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A Sermon Delivered at First Christian
Church Stockton Matt.7:21-29, Romans 3:22-28, Genesis 6:9-22, 7:24, 8:14-19 The
Story of Noah and the Flood The
LORD saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that
every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil
continually. And
the LORD was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved
him to his heart. So the LORD said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the
human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping
things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’ But
Noah found favor in the sight of the LORD.
And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all
flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am
going to destroy them along with the earth. Make yourself an ark of
cypress wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with
pitch. For my part, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth, to
destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life;
everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my
covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your
wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing, of all
flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive
with you; they shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their
kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping
thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every kind shall come in
to you, to keep them alive. Also take with you every kind of food that is
eaten, and store it up; and it shall serve as food for you and for
them.’ Noah
did this; he did all that God commanded him. And
Noah did all that the LORD had commanded him. Noah was six hundred years
old when the flood of waters came on the earth.
It rained for 40 days and nights. At
the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made
and sent out the raven; and it went to and fro until the waters were dried
up from the earth. Then he sent out the dove from him, to see if the
waters had subsided from the face of the ground; but the dove found no
place to set its foot, and it returned to him to the ark, for the waters
were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took
it and brought it into the ark with him. He waited another seven days, and
again he sent out the dove from the ark; and the dove came back to him in
the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf; so
Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. Then he waited
another seven days, and sent out the dove; and it did not return to him
any more. + In the Arthurian legend of
Camelot, the moment of crisis arrives when King Arthur realizes that his
favourite knight and bravest friend, Lancelot, and his wife, Queen
Guinevere, have become lovers. The two have surrendered to their passion,
had an affair and have sinned against Arthur "in thought, word and
deed". As a husband, Arthur
realizes that he has been betrayed by the two people he loves most in the
world and is sorely tempted to indulge his anger. As king, and in
particular a king who has prided himself on establishing a rule of justice
in the land, symbolized by the legendary knights of the round table, he
knows he cannot hold himself above the law. His wife and his friend must
be tried for their adultery. As a man, who cannot help loving them both in
spite of what they have done, his heart is torn in two. How can he
sentence to death the very people who mean more to him than life itself?
He is a man grieved to the very bottom of his soul. It is the moment everything
changes in Camelot. It is the day the boy-king becomes a man; for love
that is mature is love that can be mixed with both anger and sorrow for
those we love. Such is the Godly side of judgment. + It is one of the darkest
stories in the Bible, which is full of dark tales, a story which says that
God came to a point early on in the relationship with humankind when God
was ready to give the whole thing up. It is a story of God's terrible
despair over what was happening to the human race, God’s sorrowful
regret at having made us in the first place, and God’s decision to put
an end to us all by visiting the earth with a great flood. Now, we need to stop right
there and sit with this for a moment; for anybody who has ever heard this
ancient story thinks he or she knows what it means: that God gets so angry
with the world that the Creator decides to punish it by sending a flood;
and that if it hadn't been for good old Noah and his family, well, . . .
we wouldn't be having this conversation. That the world would be doomed if
it were up to God alone. That, generally speaking, people get just what
they deserve; and that somehow that is the way things should be: that the
good get rewarded and the bad get punished. It’s just
the way things are. But, when we take time to
listen to the story, really listen to what is being said, what we find
here is not an angry tyrant who gives us what we deserve, but a troubled
parent who grieves over what has gone wrong. What has happened is indeed
wrong, as far as God is concerned, because the world has betrayed
creation's intent. It is filled with violence and pain, hatred and murder,
greed and chaos. Human beings have treated God shabbily, disgracefully and
God takes such actions very seriously. It is the first thing to
notice about this remarkable story; for, somehow, many of us have gotten
the idea that God is timeless and immovable, which is to say immune from
what goes on in the world and in our lives in particular. Or the kind of
Victorian monarch who simply considers it beneath her dignity to be
aroused by such petty concerns. A stoical God. An apathetic God. A God who
is above such "mortal" matters. Nothing could be further from
the God revealed here; for this is a God who cannot help what she feels,
who is devastated, crushed, angered by what he sees. His anger has turned
to deep sorrow, a sorrow that convinces him that the world would be better
off without humankind, better off if there were no trace left that any of
us were ever here. And yet, God cannot quite
do it. God cannot quite give up on us entirely. Almost but not quite. It
is the gospel of this ancient myth: that God cannot quite abandon the
world he made so joyously, cannot quite stand back from it and say,
"Bad idea!", cannot quite turn his back and say, "Never
again!" Once again, we need to stop
for a moment and consider seriously what is being said; for the popular
understanding of this story is that the crisis of the flood put the world
in jeopardy. That the future of the human race is what is at risk. But if
you read the story carefully, it is the heart and person of God that are
in crisis. The crisis is not whether the flood will destroy the world; but
what the wickedness of humankind will do in the heart of God. And the story says God
changes. Changes long before she sets the rainbow in the sky and vows
never to destroy the earth again. Changes long before he tells Noah to
collect his things and become the bravest sea captain ever to ride out a
storm. Before all of that. The story says God changes in the very moment
he considers staying with his tragic creation and to leave enough of us
left to start all over again. That is the critical
moment: the one where God decides whether to turn his back on us for good
or to continue on loving us even in his terrible hurt and grief. So that
when God finally says in this story, "Never again!" it is not
because of any change that the flood has wrought in the world that has
made him say it, not because the terrible devastation it has caused and
that has forced him to take pity on us. It is not even for the sake of one
good man named Noah and all his family. It is because God has decided to
act in a new way toward us, and, in short, to indulge his own grief and
trouble for the sake of loving us as his very own no matter what. We live in a world of
judgment. Family, work, church and state are quick to judge and condemn.
It is not enough that things go wrong. Someone must be held accountable.
Someone must pay. When someone victimizes us,
our first instinct is to seek vengeance; and, as critical as we may be of
Hollywood violence, writers and producers merely mirror what we spend most
of our lives doing. Not surprisingly, many of us try fashioning a god to
call our own in similar fashion: a god who settles scores in heaven, who
evens out suffering, who judges and condemns with glee. How else could it
be, we say? It is the only fair way things could be. But every once in a while,
we come across someone who dares to question the way things are, who
wonders out aloud if this really is the way things should be. In the
entrancing film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, for instance, a renowned
martial-arts warrior suddenly announces his retirement by passing on his
famous sword to a trusted friend. When his stunned protégé and lover
asks what has precipitated this momentous decision, he tells her that it
came as a result of a prolonged period of meditation. "What happened?"
asks his friend. "Deep into my journey
I came to a place of brilliant light," he says. "Enlightenment?"
she asks. "No," responds
the great warrior. "Something different. Within the light was a deep
sadness." Is it possible? Could it be
true - that at the deepest centre of things, there is a heart filled with
sadness for everything that has happened? A heart, deeply grieving, but
that cannot let us go? Isaiah 54.9-10
For this is like the days of Noah to me: as I swore that the waters
of Noah should no more go over the earth, so I have sworn that I will not
be angry with you and will not rebuke you. For the mountains may depart
and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you,
and my covenant of peace shall not be removed. It is particularly
important for people like you and me to remember that the story of Noah
and the great flood was written at about the same time these words from
Isaiah were also written - during a time of exile and deep abandonment for
the people of Israel, a time when the world - filled with violence and
hatred and little love - seemed to mirror the darkness in the heart of
God. This ancient story was
written as a reminder that it is not darkness that is in the heart of God
but a deep sorrow, a sorrow born of that limitation God has placed upon
herself not to indulge his anger for everything that we have done and, God
knows, continue to do to one another and the good earth. It is a story
about God's remarkable decision to remain steadfast in his love toward us
in spite of everything. The good news, not that there was a Noah or a
rainbow, but that there was a God who would not abandon us. The good news
that God chose to wait for the deep change that happened in his own heart
one day - to happen in all of our hearts.
Michael Malone
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