Sermon, Sun 25 Sept, Wk5: 'In over our heads'...WMRBW

Let us listen now to an old, old story:
a story of peril and preservation;
a story of love winning over retribution;
a story from God’s word contained in scripture:
1st READING: Genesis 6:9-22; 7:11-24
2nd READING: Genesis 8:1, 14-22; 9:1, 8-17

SERMON
Let’s pray:
Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts
be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

I remember, very clearly the first time I came across
the very strange and very soggy story
of a man,
of rain beyond imagining,
of a large boat,
and a great bunch of animals, big and small.
I was 18.
I was fairly new to all this church stuff.
And for some reason, I found myself volunteered to teach P 6’s and 7’s Sunday School.
But the great joke was, that the children taught me.
And in that year, where they taught me the old, old stories of the faith –
stories that I’d never known when I was their age –
they told me the story of Noah.

I remember sitting, listening to them completely entranced, while,
as a group, they pieced the story together.
According to my young instructors in the faith,
things weren’t really working out very well in the world –
bad stuff was happening.
God was upset.
So upset, that he just wanted to make it all go away.
And then, he asked Noah:
to build a boat,
to go on a rescue mission
to save the animals – two by two -
and, in that boat,
to ride out the biggest flood that the world had ever seen
For some reason, unclear to us at the time, the boat was called an ‘ark’.

Mostly, we talked a lot about all the different animals...
I remember feeling sad about unicorns –
wishing that they’d managed to get on board,
and wondered with the kids about dinosaurs:
we all thought that, probably, they were just a tad too big...
and none of us were quite sure why animals like midgies and mosquitoes were saved.

It was a fascinating story, a story that stayed with me over the years,
but... it’s not a comfortable story, despite the all the animals.
In fact, we’ve sometimes allowed the animals to take centre stage –
got caught up in the fluffy, cuddly things, rather than think about what seems
to actually be going on, namely, God destroying that
which he had previously so joyously created.
Now, the joy has gone.
Now we see a God who seems to be grieving over the great mess the world seems to be in –
the great mess that humans have made in the course of acting out of envy,
malice, greed, anger, and all the other products of only looking toward self-interest,
as opposed to working toward the interest of all.
Here we see a God, looking upon this mess, and, despairing so much, that, it’s like
he loses heart with humanity, and says:
‘I just can’t take this anymore.’

Genesis, Chapter Six:
‘Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence... 
So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people,
for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy 
both them and the earth.”'
But, even as God has the conversation with Noah, there’s a relenting of total annihilation:
immediately following on the heels of ‘I’m going to destroy everything’
God says to Noah: ‘Build a boat.’
And you might pardon Noah for going:
‘Wait. 
What?’
Because apart from seeming like a complete non sequitur,
it’s a mighty odd thing to ask of someone when you’ve pretty much just said to them
‘Nobody gets out of here alive.’
Detailed instructions for boat building then follow and, presumably,
Noah’s got the equivalent of a notepad and pencil handy,
because these instructions are quite specific:
type of wood – cypress;
measurements – 450 x 75 x 45 feet;
exactly where to put the door;
how many decks...
and so on.
Even with this detailed plan for ark building, God still says that everything will be destroyed...
everything...
but actually,
not everything.
Already the ending of the story is changing and moving towards a possible new beginning.
When it comes to complete destruction, simply put, God’s heart is not really in it.
God just can’t seem to wash his hands of humanity,
turn his back and walk away.
God chooses to stay.
God chooses to try and find a way to work things out with those made in God’s own image –
as well as moving around a substantial amount of livestock in the process.
Creation can be saved.
Humans can be redeemed.

As we’ve seen in our journey through Genesis so far,
God’s nature tends toward creating,
tends toward life.
And, while in this story there’s an enormous amount of death and destruction,
at the end of the story, God says
‘no more’...
‘never again will life be cut off.’
God is done with answering violence with violence,
of seeking vengeance and retribution for hurts given.
God models another way:
the way of sacrificial love.

From the end point of the Noah story,
as we watch the story of God’s ongoing relationship with people unfold through the Bible,
we find that no matter how many times people
reject God;
behave badly;
make some quite frankly eye-wateringly, astonishingly poor life-choices;
no matter even, those occasions when people choose to set themselves above God...
that God continues to choose the way of love and calls us to do likewise -
through the voices of the prophets,
the actions of the faithful down through the ages,
and, in time, through Jesus.

In this strange and soggy story
of a man,
of rain beyond imagining,
of a large boat,
and a great bunch of animals, big and small,
the bow – weapon of violence,
is hung up forever on the great wall of the sky,
facing away from, not to, the earth and all its people.
The bow – bringer of death,
becomes a sign of God’s choice to make peace,
of God’s choice to break with the spiral of violence,
of God’s choice to show that power is not found
within a culture of brute force, closed fists, and tyranny –
but rather, to be found by putting away weapons,
by being prepared to be open-handed and vulnerable...
and in so doing, to break down walls of distrust and fear.
The bow becomes a symbol of peace and reconciliation
a sign of hope and life and new beginnings.
It is this model, that we, as God’s people, are called to embrace –
and it is a model, that we can find so hard to follow.
It feels all too easy to want to hurt –
both those who hurt us,
those who hurt the ones we love,
those who hurt the innocent and vulnerable.
From somewhere in our depths we can too readily want to cry out:
‘smite them!’
Or, perhaps that’s just me on a bad day?
But there’s something primal within us that moves us
to want to choose retaliation
and the tearing down of people –
that makes us want to settle old scores,
or to keep old wounds festering.
But, perhaps it’s because this is the easy way?
Taking up God’s call to break the cycle of violence and retribution
requires us to break from a habit and choose a new way of being and behaving.
It is to choose to put away our own particular weapons of choice –
whether judging looks, sharp words, or even the use of violence –
and to make the road of faith by walking together in openness and vulnerability –
even though that can be frightening.
It is to choose to operate within a spirit of sacrificial love –
even though it brings the risk of hurt upon hurt.
It is to choose to break with old cycles and patterns that bring despair and destruction,
and instead, to choose life.

In this story of Noah, we find God led to do a new thing,
to find a new way of being in relationship to people.
In this story of Noah, we find ourselves, as God’s people, called to do a new thing,
to find a new way of being in relationship to God,
and, a new way of being, in relationship to our fellow human beings.
This day, and every day, let us hang up our weapons
and choose the way of life and of love.
...
Let’s pray:
Faithful God
as we make the road together with you and each other:
may we look afresh on our lives,
and leave by the wayside,
the hurts we have caused,
the harm we have spoken,
the lives we have bruised.
And may we pick up a new promise to you,
to live full lives
in the echo of your promise to us:
your living, dying and rising again;
to find celebration before prejudice,
life before death, sharing before greed,
balance before unsustainable living.

Faithful God
as we make the road together with you and each other:
may we look afresh on our lives,
and leave by the wayside,
the ways of living that corrupt,
the lifestyle choices that ignore others,
and the decisions we make that hurt.
And may we pick up a new promise to you,
to live full lives,
and share the world together,
love it fully, walk through it lightly,
share the burden equally,
celebrate its richness fairly.

Faithful God
as we make the road together with you and each other:
may we look afresh on our lives,
and leave by the wayside,
all that brings dull living,
all that is unjust,
all that makes conflict an option.
And may we pick up a new promise to you,
to live full lives
that work towards a new world,
and a new way to live together:
through the cross and into glory,
through the tomb and into morning,
through the death and into resurrection.
                             [prayer adapted from Roots]
Amen.