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Sermon on Noah

AFTER THE ARK

TEXT: GENESIS 6-9

 


THE story of Noah: NOT A PRETTY ONE
The reading for today is the familiar story of Noah's ark. Have you ever read it? Not from a children's story book; the original documents. Believe me, the children's version is highly expurgated which is a good thing. If it were to be rated movie style, the notes would say " Warning, contains scenes of graphic violence, sex, murder, and mayhem. Not suitable for children under 17."

I've only got a few minutes for my sermon so I'm going to summarize the story in the most cursory way. This is the fourth major narrative in the Hebrew Bible. We start with Creation, then Adam and Eve lose their Paradise in Eden and have to scrape out a living like all us humans do. The third story is the murder of Abel by his brother, Cain. Already a theme is emerging. In the beginning, the world is new and it is "very good" as God intends. But things fall apart: disobedience, jealousy, and even brother rising against brother wreck the perfection. In the next chapter, people have populated the earth and they are mean, violent, and corrupt. God has had it! He regrets that he created these beings in the first place and decides to start over.

Noah and his extended family are chosen to survive because they are righteous-good seed for a new civilization. Even if you've never read the story in the Bible, you've probably heard Bill Cosby's take on it. He emphasizes the humor intrinsic in building a boat on dry land and filling that boat with pairs of every animal. Then, rain, flood, rising water, and riding around with that stinking cargo for 10 months until the ark comes to rest on the top of Mt. Ararat. After a couple more months, the waters subside enough and the Noah family disembarks to repopulate the earth.

INTERESTING DETAILS BUT UNLIKELY TO BE FACTUAL
Only the most intransigent literalist could take this as fact. The dimensions given for the ark are big-in fact, the technology to build a ship that big wasn't developed until the 19th century. (The SS Great Eastern out of London.) But even that wouldn't have been sufficient to house all those creatures and their necessary food.


And how would the Noahs have managed to keep the lions from devouring the lambs? And here's another interesting sidelight on the number of animals. How many of each species did Noah take on board? Two of each? Wrong! Two of only the unclean animals. Of the clean animals he took seven pair of each.

Presumably this was to provide food for the 8 members of Noah's family-wife, 3 sons and their wives. And at the end of the story, he also is required to make a sacrifice so they've got to have some leftover creatures for that as well.

ONE LEGEND OF MANY ABOUT THE FLOOD
This tale is one in a long line of stories that grow up around natural phenomena. There are other flood legends from that era and historical evidence of a catastrophic flood in the region when a land bridge between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean gave way and water poured into the valleys. Primitive people developed stories to explain why it happened. The gods must be angry. Maybe not-so-primitive people do the same thing. Remember Jerry Falwell deciding that 9/11 happened because God was punishing the U.S. for being hospitable to gays and lesbians and Pat Robertson claimed New Orleans deserved Katrina because of its permissive lifestyle. When you start with a God that manipulates every event in earthly life, that's what you end up with. I do not read this story through that lens. But how can it have meaning for us today?

EVEN IF IT'S AN IMAGINARY TALE, THE MORAL ELEMENTS ARE UNMISTAKEABLE
While one can dismiss the fairy tale elements of the Noah story, its moral intentions are clear. We are meant to live in harmony; it is a transgression against a good creation when we are cruel to each other and live only by a code of self-interest.

IT'S A SAD STORY, REPEATED AGAIN AND AGAIN
To me, this is a sad story. It begins in the sadness of God. One translation reads, "God's heart was filled with pain" to see his creation's cruelty to one another. It's sad too because nothing much changes. Noah is not God's superman; he's as flawed as the people who went down to a watery grave. Instead of being shaped by his miraculous delivery, he and his kin settle into a mediocre, less than exemplary life. It's a sad story because it keeps repeating itself over and over. People fail their highest ideals and God keeps calling them to repent and try again. It can be frustrating to observe the same patterns of failure and repentance over and over again. And yet, aren't these the patterns of our lives? The bible repeats these themes because they were as familiar then as they are now.

BUT WE KEEP TRYING
Today we're so pleased to have received 8 new members. People join churches for a variety of reasons, but one we hear a lot is that folks want to be part of something bigger than they are, something that will inspire them to greater depths of generosity and kindness. "Showing love and justice" is how we put it in the membership vows. There still are people who care about the dream of God. We've gotten off the ark now. But that old story goes on.

Jesus ends up dying for the dream of God. But he lives in our midst and keeps God's imperative alive, calling us again to create a new civilization based on compassion. (Flood symbolism is retained in baptism-going down into the waters to die to the old and rising to new life.) As we grow increasingly more conscious of the causes for violence and war, can it be that we might also be closer to making good on God's intention for us? In an interview on NPR, the Nobel Prize winning economist, Muhammad Yens claimed that poverty is a human construct and that eliminating it is within our grasp. And by distributing micro-loans in his native Bangladesh, he has proven that just one man can create hope and subsistence among people who had neither. Eliminating want will go a long way toward creating peace.

As we join in communion, let us remember its central symbol, all of God's people sharing a meal in peace. No one is excluded and there is plenty for everyone.