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"Somebody call?" Voobah, voobah, voobah.
"NOAH!"
"Who is it?"
"It's the Lord, Noah."
"RIGHT...What do you want? I been good."
"Noah, I want you to build an ark - go out and gather up
every species of animal, two by two, male and female, and bring
them into the ark, because I'm going to destroy the world."
"RIGHT...Who is this really? Am I on Candid Camera?" And
on and on it goes. Fun stuff.
Of course, the biblical account is meant to be taken
seriously. The story of Noah was the ancient Hebrew way of
reflecting on the responsibility and accountability of humanity
under the sovereignty of God. There is a respectful and reverent
affirmation that God brought us into this world, and, if we get
out of order, God can take us right on out again. But
ultimately, the message of this old, old lesson is that God's
supreme aim is our redemption, not our destruction. It is a
wonderful story of grace.
We first meet Noah at the end of Genesis, chapter 5, where
we learn that his grandfather was old Methuselah (the one who
lived for 969 years), his father was Lamech and that he was named
"Noah" (which comes from an ancient root related to "rest")(1) when
his daddy said, "He will COMFORT us in the labor and painful toil
of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed."(2)
Such was not to be, though. As the story unfolds, God sees
that folks are not measuring up to divine expectation, God is
angry at all the evil and wickedness going on, and as the
scripture has it, "The LORD was grieved that he had made man on
the earth, and his heart was filled with pain."(3) So the decision
is made that God will wipe us all out and start fresh. But, as
the old spiritual has it, "Noah found grace in the eyes of the
Lord," so he and his family would be preserved as progenitors of
a new and improved creation.
The story continues with Noah working around the house...
down in the rec room (or wherever). God lets him know what is
coming, gives him instructions on building an ark along with
direction on the birds and animals which are to be included.
At this point, my mind jumps back to Bill Cosby who has God
saying to Noah, "I'm going to destroy the earth. I'm going to
make it rain for a thousand days and a thousand nights and drown
'em all out."
Noah replies, "Right! Look, why don't you do it like
this...you'll save water. Let it rain for forty days and forty
nights and wait for the sewers to back up?"
God answers, "RIGHT!"
We know the rest of the story. The rains come, the floods
rise, and the world is destroyed...everything except the ark and
its contents. Forty days and nights of rain, then another 150
days of floating around, after which the waters began to subside.
All told, it would be over a year before Noah and his fellow
travelers would be able to get out of the ark. And yes, it must
have been pretty ripe in there. Some wag has even suggested that
the ark is a parable for the church: if it were not for the storm
without, you could never stand the smell within! Perhaps so.
Finally, this floating menagerie is able to disembark, and,
filled with the hope of a new beginning, the first thing they do
is worship the God who delivered them.
I was intrigued to hear a discussion of this sometime back
on the Public Television series called "Genesis: A Living
Conversation," hosted by Bill Moyers. The conversation about the
deliverance of Noah turned to the deliverance of the survivors of
the Holocaust. A quote from Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel
was read: "April 11, 1945, Buchenwald. Hungry, emaciated, sick,
and weakened by fear, Jewish inmates welcomed their sudden
freedom in a strange manner. They do not grab the food offered
by the American liberators. Instead, they gather in circles.
Their first act as free human beings is to say KADESH, glorifying
and sanctifying God's name."(4) Just like Noah. I was equally
intrigued to hear that the wonderful movie Schindler's List, the
incredible story of how one man saved hundreds of Jews from the
concentration camps, was originally titled Schindler's Ark.(5)
Interesting.
Back to the story. Noah worships. God responds. "Then God
said to Noah and to his sons with him: "I now establish my
covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with
every living creature that was with you--the birds, the livestock
and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with
you--every living creature on earth." No more wipe-outs like
this one - no more will I engage this world in mortal combat.
And in fact, as my own personal reminder, I am hanging my war bow
up in the heavens. "Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and
the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant
between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never
again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life." The
covenant is unconditional; God hangs up the bow in return for
nothing from Noah. Unilateral disarmament. The covenant is
perpetual, and the covenant is universal - with "all living
creatures."
An aside here. In the Hebrew there is a "sing-songy"
emphasis-by-repetition style that is not reflected well at all in
English translation. It is almost in the meter of a nursery
rhyme - a teaching device that every culture has used to great
advantage. That reminds us that these early chapters of the book
of Genesis are not to be understood as history. Rather, they
answer, in story form (and even in nursery rhyme fashion), the
deep questions that all people have. In a style that might be
used by an ancient Hebrew grandfather to answer a little boy's or
girl's question about where people and animals and birds and
trees come from, we hear about the Garden of Eden. To answer
where all the evil in the world comes from, we hear about Adam
and Eve and the serpent. To answer why people speak so many
different languages, we hear the tale of the tower of Babel. OK.
But if that is the case, one wonders what question the story
of Noah is trying to answer. An easy response is that this
explains where rainbows come from. But I believe that the real
question being answered here is this: "Grandpa, since this world
is such an evil place, why does God not just wipe it out and
start over?" The answer, my child, is found in this story - the
covenant God makes with Noah: Never Again!
I love that old classic about the country preacher who
announced that his sermon the following Sunday would be about
Noah and the Ark and told the congregation the scripture
reference ahead of time so they might read it in preparation for
worship. A couple of youngsters noticed something interesting
about the page layout of the story in the church's Bibles so they
slipped into the sanctuary during the week and glued two pages of
the pulpit copy together. Sunday came. The preacher began to
read his text. "Noah took himself a wife," he began, "and she
was..." He turned the page to continue, "...300 cubits long, 50
cubits wide and 30 cubits high." The preacher paused for a
moment with a quizzical look on his face. Slowly he turned the
page back and read it silently then turned the page again and
continued reading. Then he looked up at the congregation and
said, "I've been reading this old Bible for nigh on to 50 years,
but there are some things that are still hard to believe."(6)
Yes, indeed. This story is not one that warns what might
happen when God gets mad, but rather it is a story of incredible
grace. Just a few verses prior to God's covenant, we read God
saying, "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even
though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And
never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have
done."(7) God makes this wonderful promise DESPITE knowing that we
will be wicked anyway.
One of the participants in that PBS conversation with Bill
Moyers was a newspaper editor. Bill asked him what would be the
headline for an article that would tell the Noah story, and he
responded with something like GOD DESTROYS WORLD. Quickly,
another panelist, Samuel Proctor, that wise old retired pastor of
the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, jumped in with an
alternative: GOD GIVES HUMANS SECOND CHANCE! Right on, Sam.
Speaking of Sam, he said that he learned the Noah story from
his father, a Sunday School teacher. He said, "Sometimes we
laughed at the ridiculous aspects of it...(but) we didn't try to
rewrite it. We drew from it what it said right then to the
people and went on. Every Wednesday, though, my daddy would
press his trousers and go down to the Philharmonic Glee Club
rehearsal. These sixty black guys -- table waiters, coal
trimmers, truck drivers -- would give one big concert a year to
the white population. (We) couldn't sit where we wanted to, even
though our daddy was singing - we had to sit in the back. But in
the midst of all that rejection, hate, and spite, they went. And
do you know the song they sang at the close of the concert? They
sang, "Yesterday the skies were gray/ but look this morning they
are blue." Noah! "The smiling sun tells everyone come/ Let's
all sing, hallelujah/ for a new day is born/ The world is singing
the song of the dawn." Sixty black guys in tuxedos in the
1920's, with lynching everywhere and hatred - "nigger" this and
"nigger" that. But they had something we need to recover right
now. I can't turn loose this story of Noah and the Flood because
after all of the devastation...there's a rainbow...I'm not going
to live without that kind of hope..."
The Peanuts characters Linus and Lucy are standing at the
window watching the rain. Lucy says, "If it doesn't stop raining
everything will be washed away."
"Oh no!" says Linus. "Genesis chapter 9 says that never
again will God wash everything away."
"Thank you." says Lucy, "that is a great comfort to me."
Linus replies, "Sound theology will do that."(8) No Doubt.
Over and over and over, scripture shows our gracious God
giving second chances...new beginnings. One after another after
another after another. We thought of some a few weeks ago on our
first Sunday together:
Over and over, in the midst of our sinfulness, in the midst
of our willfulness, in the midst of our wandering, God begins
again and again with us.
A generation ago, Judy Garland captured our imagination as
she dreamed of a place "Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high,
there's a land that I heard of, Once in a lullaby"(9) - a better
world to which we might escape when trials and troubles threaten
to overwhelm. "Somewhere over the rainbow, Blue birds fly; Birds
fly over the rainbow, Why, oh why can't I?" We know the feeling.
The reality is that, as appealing as that magical ride into
the blue might be, we can be comforted in knowing that we live
UNDER the rainbow. God's promise of grace hovers over as a
divine punctuation mark to every storm. Yes, we are flooded time
and time again:
God's message of grace to Noah is the ark in which we can
take refuge. No matter what, REMEMBER, you and I are UNDER THE
RAINBOW.
Amen!
1. "Noah," Holman Bible Dictionary, electronic edition, (Hiawath, IO: Parsons
Technology, 1994) 2. Genesis 5:29 3. Genesis 6:6 4. Quoted by Bill Moyers, videotape, Genesis, a Living Conversation, "Apocalypse,"
(Newbridge Communications, 1996) 5. Karen Armstrong, ibid. 6. Loyal Jones and Billy Edd Wheeler, Laughter in Appalachia (New York: Ivy Books,
1987) 7. Genesis 8:21 8. Posted by Bill Adams, Sutter Creek, CA via Ecunet,"Illustrations For This Week" #179,
2/15/97 9. Music: Harold Arlen, Lyrics: E.Y. Harburg, copyright 1939
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