Sunday, June 1
Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Weekly Theme
Waters of New Life
Weekly Prayer
God With Us, whose unfailing mercy is our refuge even when our broken choices corrupt your glorious creation; lead us to the safe haven of righteousness and uphold us on the rock of your presence, so that in times of trial we may stand firm, anchored in faith, through Christ, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Weekly Reading
Gen 6:9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19
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 saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. 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. This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Make 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. For 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. 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.
And the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred and fifty days.
In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry. Then God said to Noah, "Go out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons' wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh—birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth—so that they may abound on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth." So Noah went out with his sons and his wife and his sons' wives. And every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out of the ark by families.
Reflection
by Kate Huey
One of the most popular themes for nursery decorations is that of Noah's ark. Many infants gaze from their cribs at walls papered with cheery images of a friendly, bearded man and his family surrounded by pairs of charming little animals, all cute, all harmless, riding along on what looks like warm, cozy boat. (My granddaughter even has a toy Noah's ark, complete with ramp and an inexplicable little banner that waves merrily on top.) When I decorated my first office as a new pastor, I put up a "Noah's ark" plate - it was very, very cute - over my light switch. My senior pastor took one look at it and said, "I've never understood why we tell children that story as if it's cute. I think they must find it at least a little frightening." And I've never heard the story the same way since then.
Today's passage is just a glimpse of the familiar story in Genesis about the Great Flood that washed away all life on the earth except for one "good" man and his family. And it really is only a glimpse, only part of the larger story, which goes on for several chapters and would be difficult to read in one sitting. But we miss the rainbow, and the promise from God never to do that again. Perhaps the most striking piece that's missing, however, is the all-important line that begins the eighth chapter: "But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark." Interesting that the wife and children aren't mentioned in that line, but the animals are, just as they are described at some length in today's passage. Perhaps that provides a way for us to approach the text this year, when we are keenly aware of the creation around us and the effects of our actions upon it. How is God still speaking to us today through this ancient and troubling story?
There are in fact two versions of the same story by at least two different writers woven together in the long account that begins at 6:11 and goes through the ninth chapter of Genesis. (Check out the entire story to get a sense of the internal differences.) And this account is influenced, scholars say, by even more ancient stories from the cultures surrounding Israel, stories about floods that devastated not Israel but other parts of the world, including Mesopotamia (which means "between the two rivers," and is even now the focus of worldwide attention for a different kind of suffering and destruction, in Iraq). The ancient Israelites drew on the traditions of other cultures as they told the story of their own understanding and experience of God. Sometimes there are similarities between their story, and those of their neighbors. But there are important differences, too, among them, always, the image of a God who is not flighty or cruel or weak, but One who is compassionate and moved to mercy.
Still, the point of the story, at least at its beginning when the stage is set, has to include the wickedness rampant in the world ten generations into the family saga of humankind. W. Sibley Towner sketches the family tree of the one good man left, Noah: there are ten generations between Adam and Noah, and ten more between Noah and Abraham, each one of them a very important "Father" in the greater story. In fact, Noah is a kind of "new Adam," with the same three sons, and one "gone bad," one commentary says (Genesis, Westminster Bible Companion). After the beautiful account of creation, it seems that things have gone downhill rather quickly, beginning with sin in the Garden of Eden and the murder of brother by brother, and now the whole world is evil, violent, and corrupt. Barbara Brown Taylor observes, "Cain killed his brother Abel – the first murder but not the last – and humankind went on breaking what God had made until, by the sixth chapter of Genesis, God ran out of pity...What a fast catastrophe to go from 'God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good' to 'I am sorry that I have made them,' in five short chapters."
A fast catastrophe indeed – and yet within the catastrophe are mercy and hope. The short version of the Great Flood story that we share today is perhaps frightening, as any story about sin and judgment should be, but it is also full of God's grace and compassion. Yes, things were bad, but God's mind is on saving humanity in spite of itself. Our Bible speaks of little things (mustard seeds and leaven) and people small in the eyes of the world (David as a young boy, Zacchaeus, the children coming to Jesus), and today's story reminds us that we all come from a broken, small but precious remnant of humanity, after violence and sin almost ended it all.
There's no avoiding the "problem" of a God who would destroy so many people. But getting stuck on that problem would be missing the point of story: as Towner puts it, this was "a destiny that the human community unleashed on itself." It was not the act of a capricious or cruel God. And God is the point of the story, the God who feels compassion every single time the moment seems to call for complete and utter despair about God's broken and recalcitrant creation (especially the human part). The people of Israel, through their writers and the stories they passed down generation to generation, told in desert camps and written down in the Temple quarters of scribes and scholars, tried to express their deep sense of this God full of loving-kindness but dealing with the consequences of our freedom and our sin: "a God," Terence Fretheim writes, "who expresses sorrow and regret; a God who judges, but doesn't want to, and then not in arbitrary or annihilative ways; a God who goes beyond justice and determines to save some creatures, including every animal and bird; a God who commits to the future of a less than perfect world; a God open to change and doing things in new ways; a God who promises never to do this again...God, from creation on, continues to be open to and affected by the world." In fact, Fretheim says it best about the sorrow of God amidst this frightening judgment on our sins: "Grief is always what the Godward side of judgment looks like."
So we might focus in this Flood story on the breadth of God's covenant and care: God obviously cares a lot not only about us but about the animals, too. We often forget that the creatures of the earth are included in the covenant of God's care. If we actually understood things that way, wouldn't we hasten to repair the damage we've done? If God went to so much trouble and so much detail to instruct Noah about the importance of taking every kind of animal with him (notice how many times the words "every" and "all" appear even in this short passage), and if God, at the very end of this story (9:15) makes a covenant with Noah and with "every living creature that is with you," perhaps we should sit up and take notice. Caring about creation, about global warming, about pollution, about animal neglect and cruelty, aren't just nice little hobbies to make us feel good about ourselves. They aren't only about our own safety and survival, either. Such care and commitment are at the heart of faithfulness to a covenant made long ago that, thankfully, includes "every" one of us, "all" of God's precious children (even though, alas, we still sin, too, yet God is merciful).
As usual, Barbara Brown Taylor has written beautiful words about the challenge of this covenant, that, she says, "includes all the species disappearing daily off the face of the earth. They are all of them our covenant partners – heirs of God’s promise just like we are – and those of us who understand our kinship with them tremble to think what we have done, killing off those to whom God has promised life...We too are allies of creation...wounded by the brokenness we see around us, the brokenness in which we ourselves participate. We are both the breakers and the healers...It is still raining, you see. In our own time, the ark does not look so much like a barn floating on a choppy sea. It looks more like a blue-green ball bobbing on the dark ocean of space...If we go on perishing, it may have less to do with divine fiat than with our own amnesia. We have forgotten who we are and what we are supposed to be doing..so that every living creature who rides this ark with us may share the unmitigated joy of walking down the rickety ramp to plant a foot, a paw, a hoof on dry land." In light of their inclusion in this covenant, what do you think "we are supposed to be doing" about "all the living creatures" that share this good earth with us?
For Further Reflection
Julian of Norwich, 14th century mystic
Sin has to happen, but all shall be well. All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.
From The Feminine Mystic, Lynne M. Deming, Ed., Pilgrim Press.
All readings for the Week
Genesis 6:9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19 and Psalm 46 or
Deuteronomy 11:18-21, 26-28 and Psalm 31:1-5,19-24
Romans 1:16-17,3:22b-28,(29-31)
Matthew 7:21-29
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Weekly Seeds is a service of the Congregational Vitality Initiative, Local Church Ministries, United Church of Christ. Bible texts are from the New Revised Standard Version, © 1989 Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The Revised Common Lectionary is © 1992 Consultation on Common Texts. Used by permission. The Ancient Christian Devotional is © 2007 by Thomas C. Oden and ICCS, and is published by InterVarsity Press. Used by permission.