“Noah and the Ark”
A
Sermon Preached by the
Rev.
Jean Niven Lenk
Sunday,
September 23, 2012
First
Congregational Church of Stoughton, United Church of Christ
Text: Selections from Genesis, Chapters 6-9
Sixteen years
ago today, I gave birth to a bouncing 8 pound, 13 ounce baby boy. I tell you this for a couple of reasons.
First, this
coming week we’ll be making a trip to the Registry for a learner’s permit, and I
ask you to pray for the safety of anyone venturing out on the road here on in.
But I tell you also
because when Ian was a baby, I decorated his nursery in a Noah’s ark motif –
the wallpaper, the sheets, the blankets, all depicted animals marching two by
two onto the ark. In fact, I still have
the rug and the lamp. Aren’t they
cute?
I imagine that
many of us had some kind Noah’s ark toy or picture or book growing up – and why
not? There are all the elements for a
great kid’s story -- a big boat, lots of animals, and, to top it off, a beautiful,
colorful rainbow. Yes, it’s a great
kid’s story -- as long as you do a lot of editing and sanitizing, because the uncensored
version we find in the bible starts out as one of the most somber and
disturbing tales in all of scripture. It
begins as a story of God’s despair over the human race, God’s sorrowful regret
at having made us in the first place, and God’s decision to put an end to us
all by sending a flood. But it ends up
being a tender and redemptive story about God’s great love for creation.
Just two weeks
ago, we heard how God created the heavens and the earth, and no sooner does God
declare them “very good” than things begin to fall apart. Last week, we heard how Adam and Eve disobeyed
God and were expelled from the Garden of Eden.
Then their son Cain murders their other son Abel. We’re only a few chapters into the first book
of the bible, and already there’s been disobedience, jealousy, and fratricide. The first family on earth proves to be totally
dysfunctional.
Ten generations
later, the earth is overcome by violence, pain, and discord. People have not only forgotten about God, but
they have acted horrendously towards one another. It’s a long way from the perfect world God
created, and we read in this morning’s lesson that it “grieved him to his
heart” [6:6b]. And so, God decides to
start over. “I will blot out from the
earth the human beings I have created – people together with animals and
creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”
But while God seems
to exact the unforgiving vengeance of a merciless deity, the heartache of a
wounded parent also shows through. While
God is angered, crushed, devastated by what has become of creation, God can’t entirely
give up on the world made with so much joy and love; God can’t quite turn away,
saying, “bad idea,” can’t quite abandon it, saying, “never again.” Even though God could speak this world out of
existence and speak a new one in to replace it, God decides against total
destruction and instead chooses to create continuity between the old and new
creation through Noah.
And when the floodwaters recede and Noah and his
family and all those animals wobble off the ark, God takes one look at them and
the divine heart is transformed by the realization that retribution and revenge
will not solve anything. God is well
aware that Humankind, the 2.0 version, will also be filled with violence and
evil. But God hangs up the weapon of
destructive fury, and makes a holy promise to humanity and all of creation.
“I am establishing my covenant with you and your
descendants and every living creature,” God tells Noah. “Never again will a
flood destroy the earth. Never again
will I let my pain overshadow my love. I
am making this promise to you and all creation, and I will make sure I remember
it. The bow in the clouds is not for
you; it is to remind me of my promise not to destroy you. No matter how angry I am, no matter how
heartbroken I am from seeing all the violence, suffering and injustice you
inflict on one another, I will remember my promise.”
God’s is a promise without strings and without
conditions. It is a promise that says, while
death and destruction may happen in life, never again shall they be rooted in
the anger of God. And it is a promise
that takes the bow – a weapon of violence and killing – and transforms it into a
sign of God’s love, mercy, hope and divine remembering.
This is the first covenant God makes with God’s
creation, but it will not be the last. God will go on to make covenants with Abraham
and Sarah, Moses and the Israelites, and with David—each one signaling another
transformation in God’s heart, each one more gracious than the last, each one
representing God’s steadfast love and endless mercy, God’s bend-over-backwards
effort to remain in relationship with us.
The Noah story doesn’t
end high on a mountaintop with the rainbow overlooking a newly repentant and
reformed creation. Rather, after disembarking from the ark, Noah plants a
vineyard and too enthusiastically samples his crop, and the last image we get
of him is drunk and naked, passed out in his tent. When his son, Ham, tries to help by enlisting
the aid of his brothers Shem and Japheth, things get ugly fast. At the end of Genesis 9, Noah opens his mouth
for the very first time to say something. And his first words are a curse on his own
son!
No, the condition of the human heart
did not change after the flood, nor in the generations since. Humans still separate from God. Families still fall into dysfunction and
estrangement. Sin and evil and
temptation continue.
But the God
who so long ago wanted to blot out creation has promised never to give up on us. Instead, God finds the capacity to love us
unreservedly no matter how far we fall and how corrupt we become, entering into
our brokenness and setting us on a new path to wholeness.
In grateful response, may we turn
back to our heart-changing God, who offers us an ark
of gracious love and mercy to carry us safely through the waters of
chaos and death to a place of new hope, new life, and new beginnings. Amen.
