“Listening for Hope in Signs and Reminders” was preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, PA on February 21, 2021. You can hear/watch this sermon here, starting at 38:15.
--
Genesis 9:8-17
8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you 10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. 11 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” 12 God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: 13 I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” 17 God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”
--
You know the story of Noah, right? It’s a well-known biblical story that we teach to our children in their earliest years. It’s a story that was probably taught to us in our earliest years! At least it was for me..
Need a refresher? Here we go! Genesis chapters 6 through 9.
A long time passed since God created the world. People forgot about God except for one man. His name was Noah. He loved and obeyed God.
“I am very sad that people have forgotten about me,” God said to Noah.
“I am going to bring rain to flood the earth—lots and lots of rain. Build yourself a huge boat of cypress wood.” Noah did just what God said and made a big, big boat with lots of rooms.
Noah was 600 years old when he entered the boat with his wife, their sons, and their sons’ wives. God brought two of every kind of animal to the boat.
Elephants and zebras, lions and tigers, pigs and giraffes, dogs and cats, deer and rhinos, bears and cows, horses and goats, lambs and monkeys all came two by two. All different kinds of animals, birds, and creepy, crawly things came to the boat. Noah took all of them into the boat. Then the door shut behind them.
Inside the big boat the lions roared, the dogs barked, and the birds chirped.
It was stuffy and stinky! It was muggy and hot! On the outside it rained and rained.
It rained big, giant drops and little, baby drops for 40 days and 40 nights. The rains came down and the flood waters came up. The water splashed on the sides of the big boat and pushed it up and down for 150 days. Finally it rested on the top of a tall mountain.
Noah waited and waited until God said to him, “Come out of the boat, you and your wife and your sons and their wives.” Noah’s family and all the animals came off the boat.
They put their feet on dry land. They ran, and skipped, and jumped. They twirled and danced in the sunlight. They thanked God for the land and God blessed them. Noah’s family grew and grew. The animals and the birds and the creepy crawly things filled the earth again.
God painted a rainbow of brilliant red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violent across the sky and promised, “Never again will water flood the earth. Whenever you see the rainbow in the clouds, I will see it too, and I will remember.”
--
This is a story we know.
Or so we think.
The story of Noah and the flood is one of the biblical stories that we are so familiar with that we think we know the whole story.
As I said earlier, we teach it to our own kids. I can tell you; our DIG kids know this story. We teach it as a children’s story of animals and rainbows. We teach it as a story of God’s love for all living creatures and how we should remember God’s love each time we see a rainbow. We teach the metaphor that there will always be a rainbow following every storm. I love that message! I really really do.
And yet, this story is not for children at all. This story is about how our God is so angered by human rebellions that God floods the whole earth, wiping out nearly everything in a fit of divine rage. This is a story of a God of wrath who is willing and ready to strike down sinners… and it’s a story of a God who does exactly that. This is a story of genocide.
And honestly, on top of the genocide, this is a story of gender bias as the men in the story are all given names (Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth) while the women are all nameless and are only listed as possessions of their husbands (Noah’s wife; his sons’ wives) AND this is a story of extreme ethnocentrism because the moment after God places the rainbow in the sky, the rest of chapter 9 and the conclusion of the story features Noah cursing his innocent grandson and that grandson’s lineage, making him a slave to the future generations of Noah’s other grandsons. That particular story has been used as theological support for Christians persecuting Jews or Christians enslaving people of African descent.
And for some reason, many of us ignore the genocide, the gender bias, and the toxic ethnocentrism of this story, whether intentionally or not. Or even worse, we try to justify it, which leaves this entire story charged with theological potential to be used for evil in generations to come. Or least, let’s be honest, we’re not teaching those parts of this story to our children…
Here’s the thing about Noah and the flood; it’s a children’s story and it’s not. If we want the full story, we cannot separate the story of the ark and the pair of every animal from the story of the flood and the countless deaths of women, men, and children found in this narrative. If we want the full story, we cannot separate the story of the covenant from the story of the curse. If we want the full story, we cannot separate the rainbow from the rain. If we want the full story, we cannot separate the hope from the lament.
That’s the season of Lent we are in this year; a season of both lament and hope. This lent will be a season in which we cry both “How long, O Lord!” and “Alleluia!” This will be a season where we acknowledge all that we have loss and it will be a season where we lift up all that we have been given. This will be a season of tears and smiles. There will be grief and there will be joy. This Lent will be a season of death and resurrection. We cannot separate one from the other. Not this year.
So what if we approached the Genesis 9 passage that Diane read for us in the same lens? One in which we approach the story acknowledging both its beauty and its terror.
For one, acknowledging the full story will give better insights to what a covenant actually is and why it is important within the context. Here, we see God entering into a binding arrangement with humans and it’s one founded on relationship.
As we heard in
Genesis 9:8-12:
8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 “As for me, I am
establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, 10 and with
every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and
every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. 11 I
establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by
the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the
earth.” 12 God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make
between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future
generations:
This covenant and the way that God makes it with every living creature for all future generations implies that God will always maintain an ongoing relationship with every being, human and animal; truly all of creation for all time.
But also, acknowledging the full story gives better insight as to why we love this story, despite its overwhelming tragedy.
You see, Noah and the flood is not the only ancient flood story. Set around similar times with strikingly similar flood details, myths of great floods were told throughout the Ancient Middle East, Southwest Asia, and Northeast Africa. Stories that included characters you might have heard of: Atrahasis or Gilgamesh.
But here’s what sets Noah’s story apart. Those other flood myths, with their strikingly similar details, had the purpose to explain why catastrophes and tragedies in the world continue to exist today.
But Noah’s story – Noah’s story – had the purpose to explain the covenant of blessings and hope within great tragedies.
The rainbow placed in the sky is an ongoing sign of hope that things will turn around for the better even during the tough times. It is also a sign of assurance that moments of genocide, gender bias, or toxic ethnocentrism – or really, tragedy in general – should not have the final word.
And God chose to do this with a rainbow; a sign we still see in the sky today and a sign that bears more significance that it did in the world of this passage. Today the rainbow represents the beauty and God-given goodness of the full spectrum of human sexuality. And just as the covenant states concerning the wellbeing of “every living creature” and “all flesh,” no one is excluded from this sign of hope or covenant. Which means that this covenant between God and all flesh established generations ago still exists between God and every girl, woman, boy, man, and intersex person, every lesbian, gay man, bisexual and transgender person, every atheist, agnostic and religious person, every Muslim, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, Wiccan and pagan person, every person of ability and perceived limitations, every person of any nationality, ethnicity or racial construction or category, and it even includes those who defy and explode any of these categories.
That radical inclusivity is definitely a sign of hope that still exists today.
As we continue to navigate the devastation of a global pandemic and as we approach its one-year anniversary, holding onto a message of hope is something we all could benefit from. But we can’t fully do it without also acknowledging the lament each of us carries in our hearts.
One of the reasons that we hold onto this biblical flood story, as a children’s story or not a children’s story, either way – one of the reasons that we hold onto this biblical flood story so tightly is because it reminds us to hope for the rainbow in the storm.
For us, that means even the middle of great tragedies and in a season of lament, signs of hope are still there.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
--
No comments:
Post a Comment