This Sunday we’re embarking on hearing scriptures from the Narrative Lectionary during worship. All Fall we’ll sit with texts from the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and then beginning at Christmas into the spring we’ll wrestle with the gospel of Matthew and the epistles. The idea is that each year, we’ll experience together the whole arc of scripture – from God’s creation of the world – to the calling of a people – to the life of Jesus’ and his earliest followers.
Most years that cycle begins with the traditional creation stories from Genesis 1 and 2 – God creating the heavens and earth, saying, “Let there be light!” – creating humanity in God’s image – and calling everything God had made very very good.
But this year we won’t start with the picturesque garden of Eden – an idyllic world as it was or as it ought to be.
Instead we start with this story of humanity mired in violence, the story of a flood and its aftermath. Today we get a creation story not for the world as we wish it was – but a story that fits squarely with our present-day world as it is.
And even if we’re shocked and horrified by this story where God destroys most of the living creatures that God has made on the earth – humans and all others ….
We nevertheless hear the story of the flood and arc – knowing that such world-remaking disasters still happen – like in the recent flood in Nepal – and in a climate-changed world continue to devastate vulnerable communities.
And secondly, we look around at the world – and we have to reckon that evil continues to be pervasive, that violence toward humanity, animals, and the land itself – remains our greatest temptation as humankind. We marked this week the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, and for these past two and a half decades our country has waged wars of vengeance and greed at tremendous cost to humans and the planet.
At the beginning of our text, God looks out on such a world where violence has spiraled out of control – and sighs a weary, painful, heartbreaking sigh – admitting that, “I regret I ever made them…and I will wipe off of the land the human race I’ve created.” God is disgusted at the violence and corruption and wants to crumple up the artpiece they’ve been drawing and throw it in the trash-can. It’s a heartbreaking and horrifying moment.
Yet in our story – we see that God changes and evolves. We see a movement where God journeys from wanting to give up and destroy humankind, to God saving a remnant of Noah and his family and pairs of animals – to by the end, God making a universal and eternal promise to Godself to never again destroy all living things.
For both God and humanity – destruction will not be the way forward. God will forever seek a new and creative path with us and with all living creatures.
And this story of the flood and Noah’s ark – offer us three guiding images – to join God in that path of life, of new creation, rather than destruction.
1. The first image is the ark. Amidst violence, amidst destruction – where will life-giving community be found? Amidst chaos, what safe-haven will grace create?
When Noah learned of God’s plans to destroy all things with a flood and gave him instructions to build the ark – I wish that Noah had pushed back, had argued with God. But he instead began building, gathering animals. In a crisis you have to act.
And this ark, the boat, will be an enduring image in the story of God’s people – a vessel bearing people to life.
Many of the early Anabaptists interpreted Noah and his ark as symbolic of Jesus and the life Jesus’ brings – they saw those who entered the ark as akin to adults choosing to be baptized. They pointed out the peculiar detail that it was only adults mentioned who entered the ark, adults who trusted God’s word and acted in faith on it to enter a new community. In the gospels, Jesus builds a community among such boat-people, teaching and preaching and traveling on board fishing vessels.
The boat is an enduring image of a fragile yet faithful community, heading into an unknown future, trusting that God is with them, and will bring them to life.
2. The second image is the bird – sent out by Noah to see if the waters have receded and dried up. First Noah sends out the strong-flying and crafty raven which comes back. Next he sends a dove – which returns to his outstretched hand. He waits a week, and sends the dove out a second time, and it returns later that evening with a torn olive leaf in its beak.
The dove is a winged-messenger asking the question “Is there life beyond this present storm?
And its answer is a tender – “Yes!!! Yes! There is life beyond this flood, beyond this violence!”
On the front of your bulletin – you will notice the image of a dove with an olive leaf in its beak – this is the logo for the Mennonite church – it’s an enduring image of peace.
The dove returning to Noah is a reminder that peace, the peace that God offers us – is not for us alone, not an individualistic peace – but it’s a peace that is a tender gift we share with all creatures and with the land – with the dove, the raven, all animals. God calls us to be a people of peace, partnering with living creatures of all kinds, so that all may thrive and flourish on this good earth.
3. The final image is the bow.
In the ancient imagination the rainbow in the sky was associated with the idea of a divine bow and arrow, where God could shoot lightning down like arrows from heaven.
What’s interesting is that even after the flood – when Noah and his family and all the creatures being blessed to fill the earth and thrive – the conditions still exist for humans to make foolish, harmful, and violent choices. The capacity for humans to collaborate in structural sin remains present in the world, just as they did before the flood
Yet God’s heart and approach has changed. And so God makes a covenant – with all humanity – all people – and with every single other thing that lives and breathes – promising never again to destroy life.
God reminds Godself of this with the symbol of the rainbow in the sky.
Metaphorically God has promised to put the heavenly weaponry away, the symbol of violence, the tautly stretched longbow primed to rain down destruction – God says God will never use, ever again, for any reason, ever.
God has set aside the weaponry of destruction, because God desires an ongoing relationship with creation, even if that creation is imperfect and flawed.
God wants to be in a covenant relationship with all of us – and will never give up on this beautiful and broken and ongoing project of creation.
A Boat, A Bird, and a Bow. These images and the questions they provoke will thread their way through the rest of the scriptures we’ll encounter this year.
- What do we do with the problem of violence – when we harm each other and forsake the way of God?
- How will God’s grace make possible a community, a vessel, where all might flourish?
- Who will God send as divine messengers of peace , flying to us with olive leaves in their beaks?
Let’s pray:
God, Thank you for promising never to leave or forsake the creation you have made. Thank you for your enduring covenant with us. Please guide us in the way of peace. In the name of Jesus, our Savior, our ark, we pray. Amen.