Why do we think of the story of Noah and the flood as a children’s story? In our old Sunday school room here at St. Peter’s – as in many churches – there’s that charming mural showing the ark and several pairs of animals. Children’s books and toys depicting the story abound. We know that kids like animals. Is that what makes us think that this is a children’s story? Actually, if you think about it, the story of Noah is a very frightening story. Noah and his family and all the pairs of animals were saved, but what about the rest of creation? Can you picture all those people and animals drowning in the torrential rains, their bodies floating on the water? Something like the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans after Katrina? And what must have confronted the survivors as they gingerly made their way off the ark? A soggy, bare earth? Is this really a children’s story? Or is it a story for adults, adults who seek good news as they travel the road to Jerusalem?
Are there any surprises in this story, surprises that the pretty murals and children’s books don’t prepare us for? Perhaps we are shocked that God might be so disgusted with God’s creation – for that’s where the story actually begins – that God would want to destroy it all, in effect start all over again? The opening verses of the book of Genesis remind us that God brought creation into being by breathing over chaos and nothingness. Unfortunately, humanity seemed intent on returning to chaos, lawlessness, and nothingness. We have only to look around us, open our newspapers, turn on the radio, or check our news web sites to see that humanity hasn’t changed much. Wars, rape, riots, greed, lies, cruelty to animals, environmental destruction – we’re still at it. Just as God said in the story of Noah, God could easily say of humanity now, “Yahweh saw the great wickedness of the people of the earth, that the thoughts of their hearts fashioned nothing but evil ….”
Even so, perhaps we not surprised that God couldn’t bring Godself to actually go through with God’s intention to completely destroy creation. The ancient Hebrews certainly had a strong sense of God’s desire for justice and righteousness. However, they also trusted in God’s mercy and compassion. On Ash Wednesday, we heard again, both from the psalmist and the prophet Joel, that God is “quick to forgive and abundantly tenderhearted.” So, yes, God did save at least a remnant of God’s creation, so as to be able to recreate and repopulate the earth, starting with Noah’s family and the representative animal pairs.
What is truly surprising about the story of Noah is the promise that God makes at the end of the story. As the survivors of the flood come out of the ark and survey the destruction around them, God promises that God will never again visit this kind of destruction on creation. The God of justice, righteousness, and peace vows not only to show mercy and compassion on occasion, or to forgive those who are penitent. The God of justice promises even to give up the possibility of destroying creation forever. God has surrendered God’s power to destroy the earth forever!
Indeed, God has made a covenant with Noah and his family. In his declaration to Noah, God uses the word “covenant” six times. Now covenants have a long history in the ancient world, and many other peoples besides the Hebrews made covenants with each other. Often covenants were made between parties who were more or less equal to each other, e.g. two merchants, or two kings, or a group of tribal chieftains. The parties in the covenants could also be of unequal status. In both cases, both sides promised to do or refrain from doing something, and the covenant spelled out the consequences if the parties did not keep their promises. As it happens, in our Hebrew Bible readings for Lent, the Revised Common Lectionary, which sets our Scripture readings for worship, gives us a unique opportunity during the five weeks leading up to Palm Sunday to look at some of the most important covenants that God has made with God’s people. During this and the next four weeks, we will look more closely at all of them, and we’ll have a chance to ponder them together in our Eucharists on Wednesday evening. As we ponder God’s promises made to the ancient Hebrews, perhaps we will also gain a deeper understanding of God’s mighty acts in Jerusalem.
The covenant that God made with Noah is actually the very first covenant, according to the Hebrew Bible, that God made with God’s people. The story of Noah came together from two different sources – as you can easily see if you read the whole story in the Bible – after the Israelite community returned to Jerusalem from Exile in Babylon, about the 4th century B.C. As such, the story must have been a great comfort to the returning exiles, who themselves confronted destruction in Jerusalem – and later also to the beleaguered community addressed by the writer of today’s Epistle lection, what we call the First Letter of Peter.
In emphatically stating God’s covenant, God’s promise irrevocably to bind Godself to creation, the Hebrews reflected a different understanding of God’s nature from that of other ancient peoples. The ancient Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, even the Greeks, mostly depicted their gods as vengeful, capricious, and generally unconcerned with the fate of creation. The ancient Hebrews understood God differently. They show us that God was willing to make a self-limiting promise to creation. Not only that, God’s covenant, unlike other ancient covenants, was one-sided. God made all the promises: all Noah and his family had to do, as we learn from what precedes our lection, was to have children, not eat blood, and not kill each other. Moreover, God made God’s covenant not only with human beings, but with all creation. And God’s covenant is “for all future generations.” Indeed, it is an “everlasting covenant. The rainbow in the story is not only God’s post-it note to Godself – as if God could forget God’s promises – but, what is more important, it is a reminder to us of God’s wonderful promises.
And they are wonderful. By virtue of God’s covenant with Noah, God has become the “God who remembers,” to whom the psalmist rightly pleads. God is now invested in us. God is deeply committed to us. God is not only just and righteous – the ancients already knew that – but God is also totally self-giving. Through the story of Noah, the Hebrews tell us that God has willingly given up part of God’s power and now intimately shares our lives and our fortunes with us. Even before the Word became flesh, the Hebrews proclaimed God’s abiding relationship with humanity.
As we begin our journey to Jerusalem, to the events of Holy Week and Easter, why does the church ask us to hear again about this ancient covenant? Quite simply, this surprising covenant reminds us of God’s willingness to limit God’s power and freedom to act. Are we astonished that God would identify with our weakness and vulnerability? How else are we to understand that God in Christ willingly accepted the limitations of becoming human? How else are we to understand St. Paul’s reminder to the Christian community at Philippi, that, “Christ, though in the image of God … became completely empty and took on the image of oppressed humankind?” How else are we to understand that in Jesus God sealed God’s relationship with humanity through death on a Cross?
My friends, this is the God to whom we have committed ourselves. Becoming more like this God is what we have committed ourselves to in baptism. Can we follow through on that commitment? The psalmist asks God to “lead me in your truth and teach me.” As we join the Lenten retreat of the church, perhaps we can ask God to help us model more closely God’s self-limiting and self-giving. Perhaps we can examine and reconsider our relationships with each other, and with all the rest of creation. If God was willing to enter into covenant with all humanity, all creation, can we do anything less? Can we get beyond our own needs? Can we forego any part of our self-indulgent, self-centered lives, to look more closely at the needs of others? Can we see all whom we encounter as members of the same human family that God has promised to protect and cherish? Can we reach out to others in love and compassion? Can we ponder our relationship to the rest of creation? As we travel to Jerusalem, might God be asking us to see God’s world in a new way?
Might we also be ready to pray this prayer? O God of wild beasts and angels, of waters and wilderness, remember us; remember all whom we remember; remember the covenant you made with every living creature, for that is our bond with you now and forever.
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With thanks to David J. Lose for suggesting the basic thrust of this sermon in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 27-31.
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