Scripture: The First Sunday in Lent (Quinquagesima), 2012 B

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

If there’s any tale in the Bible that has come to be viewed as the consummate children’s story, I think it must be the saga of Noah’s Ark.  What story, after all, has been the subject of more Sunday School murals, more Bible Camp songs, more bedspreads, cartoons, or board books in religious households?  It works so well upon children’s imaginations, and lends itself so perfectly to their interests and art: two of every animal, be they fuzzy, feathery, scaly or slimy, all piled into an enormous ship out on the sea beneath a brilliant big rainbow.  The dove and olive branch from Noah’s Ark have come to embody the very notion of peace and prosperity amongst humankind.  Now if that’s not family friendly, I don’t know what is.

Things get a little darker, however, once we dig a little deeper.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, my son had a Little People plastic ark when he was a toddler—two of them, in fact—full of cows and lions and dogs and elephants, all of which he gleefully played with and adored.  But, then, his mother and I didn’t really go into the details as to why, exactly, they all had to be on that boat, and what ended up happening to everybody and everything that didn’t get onboard.  “What about all the other animals, Daddy?” kids ask us one day.  “What about all the people?”

Noah’s Ark falls in that section of Genesis often referred to as “mythic beginnings:” the stories of Creation, the Fall, and the Flood, before we get into the more historically verifiable records of Abraham and his children.  Mythic, mind you, doesn’t mean false.  Calling something a myth doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.  A myth, rather, is a story that explains our world; it tells us deep and abiding truths about God, humanity, and the present state of reality.  According to the Bible, once sin and death entered the world, things went to pot with astonishing rapidity.  Jealousy, violence, murder, and all manner of horrors corrupt humanity by the second generation.  There’s even mention of angels going mad, taking human brides, and producing the giants and monsters of ancient lore.

Unwilling to destroy the world He created good, God instead sends a great Flood to wash away all the evil and destruction before it’s too late.  Noah and his family are the last ones around with even a hope of avoiding complete corruption, so it falls to them to preserve not only their bloodline but that of God’s beloved animals.  You know the story: Noah builds the great Ark according to God’s specifications, gathers in as many animals of the land as it will hold, and then the floodgates of the earth and sky alike open up for 40 days and 40 nights, washing Creation clean.  Finally the waters subside and Noah’s Ark comes to rest on a mountain called Ararat, where, amongst other things, Noah plants history’s first vineyard, ferments from it the first wine, and thus becomes the first man ever to get falling-down black-out dead drunk.  And remember, this was the branch of humanity worth saving!

In the last century or so, the story of the Flood has been dismissed as pure fiction, because, by and large, there’s no evidence that the entire planet ever found itself submerged by water in the last several thousand years.  Because of this, Noah’s Ark has been relegated to the realm of children’s story, not worth the time of an educated adult, except perhaps as an allegory.  But I for one find this blithe dismissal far too rash.  First off, the Flood may be the only biblical story attested by well nigh every culture on this earth.  The Greeks, the Hindus, the Chinese, the Sumerians, the Navajo, everybody has a story of a vast Flood of divine origin that wipes out the world save for a select few survivors.  Second, archaeology has not disproven the events of the story but only our interpretation of those events.  Scripture, for example, never says that the Flood covered the whole planet, but rather “all the land.”  This is the same phrase used to describe King David’s rule, that he conquered “all the land,” and David’s rule was local.

Additionally, Scripture speaks of latter-day descendants of Cain and of other Old Testament figures who were not ancestors of Noah.  Genesis itself, then, supports the understanding that the Flood didn’t wipe out everybody.  In point of fact, modern scholarship has found a prime candidate for Noah’s Flood: the Black Sea.  Long before Egypt and Mesopotamia rose to prominence, civilization flourished around the five rivers that emptied into the Black Sea—which was, thousands of years ago, a freshwater lake.  Then one day the Bosporus, “floodgates of the earth,” opened up and the Mediterranean came rushing in with a force 300 times that of Niagara Falls.  The Black Sea doubled in size and turned saltwater, wiping out civilization for another 2,000 years.  Sound familiar?  For that matter, the Black Sea borders a mountain range called Ararat, where anthropologists believe that grapes were first domesticated.

So, anyway, I tend to think that there’s a lot more behind Noah’s Flood than a simple children’s story.  It teaches us that ours is a God Who will go to great lengths to nurture even the slightest opportunity for mankind to be saved.  He is a God Who loves this world so much that He will limit Himself—making the rainbow into a sign and reminder of His promise never again to flood the world—in order to preserve it.  And it reveals to us the Nature of a God Who seeks always to redeem rather than to replace: to forgive and to sanctify even (and especially) the undeserving, rather than give up, destroy, and start from scratch.  Furthermore, for Christians, the Great Flood of Noah stands as a precursor to that greater flood, Baptism, which forever drowns we sinners in our brokenness and raises us up to new life in Jesus Christ.  The very reason that we design our sanctuaries to look like boats, calling them “naves,” as in something “naval,” is to recall Noah’s Ark and the Flood that brings new life and hope through the waters of death.

God cares for this world and for the smallest things in it.  In His mercy and generosity God may allow the wicked to do evil, but He will preserve and abide with the faithful.  And ultimately Creation itself recalls the covenant that ours is a God not of vengeance or violence or wrath, but of peace, of promise, and of fresh new life.  This is what the story of Noah teaches us regarding God, humanity, and the world.  And that is why Noah’s Ark remains a myth in the best possible of senses.

Still, though, there remains that uncomfortable question asked of every generation of parent by our innocent daughters and sons: “What about all the other animals, Daddy?  What about all the other people?”  Yes, Noah survived and flourished, but what of his contemporaries?  What of those ancient freshwater settlements now resting like rotted teeth on the bottom of the Black Sea?  How many people died in the story of Noah, and how can that ever be set right?  Even if they deserved it—it still seems an awful tragedy, does it not?  After all, there but for the grace of God go I.

But now we must remember, brothers and sisters, that nothing is impossible for God!  No one and nowhere is beyond His notice, His mercy, His reach.  “Where can I go from Your Spirit, or where can I flee from Your presence?” sings the Psalmist.  “If I ascend into Heaven, You are there.  If I make my bed in Hades, behold, You are there.”  We’re so used to thinking that the grave is our end, that death has the final say, that we forget just how far Christ’s authority extends!  St. Peter writes in his epistle this morning that even when Jesus’ flesh was put to death, we could not slay His soul!  During the three days when His Body lay in its tomb, the Spirit of Jesus descended to the dead and proclaimed the Good News of His Kingdom “to the spirits in prison,” including—and this Peter states explicitly—those “who in former times did not obey… in the days of Noah”!

Would you get a load of that!  It doesn’t matter that humanity had become so wretched that God flooded the earth in order to save Creation from their perversions!  It doesn’t matter that they perished thousands of years ago under millions of gallons of seawater!  Jesus came for them, even for them, in the land of the dead, because even while He’s dead Jesus can’t help but save the souls of everyone around Him!  What about all the people who didn’t make it onto the Ark?  What about all the animals that didn’t come two-by-two?  Jesus saved them.  Time was no barrier!  Death was no barrier!  All angels and authorities and powers are subject to Christ the King and He descended into Hell to pull sinners back up into Heaven.  What about all the people who died in the Flood?  They are alive in Christ.

When we say Christ is King, we do not mean simply King of the Church or King of this world.  He is the King of beasts and of angels, of spirits and ghosts, of storms and of mountains, King of stars and of galaxies, of space and of time, of words and thoughts and gravitation and existence and primal forces and of reality itself.  Nothing is beyond Jesus Christ.  No one is beyond His reach.  Not the sinner, not the broken, not the lost, and certainly not the dead.  No matter where you are, no matter what you have done, no matter how deep in the Flood you have fallen, call to Him and He will hear You.  Call to Him, and He will come.  The King will fight for His beloved.  And not even Hell will stand in His way.

Thanks be to Christ, Servant of Servants and King of Kings.  In Jesus’ Name.  AMEN.

Prayers of Intercession:

We cry to You for help, O God, praying for the Church, for the world, and for all those who are in need…

Lord, when rain and storm and cloud

            Do seem Your face from us to shroud

Then let us look unto the sky

            And see the bow You placed on high

Thus in the storm we see Your love

            Life giving water from above

Remind us we are in Your care

            Lord in Your mercy—hear our prayer

Lord, the gift of government

            Was meant to hold good order fast

But justice we’ve asunder rent

            And from our minds has fairness passed

Guide our leaders’ righting wrongs

            But let them not become too strong

So as we set the captive free

            We also stave off tyranny

Uphold our state and make it fair

            Lord in Your mercy—hear our prayer

Ev’ry 20 years or so

            We see world order come and go

As nations rise and nations fall

            The conflicts turn to bloody brawl

Water, oil, routes of trade

            Insight the use of gun and blade

Markets roil, powers shift

            Is our future set adrift?

Guide us true through the unknown

            In happy faith we are Your own

Through the dark to march we dare

            In Your mercy—hear our prayer

We pray especially for those we name before You now, both silently and aloud… for Jennifer, Gabriel, Jackson, Taylor, Owen, Kathy, Lon, Hilding, Birdie, Alma, and Jessica… for those recovering from cancer, those living with disease, and those whose hearts need Your strength… for peace in the Middle East, especially between Israel and Iran… for the people of New Orleans… and for all who dare not pray to You.

Into Your hands, O Lord, we commend all for whom we pray

Trusting in Your mercy to light and guard their way.  AMEN.