Sermon: A Glimpse of God’s Heart

 Genesis 9:8-17
A Glimpse of God’s Heart
James Sledge                                                                          Lent 1 - February 21, 2021

Reminder, Mike Moyers, 2012

from Art in the Christian Tradition, 

a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library

I’ve read a number of newspaper articles and opinion pieces connecting the January 6 assault on the US Capitol to Christian nationalism. One of the insurrectionists stood at the Senate podium and called out, “Jesus Christ, we invoke your name. Amen.” And the shirtless QAnon shaman wearing a Viking headpiece offered gratitude to God for the opportunity to speak against all those he imagines a threat to a white, Christian nation.

Along with Confederate battle flags, those storming the Capitol also carried flags reading “Jesus Saves” and “Jesus 2020.” The noxious mix of white supremacy and nationalism with evangelical Christianity was on full display. That is not to tar all evangelicals with the same brush, but the ease with which some who claim to be Christian embrace hate, racism, idolatry, and violence is appalling to witness.

It is hard not to imagine Jesus weeping over the way his name is invoked in all manner of hate, the way he is coopted for political movements that happily espouse hate and violence against opponents, the very antithesis of how Jesus lived and what he taught.

But there’s nothing new here. Over the years Christians have supported crusades and the wholesale killing of Muslims, inquisitions and the slaughter of Jews. In our nation Christian faith was used to justify slavery, genocide of Native Americans, and Jim Crow segregation. “Christians” have been in the vanguard of movements against LGBTQ peoples. Surely at some point Jesus would be justified in saying, “Enough already! I’m done with all of you.”

“All of you” might well include more progressive Christians, too. It is true that we tend not to invoke Jesus’ name against others, but we often practice a kind of watered-down, Christianity-light that tries to be kind and nice but has limited interest in actually following the difficult, self-denying way of Jesus.

Might Jesus, might God, simply tire of us at some point and say, “That’s it!” Might God conclude that humanity is a lost cause?

This is a serious theological question. Is there a point at which God throws in the towel? Might God say, “Go ahead and destroy yourselves through climate change, nuclear weapons, or some other catastrophe? You’re on your own. I have no use for you, your churches, your religions.”

The Noah saga in the book of Genesis wrestles with just such questions. Unfortunately, Christians of all stripes tend to miss the sophisticated theological thought expressed here. Conservatives are too caught up in defending the literal, historical account of Noah to see the theological themes being wrestled with. And liberal Christians are so embarrassed by biblical literalism that we think Noah primitive myth with little to say to us. That both sides make Noah a children’s story shows how little we appreciate what is tries to say.

The Noah epic is a long one, far too long to read in worship, and so our passage for this morning speaks only of the story’s end. But you cannot understand the Noah saga without knowing the beginning. The beginning of the story says, 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. The story depicts a heartbroken God whose passion issues forth, initially, in a desire to be done with it all, to destroy and perhaps start all over.

Noah enters into the story as a small ray of hope. There is someone who pleases God, and so there is an ark. A “righteous remnant” will be preserved, even as Creation descends back into the chaos of In the beginning,  when the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep.

When we meet God in today’s reading from Genesis, the flood itself is over. The righteous remnant has emerged from the ark to repopulate the earth. But curiously, the underlying problem remains. As Noah and company first leave the ark God promises never again to destroy because “the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth.”  The horrors of the flood, the terrible destruction, and nothing has changed. Except perhaps God.

Surely God’s heart remains broken. The basic problem with the human heart has not changed, but God has a startling change of heart. God drastically alters course. The human creatures continue to resist God. Perhaps they always will; just look at the news. But God will no longer meet human resistance with overwhelming force. God retires the divine armory and puts it into storage.  “I have set my bow in the clouds.” 

In ancient thought, God’s bow fired lightning bolts. But God says that bow will no longer be used. God has hung it up. It is not unlike one of those old tanks or military aircraft in a park where children climb over them, artifacts whose cannons have been plugged and engines removed, threats no more, only reminders.

God’s retired bowed is now just reminder. This dangerous weapon now decorates children’s bedrooms and elicits oohs and aahs when it appears after a rain shower. And according to the story, it’s as much a reminder for God as for us. “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.”

It may seem odd to speak of God needing to remember. Surely this is a primitive image of God. But in reality, Israel’s theologians are using the story to make a point. Yahweh’s commitment to humanity is a costly one. God’s love is so often unrequited that it tears at God’s heart. It is the same inner turmoil seen when Jesus prays in the garden of Gethsemane that he might somehow avoid the cross. But that would require a forgetting. And Yahweh promises to remember.

The Lenten devotional booklet that many of you contributed to is organized around the idea of pause. It recommends a Lenten discipline of pausing each day to read through John’s gospel and reflect on it. Remembering requires a pause. When we are reacting to what goes on around us, when we are in a hurry, it is difficult to take stock, to remember.

Lent is a time to pause and remember, to remember who we are and who God is. The Ash Wednesday liturgy says, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” This is a call to remember our creatureliness, created beings dependent on our Creator. It is a call to remember that as creatures, we cannot finally bless ourselves by the anxious acquiring of any sort of enough. In the end, blessing, true and full life, are not things we acquire by striving. They are gifts given as we are shaped by a true recalling of who we are and who God is.

In his book, Remember You Are Dust, Walter Brueggemann writes, “When we remember that we are dust, we are made freshly aware that along with our remembering, God is remembering and regarding.”

In our world with all its problems and troubles, in the face of partisan rancor, relentless pandemic, loud and emboldened voices of hate and violence, economic uncertainty, and more, it is easy to imagine that God is distant, absent, unnoticing of us, inattentive to us. But God has promised to remember us, to regard us, to be for us.

And if the rainbow is God’s touchstone for remembering and regarding, the cross is ours. Without reducing the cross to easy, mechanical formulas of salvation, Jesus assures us that it is a remembering, a regarding of us. “This is my body that is for you.”

Pause, rest, be still, and remember. Pause, rest, be still, and know that you are remembered. And let that remembering, both yours and God’s, shape and form you for life that the world cannot give, but can only be received, a gift from God.