Scripture: Genesis 6:5-9, 17-22; 8:6-12; 9:8-11
Friends it is so good to be together . . . and so good to be back together in this new year of the church year — Newman Church is a wonderful place to journey together in faith — we’ll be learning together, forming spiritual friendships, developing new faith practices, and creating capacities to be beacons of kindness and compassion to a world in need of both these things.
We begin with the flood on a morning in which the National Weather Service has issued a flood watch for our region, so even in the midst of these dark skies this morning, it feels like we are at the threshold of a new beginning.
This weekend, Jews around the world are celebrating a season of new beginnings too … Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, marking the start of a new year — the birthday of the world — began on Friday night and goes until sundown tonight.
So we say Shanah Tovah to our Jewish friends, meaning wishes for a good new year.
Rosh Hashana is the beginning of a 10-day period of reflection and repentance among Jews that culminates in Yom Kippur, the tenth day of the new year, in which seeking repentance, and seeking forgiveness from God and others happens during a day of fasting.
Today at Newman Church we’re starting a new season too with the beginning of a new lectionary cycle. The word lectionary (from lectio- Latin for “reading” and -ary denoting “a collection of things”) is the name for a special calendar of scripture readings that gives a structure to our worshiping year.
This is the second year that we’re following something called the Narrative Lectionary, which follows the story of God and God’s people beginning in the book of Genesis today, and finishes in May with the New Testament epistles located in the very backs of our Bibles. For the next nine months we are more-or-less moving sequentially through the entire Bible.
So today we’re starting a new lectionary year at the beginning.
But by now many of you are saying to yourself, well wait a minute. The Bible doesn’t begin with Noah, whose story we’ve just read! We’ve skipped over all those important chapters of God’s creative act, with Eve and Adam and the fruit and the serpent. And the command to observe the Sabbath day of rest and keep it holy. And what about Cain and Able? And a few of the Bible scholars among us are even saying, we skipped over the chapters of genealogies that describes how Noah is a grandson ten generations removed from Adam.
To anyone who feels they can’t in good conscience start a new lectionary year without studying the Gensis chapter 4 and 5 genealogies, I will do personal Bible Studies on those chapters with anyone, any time. Just let me know.
For whatever reason, the lectionary calendar this year starts with Noah and the flood as the first reading in Genesis chapters 6 through 9. We might be struggling with the fact that this year begins not with creation, but with God’s seeming destruction of creation.
All I can ask of you is to give me a few minutes to make a case to you here, that the Noah narrative is not really about the destruction . . . it’s not even really about the flood. Noah’s story is another creation story just as inspirational and important as those creation stories from Gensis 1, 2, and 3 . . . the first creation stories end with God banishing the wayward humans from paradise to go farm the ground and struggle through life — an awkward situation of unresolved conflict to say the least. But as we read the Noah narrative, we realize that this story of God starting over actually ends with God wanting to be in a relationship with us, and setting up some expectations about what that relationship could be like. There is something new in this Noah creation story!
One of the most important things to say about the flood story is that it is not unique or original to the Hebrew people. The story of Noah’s flood is certainly borrowed from earlier religious traditions, for in fact all early civilizations have their own flood stories … almost all lived close to rivers and bodies of drinking water, and all had flood stories to try and make sense of mass tragedies when the natural world overflowed and wreaked havoc on their worlds. Everyone needs a flood story to help us grapple with loss and the search for meaning.
The Hebrew flood story takes a familiar genre of flood story and makes it unique by what it teaches us about God. We learn that God can change; God is not captive to past precedents; God can choose to abandon what is not working, and can also rescue what has been condemned — in this case what is to be saved is Noah’s righteousness. Noah embodies something that is worth saving — and part of whatever that wonderful righteous thing is, it also part of you . . . it’s part of all of us. Part of our religious calling is to search for and find Noah’s righteousness in us, and to let it be our beacon to the world for those who need help finding a way back to dry ground.
It was previously said of the world that God created that, “God saw everything that had been made, and it was very good.” But now in the Noah story God is saying, “I will blot it out.” I will blot out the evil, but I will preserve Noah if I can.
In this story, God is not angry so much as God is grieving the world as it is. It matters to God what we humans do to each other.
The flood in the story is a physical manifestation of God’s grief at what the world has become. The crisis is not the rising water . . . the crisis of this story is God’s distress and anxiety becoming part of creation because God wants to create a way for suffering to end in this lifetime, and for people to be good to one another.
The flood brought on by God mirrors our own lashing out when we are overwhelmed in distress when we experience grief and chaos. We act rashly; we say things we don’t’ mean; we have to ask the forgiveness of others. So does God.
Asking forgiveness from someone else is really hard. It makes you vulnerable. It requires some level of courage. God shows us how to do it when God forms a new covenant.
After flooding all of creation, God finds internal calm through the apology of making a new covenant and promise with Noah, and Noah’s family, and all the animals of the world. God explicitly says, “I am establishing my covenant with you, and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you.”
That’s so powerful. I often forget this part of our religious tradition.
The world is brought back through God’s vulnerability and ability to make a new promise. The same is possible for us — to embrace our vulnerability and make a new promise to each other.
God sees Noah as righteous and wonderful, but God is not deceived that human nature seems pretty frail and even after the flood we’re almost certainly going to resume going to war, and deteriorating the environment, and using our ingenuity to make weapons and new forms of wealth inequality, and other unrighteous things. Instead of threatening us with punishment because of our frailty and innate flaws … God accepts us and the fact that our maturity as a species will not come from our own actions, but will have to come with the help of God. For this we put our hope in God.
It’s somewhat funny that this sacred text does not hide the fact that God knows our imperfections as humans . . . but even in this doubt, God sees us as perfectly imperfect, utterly indispensable, helpless yet essential and in need of preserving. There is something new happening in creation, and we are a part of it…
In the days ahead, other imperfect friends will join us on the scripture journey … all the descendants of Noah and Abraham are terribly flawed, and yet God loves them and does not give up on them. Just as god loves us, and does not give up on us, because God was vulnerable enough to change. May we be vulnerable enough to change toward God as well . . . with the help of one another. Thanks be to God, Amen.
