Build Your Ark for God
a sermon based on Genesis 6:5-8,17-22, 8:13-22
by Rev. Frank Schaefer


 

This morning, we are faced with one of those stories in the bible which are a challenge to preach. We read about God being upset at his creatures. In fact, God is so sorry to have made human beings that  he decides to wipe out all of humanity by a flood of universal magnitude. The first image that came to my mind preparing this message was that of the Tsunami earlier this year--the seaquake that caused tidal waves and floods that killed almost a quarter million people. The question in many people's mind about the Tsunami of 2005 was: "why would God allow for something like this to happen?" If anyone is in charge of natural disasters it is God. For the most part, the church's response to these questions was: no, this is not God's doing. It is not an act of judgment on anybody. God is weeping with us and is present in the rescue efforts and the survival efforts of the victims. God, through the church, is also supporting the victim's surviving families; the outpouring of financial and other aids, primarily through religious organizations, has made a strong statement in support of the theological acclaim that God is a good and compassionate God.

But this morning we read about a time when God indeed decided to punish and destroy. God was upset at people for their sinful and uncaring ways. Many have wondered if people at Noah's time were really that much worse than Noah's offspring today. What unsettles me most about the story of Noah and the flood is the question of whether God still gets upset with people, at us, at me. And what are the consequences of God's anger? Is God going to punish us when we get on his bad side?

We are so used to hearing about God as loving, compassionate, and patient with us that a story like this can scare us a little. If we look a little closer though, we notice that God's emotion may not be that of anger, but rather that of disappointment. In verse 13 God is said to convey 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."

This is a rather matter-of-factly statement about the condition of humanity at Noah's time. No doubt, God is disappointed about the corruption and the sin, like parents would be disappointed over the wrong choices their children are making. God's decision to bring on the flood and to wipe out the human race may have been made of necessity.  There was just no hope for humanity back then.  Still, from the human perspective this is very hard to understand and very hard to take. Did not God give his creatures free choice to begin with? So, God must have known that there was a strong possibility that people would make wrong choices.

As I prepared this message, I became aware of the fact that, the longer I thought about this story, the more I was trying to rescue God's image. I was trying to save God from being thought of as an angry, tyrannical, and vengeful God and I was desperately looking for a redeeming aspect in this inhumane sounding story.

Maybe, that's not being faithful to the biblical witness. Perhaps, I should have followed some of my colleagues into preaching a "hellfire-and-brimstone" message having us all sweat at the fact that God might smite us too; that we should shape up, stop sinning, or else face the terrible consequences of sinful people in the hands of an angry God, but . . . something within me prevents me from going there.

So, then I noticed that after God makes his admittedly inhumane decision, the focus shifts; it is no longer on the punishment or the destruction, but it is now on salvation. For instance,  in the story the list of the animal types and numbers are repeated four times. And think about this: the fact that Noah was to build a huge ship nowhere near a lake or an ocean was really a message of salvation to the people of the earth. In fact, we read in the verses that are not part of our reading this morning that people did take and interest and asked Noah what this building was about. At that moment Noah became a messenger from God, reaching out to people, trying to warn them and trying to save them from the impeding doom.

When the Tsunami disaster was covered extensively by the news media, we learned that it had, in part, become so catastrophic in nature because there are no proper seismographic warning devices in place in the Asian area. In the United States, we were assured that warning devices were in place, that we could rest assured that evacuations would be announced and organized in case of a sea quake in our immediate area.

Well, in the biblical story of the flood, God is giving proper warning to the people of the earth, by having Noah and his family build a humongous ship in the middle of dry land, coupled with a warning of the flood, coupled with a message that there is a way out. The good news of the flood story is that God is a God of Salvation, that the choice is ours. There is still time to change, there is still time to "evacuate."

Even today, God is reaching out to us. We believe that end of our days is coming (everybody dies), we believe that God is a righteous God and will restore justice in the earth, we believe that God's judgment will be just and fair and that the bad and corrupt will be punished and that the victims will receive retribution and comfort. And we know from watching the news and from looking around us that this world is still corrupt, that violence and sin still prevails. Maybe there are some in this world, who truly live a good and righteous, and compassionate life; I'm not going to judge anybody. But I do know that there are plenty of people in the world who are lost, who do need forgiveness, who do need to change, who do need to come clean with their maker.

And as Christians, we have the good news of Christ to bring to them: a message of grace by a God of second chances, a message of forgiveness and the possibility to change and become fruitful and fulfilled human beings. And so, God is still building his ark among us--even today. God's signs of love, compassion, forgiveness and reconciliation stands tall with God's original messenger Jesus Christ and with all those who follow in his footsteps. As Christians we are all tsunami warning devices, we are all called to build our ark, we are all called to reach out and save as many people as we can from the destruction of sin and Godlessness.

Yes, God's work of salvation is not finished here, and it seems that God is using us as he used Noah and his family to complete his work of salvation.

There is a great midrash by Cherie Karo Schwartz which describes this task of ours so well. According to this midrash, "Noah and his family gazed at the beautiful arc of light, watching the rainbow flow from one end to the other. They saw it touching near and far, bridging sky and ground.

And then Japheth, Noah's youngest son, asked his father, “We came full circle in our journey on the ark, from dry land to water and once again to dry land. Why doesn't the rainbow come full circle?”

Noah puzzled over his son's question. He looked up to study the arc of colors in the sky. Then he answered:

“Perhaps the rainbow is a sign. Not all things are yet full circles. God has begun the work by making the arc in the heavens. Making the arc come full circle here on earth will be our work.” And so it remains." (Cherie Karo Schwartz, from Reading Between the Lines: New Stories from the Bible , edited by David Katz and Peter Lovenheim). Click here for the Reading: Midrash

Isn't it an honor that God shares his work of salvation with us? That's the kind of God we have, that the kind of grace God extends to us and to all of his creation. Let's take him up on it. Let's get busy building our ark for God. The task is tall, but it's great to be a part of the compassion of God reaching those who are in a very dark place. Praise be to God for his compassion and love that he shares with all of us!

Amen.