There is a story told of when God first made the world, nothing turned out right, so God decided to start all over again. When the animals heard about this, they were frightened. They decided to ask God not to end the world. But none of them knew where God lived, so they all flew and flopped, rolled and ran, jerked and jumped, crept and crawled, slithered and slid to the different places they thought God lived.
The elephant said, “I am the biggest animal, but God must be bigger than I. Surely I will find God in the biggest thing.” The elephant came to a mountain. “This is the biggest thing around, so it must be God!” And the elephant asked the mountain not to end the world.
The eagle said, “I can fly higher than any animal, but God must fly higher than I. Surely I will find God in the highest thing.” The eagle flew higher and higher– far higher than any bird had ever flown before. The eagle saw a fluffy white could that was even higher than he. “This is the highest thing, so it must be God.” And the eagle asked the cloud not to end the world.
The lion said, “My roar is the loudest animal sound, but God must be louder than I. Surely I will find God in the loudest thing!” SO, the lion roared and roared and roared and roared. Suddenly the clouds gathered together, turned black, and sent out thunder and lightning. “This is the loudest thing, so it must be God.” And the lion asked the thunder not to end the world.
Soon the elephant realized that the mountain wasn’t God because it didn’t answer him. Soon the eagle realized that the cloud wasn’t God because it blew away. Soon the lion realized that the thunder wasn’t God because it stopped. Soon all the animals were yelling, “We have to find God or we’re done for!”
Then the fish spoke up. “In the oceans and sea and rivers and lakes where we live, water is everywhere. There is water all around. If the water is everywhere, God must be everywhere too.” When God heard what the fish said, the whole world shone and the black clouds blew away. Then God said to the animals, “When I end the world, I will save two of each kind of animal so that when the world starts over, you can start over too. But as for the fish… I will save all of them, because only they knew where to find God.[1]
As we have been walking together in the book of Genesis, we, too have returned to the beginning to remind ourselves about God. The foundational stories remind us where to find God, who God is, and who we are. These old stories, some of us might want to prove and take pictures of factually; others might want to analyze the likelihood of cubits and species of animals. Even still some might disregard as myth. However, we still tell these stories to our children, for a good reason. We need to remember that when we feel most like we are doomed by the actions of humanity, when we are disappointed by the less than humane ways we treat one another, the painful decisions our governments make, and horrific stories of shared history, we are never lost.
Civilizations through the known world hold onto the tradition of a deluge or a flood as a part of their creation story. From the Babylonian, Enuma Elish to the Mesopotamia’s epic of Gilgamesh to the Norse mythology and the Yoruba traditions and the Native American tradition of turtle island, this concept echoes through global understandings of our creation as a people.
At the heart of this scripture and these flood stories is the truth that the world has gone astray. The world has not acted as God has called people to act. Sin is something we know a lot about. We come from a people who have sinned, we are part of people who have sinned, and many of us are careful to point out the sins of others.
But in the midst of a sinful world, doing sinful things, at least one sought God. NOAH. Noah is so intertwined with God that Noah’s moment of hearing God is almost glossed over in the scripture. It is shared as though God always talks to God’s people. And to be fair, God has spoken with most of the people prior to Noah in Genesis – Adam, Eve, serpent, Cain, Abel, to name a few. And God still speaks to God’s people calling them to listen and follow.
But for many of this idea sounds preposterous. We always imagine that Noah looked awkward and confused in the beginning. We imagine that he was teased by his neighbors and ridiculed by his family, as he built the ark the Lord had called him to build, before a drop of rain fell from the sky. This terrible flood was coming to destroy the world, but no one could see it.
Now, think about it for a moment. God called Noah to build the ark he needed from the storms of life. God gave Noah the specifications and directions to have what Noah needed for what was coming. Noah listening to God was the most important of life of Noah, his family, and all of animal creation.
What would it look like for us to imagine that God might have already provided everything we need to ride the storms of our lives? When we are reeling from a cancer diagnosis, when our marriage is crumbling before our eyes, when our bodies betray us, when the world seems to beat in from every angle, God is not far from us and teaching us to come into the shelter of the ark, we have built by listening to God in the storms of our lives.
We need the ark against the storm and from what is become for us. The ark is where barriers stop being barriers and we come to know that we need one another in a stormy world. Seeking shelter from the storm means recognizing we cannot handle the storm by ourselves. When we speak aloud that we cannot do it alone, we chose to depend on God and God’s people. We need one another white and black, young and old, optimists and pessimists, conservatives and liberals. “We build arks with love and ride out the storm with courage and know the sprig of green in dove’s mouth betokens a reality beyond the storm more previous than the likes of us can imagine.” [2]
Ark is where we have one another and hold out sprig of hope. Just a sprig of hope the dove brings against the world that is coming. Just a small indication of God’s grace in the midst of trial. It tells about how we managed to ride out the storm.
And from inside the ark, we see the rainbow. The rainbow is still placed in the sky as a sign to all of humanity. The Noahide covenant was unconditional in nature. God and all of humanity (meaning those you adore and those you cannot stand) hold this in common that God will not destroy humanity. Unlike other covenants, there is no promise from humanity, no sacrifice of animals to seal the deal. This covenant is universal and unconditional. It is undeserved blessedness and compassion from the Creator to the creation.
This is a story of prevenient grace. Undeserved and before we do anything, God offers God’s very self to us. Prevenient grace is not based on what we can, but what God does. The rainbow is the sign of the covenant. Rainbows are short-lived and always invite community. Each time, we see a rainbow, we look to show it to someone else. Rainbows bring delight and surprise. Rainbows cannot be taken inside.
As you find yourselves with the storms of life raging, look to what God has already provided for your ark from the storms. Seek out the sprigs of hope that indicate that the storm is finally passing. And look up! For the rainbow that while fleeting, reminds us of God’s everlasting commitment to us. This is the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ, thanks be to God, Amen.
[1]Gellman, Mark. “Water All Around” in Does God Have A Big Toe? , 1993.
[2] Buechner, Frederick. “A Sprig of Hope” in Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons. 2006, 42-48.
Old Testament Lesson: Genesis 5:1-3, 28-29, 32; 6: 9-11, 13-14, 18-22; 7:1, 11-13, 17-19; 8:1, 6-12; 9: 8-17
This is the list of the descendants of Adam. When God created humankind, he made them in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them ‘Humankind’ when they were created.
When Adam had lived for one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.
When Lamech had lived for one hundred and eighty-two years, he became the father of a son; he named him Noah, saying, ‘Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the toil of our hands.’
After Noah was five hundred years old, Noah became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
These are the descendants of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God. And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.
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.
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.
Then the Lord said to Noah, ‘Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you alone are righteous before me in this generation.
In the six-hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. The rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights. On the very same day Noah with his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons, entered the ark,
The flood continued for forty days on the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters swelled and increased greatly on the earth; and the ark floated on the face of the waters. The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered;
But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided;
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.
Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ‘As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and 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. I 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.’ God 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: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.’ God said to Noah, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.’
New Testament Lesson: Romans 11: 1-3, 7
I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? ‘Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars; I alone am left, and they are seeking my life.’
What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened,
Meditations For Your Week
Sunday, July 9~ Saturday, July 15
Sunday: “These are the descendants of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God.” Genesis 6:9 To walk with God is to know well enough God to walk to step with God. Where are you walking with God?
Monday: “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.” Genesis 6:11. God has never stopped seeing the pain of the world. Laments and tears have always been the way of God’s people to respond to the pain of the world. Cry out in prayer to God in brokenness of the world.
Tuesday: “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.” Genesis 6:18. God’s covenant is a promise of everlasting connection. A covenant in the midst of life, not away from it. Give thanks to God for God’s presence in the midst of life.
Wednesday: “Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.” Genesis 6:22. Noah responded to God’s commands with obedience. Many of us ask God to speak clearly and show us a sign. Prepare your heart to respond to God’s commands with obedience.
Thursday: “The flood continued for forty days on the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth.” Genesis 7:17. The storms of life continue to increase, but the ark holds. Where do you need to turn to God as shelter, in midst of life’s storms?
Friday: “Noah waited another seven days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark.” Genesis 8:10. Noah did not give up hope, but kept watching for the waters to subside and testing the ground. Where do you need to be encouraged to keep waiting on God, while testing the ground?