FIRST SCRIPTURE READING Luke 3:21-22 Common English Bible (CEB)
21 When everyone was being baptized, Jesus also was baptized. While he was praying, heaven was opened 22 and the Holy Spirit came down on him in bodily form like a dove. And there was a voice from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I dearly love; in you I find happiness.”
SECOND SCRIPTURE READING (PASTOR) Genesis 5.5-8, 13 - 22, 8:6-12; 9:8-17 Common English Bible
Genesis 5.5-8 The Lord saw that humanity had become thoroughly evil on the earth and that every idea their minds thought up was always completely evil. 6 The Lord regretted making human beings on the earth, and the Lord was heartbroken. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe off of the land the human race that I’ve created: from human beings to livestock to the crawling things to the birds in the skies, because I regret I ever made them.” 8 But as for Noah, the Lord approved of him.
13 God said to Noah, “The end has come for all creatures, since they have filled the earth with violence. I am now about to destroy them along with the earth, 14 so make a wooden ark. Make the ark with nesting places and cover it inside and out with tar. 15 This is how you should make it: four hundred fifty feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and forty-five feet high. 16 Make a roof for the ark and complete it one foot from the top. Put a door in its side. In the hold below, make the second and third decks.
17 “I am now bringing the floodwaters over the earth to destroy everything under the sky that breathes. Everything on earth is about to take its last breath. 18 But I will set up my covenant with you. You will go into the ark together with your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives. 19 From all living things—from all creatures—you are to bring a pair, male and female, into the ark with you to keep them alive. 20 From each kind of bird, from each kind of livestock, and from each kind of everything that crawls on the ground—a pair from each will go in with you to stay alive. 21 Take some from every kind of food and stow it as food for you and for the animals.”
22 Noah did everything exactly as God commanded him.
Genesis 8:6-12
6 After forty days, Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made. 7 He sent out a raven, and it flew back and forth until the waters over the entire earth had dried up. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the waters on all of the fertile land had subsided, 9 but the dove found no place to set its foot. It returned to him in the ark since waters still covered the entire earth. Noah stretched out his hand, took it, and brought it back into the ark. 10 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out from the ark again. 11 The dove came back to him in the evening, grasping a torn olive leaf in its beak. Then Noah knew that the waters were subsiding from the earth. 12 He waited seven more days and sent out the dove, but it didn’t come back to him again.
Genesis 9:8-17 Common English Bible (CEB)
8 God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 “I am now setting up my covenant with you, with your descendants, 10 and with every living being with you—with the birds, with the large animals, and with all the animals of the earth, leaving the ark with you. 11 I will set up my covenant with you so that never again will all life be cut off by floodwaters. There will never again be a flood to destroy the earth.”
12 God said, “This is the symbol of the covenant that I am drawing up between me and you and every living thing with you, on behalf of every future generation. 13 I have placed my bow in the clouds; it will be the symbol of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember the covenant between me and you and every living being among all the creatures. Floodwaters will never again destroy all creatures. 16 The bow will be in the clouds, and upon seeing it I will remember the enduring covenant between God and every living being of all the earth’s creatures.” 17 God said to Noah, “This is the symbol of the covenant that I have set up between me and all creatures on earth.”
PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION (PASTOR)
In the flood of everything
we have to let go
of all we have
that doesn’t sustain us.
You instruct us -
Carry creation, family or friend,
all else will be washed away.
And so we prepare an ark,
to keep out the waters,
yet we are thankful for the dirt we track in
which nestles in the cracks
of the spaces
in which we will reside.
Our dirt
- future reminders
of that which we deem to be solid.
But the rains come
and we are forced to get on board
where the only thing solid
is the rocking of the boat
and the reality of - wet.
Wet, in the washing,
the ritual stripping
of all the dirt
onto which we have set our feet,
and their scoured creases
into which we have written our stories
of solid land.
In the wet,
and in the washing,
when all we wanted for was sun,
you bring us a baptism
where to immerse
and become soaked
is finally to be set free.
Where not the ground
but that which is flowing
that which is rocking like a chair to a lullaby,
becomes the only way to move.
In the going under, Reborn
in the rising, a Dove,
in the subsiding an Olive Leaf, and a Bow,
And we, glimpsing the mind of the Mariner, the Mermaid
become Sailors, Swimmers
the people who belong to the wet,
who are called to the water.
Yet, red sky at night
and the dove doesn’t return
and it is time go home,
to face the dirt that has become mud,
where each step begs for our imprint,
and our clean feet cake on the land.
We step with our sea-legs
feeling the difference between rocking
and what we once thought was solid.
It feels unsteady,
to look at the ground.
So we look up,
and are reminded,
there is a covenant,
hung high above the town,
like a widow on her walk -
a bow in the clouds.
A bow to remind us
that we are people of wet
and with that wet we may simply
wipe the dust off our feet
because underneath
we have been reborn
and to each of us,
Sailors and swimmers
God has said,
“You are my beloved.
In you I am well pleased.”
Amen.
SERMON (PASTOR)
You can’t take anything with you when you swim. And it’s a good practice, especially when you’re traveling, because all you have, is everything you think you’ll need. Your passport, your wallet, your camera, your water bottle, your chapstick, a hair-tie, pen and paper, a couple bandaids, your clothes, your coat, your towel, your snack, your medicine, your room key, your phone, which for me is also my maps, my itinerary, my budget, my communication and contacts, my guidebooks, my photos and digital camera. My shoulder bag is my ark, not only my camels, my sheep, my chickens and my doves, but also, perhaps, carrying things like Noah and his family must have brought from home. Maybe Noah and family brought all the money they had, a deed to his land, candles to work at night, and maps of the stars. Maybe he brought a bottle of good wine, his finest pottery and softest wool blankets. He probably brought an assortment of tools, lumber, and whatever were the Biblical equivalents of duct tape and crazy-glue. Maybe he brought an instrument, or a small set of paints. I hope he at least brought a swimsuit. I imagine Noah brought the stuff we all think about, when we think about what we would take in a natural disaster, and I bet he also brought the stuff we think we need when we are traveling the world. The ark is Noah’s everything bag and it feels pretty vulnerable to leave the things we carry, back on the shore.
Once, years ago, in 2010, in the port of Athens, I asked my friend to hold my everything bag. As I was taking off my bulky coat, two people came up and distracted my friend asking him questions, while subsequently another did the same to a police officer watching the area, and subsequently one more casually and quietly started walking off with my Everything Bag. I yelled to my friend, “Will, watch our stuff,” and I subsequently - took chase, yelling, “Hey, Hey, Hey,” and before I could even say, “That’s my bag!” the thief gently placed it down and walked away. There would have gone my passport, phone and wallet, a beautiful leather backpack I had just bought, and possibly our trip to the Cyclades. There would have been phone calls, and embassy visits, and canceling credit cards, and locking up my stolen phone, and schedule changes, and so much time lost. Likewise, in 2018, as the church prepared, this was also what I heard as the congregation’s biggest fear of my travel. “Please, be safe.” You would say. “What if the grant debit card gets stolen?” “Are you going to call your parents to check in so someone knows if something happens to it?” Leaders would ask. It’s a scary thing to send someone off to a place where you need an Everything Bag and there no immediate replacement or familiar community if it’s lost. And so, each time swimming required me to leave my stuff on the shore, I knew there was a risk.
Yes, you do what you can, you sit by people who, “look safe,” whatever that means, be it they have kids, or are elderly, or are themselves leaving their stuff to go swim, or they simply smiled at you when you laid your towel down nearby. You also, cover your everything bag in your towel, and may sure to scoot it away from the incoming tide. And still, once out in the waves, every hundred or so feet from shore, you look back, and peel your eyes to check and find your stuff, and look for any suspicious movement by your towels, or when you really can’t see it anymore, you look back at least to show you are looking, and you think about how fast you would have to swim to intercept a incident, “Hey, Hey, Hey.” But ultimately, that’s no way to swim and there are grottos to discover and shells for which to dive. So, you have to leave it behind and go do what you love, what makes your heart sing.
I wonder what Noah had to leave behind in order to follow God. A comfortable home, the land he loved and called his own, his community, and perhaps some the grudges that came from naming his view community’s imperfections and the ways he beat himself up for not being able to take a breath and explain better with his heart. Because Noah was doing something as ridiculous as building an arc, and leaving for a long time. I wonder what Noah had to leave behind in order to follow God and I wonder what we had to leave behind to follow God. Those things we hold on to to make us feel secure. Imagine all the paperwork, wouldn’t in some ways feel good to bring it just to toss it overboard. Wouldn’t feel somewhat like trusting God instead of humanity? And still we hang on to those things, our bank statements, and the titles to our offices and cars, all the papers that say we are who we say we are, the birth certificates, the adoption papers, the official IDs, the marriage certificates and the divorce decrees, and anything for which we carry a card - from a political party to the Safeway or Albertsons down the way, the calendar we have mapped out and and to-do list that is a mile long. Loosing either of those things, our calendar or to-do-list, causes much fuss, even though it is from those very things we attempt to take vacation. In our denomination we hoard Session minutes from about the time Noah, and perhaps individually, at work or in our relationships we folder the chains of e-mails or letters which try to prove something other than what is blareingly obvious -miscommunication. And so even onto our ark, or into our everything bag, we attempt carry the long resentments, the broken expectations, misunderstandings, and the paperwork messes, of the places where we have dug our feet in the mud and buried our heads in the sand. All that is not going to fit in the ark and if we tried to swim with our everything bag, it would sink us. And so, sometimes, we have to let it all go, in order to swim. In order to be baptized in the flood.
I remember one such swim with Lisa, the bay of Amalfi curved around ,and just past the sightline of the beach where our stuff was, was another bay, and at it’s far edge, a dock from which to jump. We covered our stuff, and as I swam, I looked back every so often, finding the bright colors of our towels and the covered bulges of our everything underneath, but eventually we swam to the point where to keep going meant we had to leave everything behind. There is nothing greater though, than truly leaving everything behind. There was so much pressure when we could see our everything bags, but once we were far enough out that we had to let go, that is where the swimming began. That is where God part began. That is where the play began. We would dive down and show one another the cool fish we had spotted, or a new shell we’d carry in the one hand we could spare and still make decent enough progress stroking freestyle with the other. We would pop up and look at the city from it’s grandest and intended view, the one seen by ships coming to dock, rather than from the land. We would notice the way that one house was placed just on the edge, and so, unlike the others, it surveyed both bays, or the one solely white with the giant tree, far up by the church where I wondered if it was perhaps a Catholic rectory, like a manse, or the other home who got away with the color sea-foam in a town prescriptively painted red, yellow, and orange. These thing’s we’d never notice from the safety of the beach. We’d describe the clouds and their shapes and colors and the weather, and Lisa would laugh at me because I would be so happy out there, that I turned into a motormouth and she’d have to remind me to actually go somewhere instead treading water, a motion for me in water as unnoticed as the ebb and flow of a rocking chair. Out there, carrying nothing, we got to finally really swim, swim faced forward rather than backward, swim underwater, swim to somewhere far, swim long enough that our feet cramped and the knew we’d be sore in the old odd familiar places on the walk home, when walking itself would feel weird, the opposite of getting your sea legs, we would have to find our land-legs. Once to the end of the other bay we swam to the concrete dock and with the kids half our age, jumped enough times to dive, and cannonball, and pencil and then decide to swim back. On the way back we found a giant rubber covered styrofoam floating bouy-line, that stretched across the bay to separate the swimmers and the ships and was big enough to be visible by such ships and to hold humans who were laying on it like a float. So Lisa and I played flips and the push game, and try to stand up and balance. Falling off and crawling on was so ungraceful and ridiculous that both ways we would hit the water still laughing with an open mouth that carried the sound in our bubbles. We were having so much fun that others found their own spots to try down the way. We played until our stomachs hurt from laughing, and I remember the reluctance we both shared and about going in. It had been time for quite some time, and it was suggested by one or the other of us, once or twice already, but it was that stretching out of moments when you don’t want it to end. It reminded of how as kids, my sister and I, would hold our breath underwater when we saw my parents come to the edge of the neighborhood pool to tell us it was time to head home. If we were underwater we couldn’t hear the five-minute warning, and therefore, it would mean five minutes from the point at which we’d come up for air, rather than five minutes from when they’d stand at the water’s edge. So, we’d come up for quick breaths pretending not hear the beginning of the, “It’s time to…” sentence. Holding out those summer afternoons to the last moment possible. And this is how it felt with Lisa, the day was done, but all we wanted to do was keep going underwater, holding our breath, and not worrying about the things we had left behind, or the night to come, because we had God with us out there in the deep.
We can’t get that expansive ocean view, if we are still clinging onto the things of the land. I like to think Noah looked at his everything bag after a time, and that he had foregone those softest wool blankets, because when God told him to make a space one foot below the roof of the ark it had created the perfect cradle for Noah and his family to sleep. I imagine the candles that Noah bought he found no use for, because he quickly learned the shape of the ship at night and his eyes would adjust to the directions of the stars. I imagine his pottery had little use and found their way into a corner just holding seeds and hay mostly forgotten, like that one pair of heels I packed all the way through Texas, Massachusetts, Israel and Palestine, and only wore once just to make me feel a little less stupid for hanging on to the things I thought I needed. I imagine the things that mattered were that which made his heart sing, maybe it was an instrument, maybe it was a little paint, maybe it was just time with his family, maybe it was his swimsuit when the sea was calm and clear. Maybe Noah out there learned to embrace the flood, to swim in it and be submerged in God.
Maybe after forty days, he wanted the dove to come back, that that time with God would never end. But God did something different, the dove flew on and God hug a bow in the clouds. Bows only come when there is sunshine and also wet. It was for Noah, a reminder, of who he was to be, a person of the dry land, that none the less belonged to the wet. A bow is bridge between these things. It connects the land and the sky, the rain and the sun, and we to God. We are all walking on that rainbow bridge, coming back together from our sabbath time, to a time on the land and the dirt. But we walk with God’s covenant, of a bow in the clouds, that reminds us, to leave the ark of our everything bag behind and in that way, we may be submerged in God, a people reborn.
