me a wooden one that sits on a
bookshelf in my office. The little animal pairs are typically lying on their
sides because children who accompany a parent into my office can rarely resist
playing with them. Like those animals on my bookshelf, the animals in the Noah story
have proved irresistible to people over the years. That’s just one of the
reasons the flood story in Genesis is so misunderstood, even by those in the
Church.
Many
know the broad strokes of the story: a wicked world, the good and faithful Noah,
and a plan to start over fresh. The whole idea seems rather primeval or
primitive. It’s an entertaining story in a way, but it has little to say to us,
or so many believe.
Many
cultures in the ancient Middle East had some sort of flood story. Some scholars
speculate that a catastrophic flood centuries earlier provided the raw material
for such myths, and it’s safe to say that people of ancient Israel were
familiar with more than one version of the story. If you read the story in
Genesis with any care, you will notice parts of at least two different accounts
included there.
The
writers and editors who pull together the book of Genesis are happy to include
these sometimes conflicting accounts because they are only peripherally
interested in reporting what happened. Their real interest is to use the story,
along with other stories in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, to address
deep, theological questions about the nature of God and about God’s
relationship to creation, especially the human creature. It is this primary
purpose of these stories that gets missed when we imagine them to be primitive,
ancient tales.
The
Noah story begins, some three chapters prior to our reading, with this comment.
Yahweh
saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every
inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And
Yahweh was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to
his heart. Or perhaps, it
grieved her to her heart. Men wrote down the stories after all.
A
heartbroken God may seem strange to us, but the Hebrew Bible has no problem
portraying a God emotionally impacted by humanity. And so the flood story
begins. You’ve surely heard it. A great ark is constructed and animals of every
sort are brought on board. Subterranean springs burst forth and rain falls for
forty days and nights. Creation returns to its pre-creation chaos where the
Spirit of God moved over the waters. But finally, after months, God
remembered, and the waters begin to subside. Now, as the story is often
understood, creation and humanity can start fresh.
And
yet, when Noah first comes off the ark, builds an altar, and makes an offering,
God says to Godself, "I will never again curse the ground
because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from
youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.”
Did you hear that? The very reason given
for the flood, the evil inclination of human hearts, not only still exists, but
it is now cited as the reason God will not destroy. The flood itself seems to
have changed nothing about humanity or creation. If anything has changed, it is
God’s heart. The story began with a God described as hostile toward wayward and
wicked humanity, but it ends with hostility transformed into commitment. Divine
speech shifts from talk of judgment for sin to promise, to gospel, the good
news of perpetual commitment.
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When
the various threads that make up the book of Genesis are woven together into the
work we have today, Israel is a broken and defeated people. Babylon had
destroyed Jerusalem and carried into exile all those of any importance. It was impossible
to avoid thoughts of this as punishment for breaking covenant with God, for
ignoring the warnings of countless prophets. God was finally done with them,
had abandoned and forgotten them.
Ancient
Israel is hardly alone in worrying that God had finally had enough and is done
with them. Most of us have experiences of life descending into chaos. The
shootings this week are but the latest example. Often such moments are
accompanied by crises of faith, doubts about God. Who has not at some point
feared that God has forgotten them, or its modern equivalent, that God simply
doesn’t exist?
But
the Noah story speaks a powerful word of gospel to people caught up in chaos of
their or other’s making. God will not forget. No matter how pained God’s heart
is over the state of creation or humanity, God will not walk away.
God
makes a covenant with Noah, with his descendants, and with all the creatures of
the earth. God is fully and totally committed to Israel, to humanity, to
Creation. And to prove it, God gives a sign. God hangs up God’s bow.
All those rainbows painted on nursery
walls may obscure the fact that this bow is a weapon of war, a weapon that God
now retires. Even more remarkable, God says of this bow, “When I bring clouds over the
earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is
between me and you and every living
creature of all flesh.” The story speaks of the rainbow as a sign, a
reminder, for God. This string tied around the divine finger is the text’s
colorful, narrative way of describing the depth of God’s commitment to
creation.
Modern people are not used to story
being used to proclaim sophisticated theology, and so we too often focus on issues
of science or history. But the writers here make an astounding proclamation of
gospel to a people who are up to their necks in chaos. God is for you. God’s
promise is still good. God will remember you.
___________________________________________________________________________
On
a recent Sunday following our 10:45 worship service, a small, ad hoc group of
church members met with Diane and me to discuss how we might do Lent well here
at FCPC. I had sent them some notes on Lent and the scripture readings that
would likely be used for sermons each week, along with liturgy and scripture
from Ash Wednesday and Easter, the bookends around the season of Lent.
I
had my own notions of how this discussion would go, how to help it along. I
asked the group how Lent would help us move from Ash Wednesday to Resurrection.
We bounced ideas around for a bit, but then one of the members turned us in a
different direction. He spoke of Lent more in terms of stoppage than movement, a
pause, a fallow time, and we began to discuss the season as a time of stillness
where we become more deeply rooted in faith that it might spring forth with
renewed vigor in the glorious light of Easter.
We
decided to think of Lent as a fallow time for letting go of those things that
get in the way of following Jesus, get in the way of deep faith. We’re not
really talking about giving up things for Lent, but of letting go of whatever
is a hindrance to being disciples.
But
as we work to identify those things that are hindrances for us as individuals
or as a congregation, as we seek to take seriously Jesus’ call to deny oneself
and take up the cross, we will do well to hold onto the gospel promise right
here in the story of Noah – the good news that our waywardness, our tendency to
move and act in ways contrary to God’s purposes for our lives, the chaos
created by our foolishness or the foolishness of others, are not cause for God
to reject or abandon us. Nothing can break God’s commitment to those covenant
promises made to humanity and to all creation.
As
we enter into this Lenten season that ends at the cross and the grave, let us
listen for the echoes from Noah’s story found at the cross, echoes of a God who
cannot and will not give up on us, no matter how terribly we grieve God, even
to the very core of God’s own heart.
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