Sermon - A Glimpse of God's Heart

Genesis 9:8-17

A Glimpse of God’s Heart

James Sledge                                 Lent 1 - February 26, 2012

I saw in the paper the other day where the friendly folks from Westboro Baptist Church planned to protest at Whitney Houston’s funeral.  These are the same people who protest at the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, who parade around with signs that read “God Hates Fags.”  They reason that since “God hates fags” and American tolerates them, then God hates America, too.  Hence the protests at military funerals.

Now to be honest, I’m not sure why the news media even cover these folks anymore.  There are a tiny group, with less the 50 members, and the attention they garner is way out of proportion to any influence or following that they have.  But even though they are a tiny, fringe group, they do share something in common with quite few people of faith.  They believe that God hates some folks and that God has it out for these folk.

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans a few years back, it wasn’t just the Westboro whackos who were talking about whom God hates.  Quite a few Christian preachers suggested that New Orleans was a particularly appropriate target for God’s wrath.  With its drunkenness and revelry, no wonder God decided to punish them.

And even Christians who have a hard time imagining that God singled out New Orleans sometimes shake their heads at the state of the world and wonder how long God will tolerate it all.  “Surely someday God will say, ‘That’s enough.’ ”

The Noah epic, despite is popularity as children’s story and nursery decoration motif, is a story about a someday when God has had enough. 
The wonderful Creation that God has made, that God rejoiced over because it was “very good,” has become hell-bent on living at odds with the Creator’s design.  Or at least the human creatures have. 

The beginning of the Noah 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 in Genesis depicts a God whose heart is broken over a wayward Creation, and whose passion issues forth, initially at least, 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.”

The Noah story doesn’t fit well into our modern notions of God as perfect theological construct, the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, the author of eternal decrees that cannot be undone.  The God of the Noah story, and indeed much of the Bible, is quite capable of repenting, of changing directions and abandoning strategies and tactics that have not worked so well.  The God of Israel is a dynamic, personal being whose own life is impacted and affected by that Creation that God has made.

When we meet that 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, this has not fixed the underlying problem.  When Noah and the animals come off the ark God states, “The inclination of the human heart is evil from youth.”  The horrors of the flood, the terrible destruction, and nothing has really changed. 

One can only imagine that the grief in God’s broken heart remains unabated.  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 newspaper headlines.  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 a reminder.  This dangerous weapon of war 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, needing a reminder of the covenant with all creation.  But when you consider how little we humans seem interested in doing things God’s way; when you consider how even those who claim to be God’s people so often pay lip service to God all the while ignoring what Jesus tells us to do, it is easy to imagine God finally saying, “That’s it.  I know what I said long ago, but I can’t stand it anymore.  I won’t tolerate it anymore!”  But then… there is the bow, now mounted on the sky, retired and disarmed.

It is difficult to overstate the costly commitment God makes as the Flood story ends.  Yahweh has forever committed to this wayward humanity that has broken God’s heart.  Despite the pain we cause God, the broken heart, the bow remains in the clouds, a constant reminder of this commitment.  And this refusal to abandon humanity, despite how we grieve God so deeply, must inevitably lead to something like the cross.

Humanity remains hell bent on going its own way, but God has sworn off coercive power as the solution.  The bow is retired, and so God turns to a different, much more costly strategy, covenant relationship, even when that requires suffering – power made perfect in weakness on a cross.

Even we Christians, who speak so often of the cross, struggle to make sense of it.  We reduce it to a trite salvation formula, a cosmic loophole God created to get some of us to heaven.  But that trivializes it terribly.  And when Christians say, “I’m saved but you folks are gonna get it,” we’ve clearly misunderstood the cross and God’s costly commitment to all humankind, to all creation.

When Jesus tells a rich man to give away all that he has and follow; when Jesus says that his followers must be willing to lose their selves, lose their very lives for the sake of the gospel, many of us hope that he’s not talking directly to us.  We struggle to understand why the gospel, the good news, would mean getting rid of all those things we need to be happy.  We’re baffled by the idea that good news could cost us, cost even our lives.  But this is the sort of commitment God has made to humanity, and Jesus embodies that commitment.  If Jesus dwells in us, if we are to share this presence of Christ with others, God’s costly commitment to humanity must become a part of us as well. 

Many of us understand the idea of costly commitment to people we love, to children or a spouse or partner.  But the good news in Jesus is that God’s costly commitment is to all humanity, to all creation, to those who are not family or friends, even to those who are enemies.  And loving enemies will cost you, perhaps even cost you your life.

God looks out at our inhumanity to one another, looks upon our wars, our violence, and our greed.  God looks out and sees modern day slavery, systematic oppression, and floods of refugees.  God looks out and sees political systems focused on preserving power and privilege for the few, while turning a blind eye to suffering.  God looks out at all this and more, and God’s heart breaks.

But… God remembers the covenant with all flesh, with all creation.  “My bow is retired,” says God.  “And so, even though humanity continually turns away from me and breaks my heart, I will woo them with love."

What a strange God.  What a wonderful God.  Thanks be to God!