Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
March 5, 2006
Genesis 9: 8-17
I love our Noah’s ark which is in front of Pilgrim House, as does the Sebastopol community. It certainly has raised our church’s visibility. Instead of the church past Taco Bell, we are now the church with the Noah’s Ark in the front. And, thanks to Patrick Amiot’s wonderful skill and sense of whimsy, the ark is also a lot of fun. I still go out and look at the animals. But as much as it has become an important part of our church campus, it is hard to imagine the ark not being here now, it was not without controversy in the beginning. There were people, including some of my UCC colleagues, who thought a Noah’s ark was a terrible idea. “Have you read that story? It is horrible. All those people killed in the flood, a flood sent by an angry God. It’s a gruesome and violent story backed up by an equally gruesome and violent theology. Who wants to worship a God who drowns men, women and children? I wouldn’t want an ark in front of my church.” It just warms your heart to have wonderful, supportive colleagues like that.
But they did have a point. The story of God and Noah, the ark and the flood, is a dark story, as dark a story as there is in the Bible. It is a story of God’s terrible despair over the human race, and God’s decision to visit humanity with a terrible flood that would destroy them all, except for one old man and his family. A hard story, that we often disguise as a children’s story, perhaps to soften it up a bit. But it never softens much. And so we come to the first Sunday of Lent, open our Bibles, and what do we find? God and Noah, the ark and the flood…and, oh yes, the rainbow. Well, since we can’t seem to get away from the story, what are we to do with it? A couple of thoughts come to mind.
First, rather than beginning with God and the flood, I believe that we need to begin with ourselves. What does this story say about us? And, quite frankly, the news is not encouraging. You could say that this ancient story tells the truth about us and about how we got to where we are today. As you know, I often quote Frederick Buechner. I think he is a wonderful writer and his words are usually soft and comforting and reassuring. But listen to what he had to say about this story back in the early 1970’s. He insisted that the Noah story was essentially a story about us, a story that embodies a painful and important truth about us. In his words, “The truth that, if left to ourselves, we are doomed – what else can we conclude? – doomed if only by our own insatiable lust for doom. Despair and destruction and death are the ancient enemies, and yet we are always so helplessly drawn to them…Even our noblest impulses and purest dreams get all tangled up with them just as in Vietnam, where in the name of human dignity and freedom, the bombs are falling on both the just and the unjust and we recoil at the horror of little children with their faces burned off, except that somehow that is the way the world has always been, with nightmare and chaos and noble dream all tangled up together.”
I like Buechner, but these are hard words, and when I first read them I want to argue with him; “Oh, come on Fred, that seems so negative!” Surely he is overstating his case. Doomed? But then, just a week ago, as I watched news reports of the destruction of the golden-domed mosque in Samarra, Iraq, and the subsequent violence which now threatens to engulf that country into civil war and our soldiers with it, I wondered what had become of the noble dream of democracy and freedom with which we began that war? And whoever thought in a million years that the United States would be the center of a debate over torture as a legitimate tool of national policy? Even our best motives all tangled up with despair and destruction and death.
It seems that the turbulent waters of chaos and nightmare are always threatening to burst forth and flood the earth, not through the hand of God, but from our own ignorance, greed and wickedness. Words from Robert Penn Warren’s poem, Brother to Dragons, come to mind:
We have lain on the bed and devised evil in the heart
We have stood in the sunlight and named the bad thing good
And the good thing bad.
Rather than focusing on a vengeful, punishing God, I believe this ancient story powerfully reminds us that the kind of world we create, the kind of lives we live, determine our direction and yes, our fate. Let’s not blame it all on God. How many generations will have to suffer until we learn that the exercise of violence in the name of peace and order is a tragic contradiction? And God sees it all. I can change the channel, turn off the news. God doesn’t have that option, God doesn’t own a remote control. God’s eyes are not averted. God’s heart is not numbed. Do you suppose the Creator ever regrets having given us life?
Ouch! That’s a negative thing to say. All this talk of human weakness and wickedness…. Maybe I was just in a bad mood this week. Why must the church, why must the preacher, dredge up this sordid story of a God angry with our ill-fated, misbehaving ancestors? Why must we be linked to their misbehavior? It doesn’t do much for our self-image…probably doesn’t do much for church growth. Of course, I could say, “People, it’s Lent, deal with it! It’s time for a little honesty about the human condition!” Or I could point to the rainbow.
Linus is winding up, preparing to nail Lucy with a big snowball. She sees what he is preparing to do, walks over to him, and says, “Here is a gentle reminder. If you throw that snowball at me, I will break every bone in your stupid body.” As she walks away, Linus drops the snowball and says, “Saved by a gentle reminder.”
Well, Lucy presents us with one kind of a reminder, I suppose, but here is another: “This is the sign of the covenant that I will make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations. I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign (a reminder?) of the covenant between me and the earth.” Ah, the rainbow.
When we talk about this story, and its many challenges, and its negativity about the human condition, we mustn’t lose sight of the rainbow. Martin Copenhaver, a UCC colleague in Massachusetts, writes that Noah and his family are barely off the ark, still wobbling around on their sea legs, when God says, “I am committing myself to you. I am going to stick with you no matter what…In fact, I am going to give myself a reminder of this promise. I am going to hang up my bow in the sky. (the word in Hebrew refers to the kind of bow that shoots arrows). But this bow will be empty of arrows…I am more sick of violence than anyone and I, the Lord God, will be the first to lay down my arms.”
Why do we still tell this story? Why do we place an ark where everyone can see it? Because the story does not end in terrible sin, violence and judgment. The waters recede, the clouds fade, the sun comes out, and a rainbow arches over the whole muddy mess, a rainbow proclaiming that the last word will not be our violence, our sin, our weakness, our seeming lust for our own destruction. The last word is the Creator’s awesome love. God chooses to continue the conversation, resumes the journey with us, all under the rainbow. God makes possible a new creation.”
And so, we find that the story of Noah and the flood leads us to baptism. As we read in I Peter 3: “God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you…” In the words of Copenhaver, “When we approach the waters of baptism, we remember Noah and the flood. Both the flood story and baptism remind us that we still stand in need of God’s cleansing. In baptism God says, ‘Let’s start over. But this time let’s do it one person at a time…Violence may still reside in your heart, but I am there also, and I will prevail...Try as others might to threaten you, try as you might to abandon me, I will never leave your side. For you are mine.’”
Folks, it’s Lent. May these forty days together be an opportunity for us reflect on our baptism, once again to embrace the mystery of a God who both judges us and loves us at the same time. What needs to be washed away from our lives right now? Where does the sun need to shine, what good work needs to be undertaken, what new practice needs to be ventured? Says one colleague, “Our alienation from God is severe. Storm clouds gather and waters rise. Yet the goodness and grace of God are over us all, in our heights and depths…over the valleys and peaks of our lives…there it is, a rainbow.”