“One People, Under God’s Rainbow”

As you parents may know our children have been studying Noah’s Ark this year, and that’s always fun for them.  They get to do cool things like build a toy ark and fill it with pairs of paper cut-out animals, make bright rainbow puppets out of paper plates, and sing “Rise and Shine and Give God Your Glory.”  They got to learn all kinds of good things – and I did too, because I read their curriculum!  For instance, in Church School all those cubits get translated into measures we can understand.  So all those cubits our scripture readers read off add up to an ark 150 yards long (one and a half football fields), 25 yards wide, and about 4 stories high – 3 dark decks below.

And do you know how many of each animal Noah brought on the Ark?  Two, right?  No.  Today’s scripture says “two of each kind” but really it was “at least two” of each kind, because in chapter 7 it explains that Noah actually took 7 pairs of each kind of “clean” animal – like the sheep and the goats – the ones useful for food.  It was just the “unclean” animals like the reptiles and insects and pigs that Noah took only 2.  Just imagine what Connecticut would be like if Noah had taken on more than 2 deer ticks! And did you know how many days they were shut up in the Ark?  40 days and 40 nights? A month and a half? That’s what I thought – especially because this is the lectionary’s Hebrew Scripture reading to begin the 40 days of Lent – but that’s just how long it rained.  That’s how long it was until the waters rose high enough to launch the ark.  From beginning to end, the flood lasted one year and 10 days!

And do you know what the first thing they did was, when they finally got outside onto dry ground?  The second thing Noah did was plant a vineyard, make wine, and get naked and drunk, but that’s another story!  The first thing they did was build an altar to worship God, to make offerings there.  That blew my mind, and what an example for us as we come to the end of our Stewardship Campaign.  With as few animals as they had left, they still had enough faith to sacrifice a few of them as burnt offerings, as a sign of their covenant with God – a few of them, not just one.  Perhaps they weren’t afraid because they knew the Lord, who had brought them safely through the storm, would provide.

My point is, Noah’s Ark is much more than a children’s story of puppies and rainbows – it’s a story of a family’s survival in a year-long world apocalypse that makes the tsunami that hit Japan last year look minor by comparison.  Even if we don’t take the story of Noah’s Ark literally – and I hope we don’t – history suggests that the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East was often subject to severe flooding.  There in the cradle of civilization where the Tigris and Ephrates Rivers join, those who survived were people who honored their father and mother and learned from the wisdom passed down from past generations, those who learned to build, herd, and farm in harmony with the land and the climate. But they also were those who knew how to work together as tribal extended families who could share the resources they needed to get them through really hard times.

When you look at it that way, I think Noah’s Ark is a story that can still teach something to our world today.  First of all, think about what makes God mad in the first place – corruption and violence.  Well, thank God that’s not a problem anymore – whew!  And yet that’s where Noah’s story begins.  Fortunately we downplay this part when we teach it to our kids, but Noah’s Ark begins with God’s judgment.  God is angry enough at humanity’s greed and hatred that he tries to wipe us off the face of the earth.  Our ancestors forgot where they came from – from the same human family.  Even though this is not a story that begins “in the beginning,” it does start on page 5 of our pew Bibles.  Not long after God creates Adam and Eve, people had split into tribes and nations – they had forgotten they were all children of God, one people, brothers and sisters, all equally precious to God. So they learn to fight for land, food, and riches; they hate and kill.

As we move now into our season of Lent – another purple season of repentance – I think we should take what makes God’s angry very seriously.  After all, our world seems more corrupt, divided, and violent every day.  We need to call people back to this original rainbow covenant God made with all of humanity – this is a unique covenant in the Bible because it is the one covenant that God made with not just one man, one nation, one religion, or one ethnic group. The rainbow was placed in the sky as a sign of God’s universal covenant, to give hope to the entire planet.  It reminds us that those who have the ability to batten down the hatches and live together in peace with scarce but shared resources, who can work together toward a common good when times are tough, are people who please God – and are those who will survive.  Those who are willing to nurture and cherish all the creatures God has made – not just the ones we deem the most beautiful or useful, or the most like us – are faithful people doing the will of God.

There is important environmental truth to this story as well, as we remember that Noah took on at least two of EVERY animal, not just the ones he thought were best.  Remember how in the Creation stories, after every living thing that God makes, Genesis says, “And God saw that it was good.” Even after God created the swarms that rise from the waters, and the great sea monsters beneath the waves, “God saw that it was good.”  Wow!  Mosquitoes and great white sharks – even the creatures that will happily eat me alive, God calls them all good.  God loves them too.  Now that’s a humbling thought! Christians are starting to speak up more about stewardship of the earth, taking seriously the ways we put the whole planet at risk as we use up the world’s scarce resources – the way we proudly work to eradicate insect swarms with cancer-causing pesticides and pollute the oceans with plastic shopping bags.  Did you hear about the mass of garbage floating in the Pacific big enough to be seen from space?  Lord, have mercy upon us!

And if we are cruel to the animals we depend on for food, we are even more cruel to our human brothers and sisters.  The saddest thing is, we “people of the Book” – the Jews, Christians, and Muslims who all share this Noah’s Ark story – we aren’t any better than anyone else at helping the world live in peace.  In fact, you might even say we are worse – religious fanatics and fundamentalists can be the most violent of all. It’s up to moderates like us from of all major world faiths to stand up and speak out against hatred and prejudice – wherever it crops up among us. And to teach our children well.

I’m proud of the way we do that here, at our church – whether it’s in our Church School classes or in our Oasis youth outreach to the community – we teach about the God we have come to know in Jesus Christ, the one whose last and greatest commandment was “love one another” and not “go out and force people to think and believe exactly as you do!”  The United Church of Christ, our denomination, has been at the forefront of accepting into covenant those who other Christians reject – even those first missionary journeys to Hawaii, which began right here with young people from our church. They were idealists who wanted to bring the Good News of God’s love to native people of the Sandwich Islands – people who at that time much of the world considered to be no more than savage animals.  And we did that again in the Abolition movement in the 1860s and in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s – or our national affirmation of gay marriage in 2005.  We have always been people who affirmed this wide rainbow covenant.

You all look very serious, so I want to close with one last Noah’s Ark story.  Since I’m a pastor, a lot of people bought us Noah’s Ark-themed baby gifts when our kids were born.  My favorite one – which their Godmother Penny sent to them (Penny Ford, who just preached here last month) – was a wooden Noah’s Ark made in China. I’m guessing the craftsmen who made it had not the faintest clue about the Bible story, because each animal piece was an identical die-cut of its mate.  Sounds like a great idea until you realize that meant we got not only two matching giraffes and two matching sheep, but two Noahs with matching long beards and two male lions with beautiful matching manes.  For children who grew up in “open and affirming” churches like ours, this made every kind of sense.  The loving God they grew up knowing in Sunday School affirms not only “all creatures of every kind” but every kind of human family under God’s rainbow covenant.  We are blessed to be a part of a church that opens its covenant this wide – to include ALL of God’s children and not just those who are the most like us.

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.

 

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Genesis 6:11-22 (selected verses):

  ¹¹Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.... ¹³And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence ... ¹⁴Make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. ¹⁵This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. ¹⁶Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above; and put the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks. ¹⁷For 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. ¹⁸But 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. ¹⁹And 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.... ²²Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.

Genesis 8:6-12

⁶At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made ⁷and sent out the raven; and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. ⁸Then he sent out the dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground; ⁹but 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. ...¹⁰He waited another seven days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark; ¹¹and 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. ¹²Then he waited another seven days, and sent out the dove; and it did not return to him any more.

Genesis 9:8-15

⁸Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ⁹“As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, ¹⁰and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. ¹¹I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” ¹²God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: ¹³I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, ¹⁵I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh...”