Feb
26, 2012
MARK
1:9-15 NRSV
In
those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And
just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and
the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You
are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
And
the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the
wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts;
and the angels waited on him.
Now
after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of
God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God
has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
GENESIS
9: 8 – 17 NRSV
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.”
***
I don’t know why we tell this story to children,
like I just did. Maybe we tell it for the same reason we take them to the zoo.
They can learn their animals, and about happy things like rainbows, and doves.
But really, the story of Noah is not happy story. It is not like the story of
Jesus with the children around him. The image of God in this story is a little
harder to take. Okay, the image of God in this story is terrifying.
Every animal, that we so lovingly teach our
children, is wiped off the face of the earth. It is really hard to imagine all
the animals shaking and terrified as the waters rise to their death. It is even
harder to imagine all of humanity swimming frantically and then drowned, a mass
grave of corpses buried under the sea. Even if you were Noah and his family,
can you imagine the grief of loosing everyone you ever knew? Can you imagine
the grief of looking around and seeing only the sea, where there once were
plants, and bugs, and birds, and fruit, and children at play? All is no more.
The earth has returned to nothingness, to being formless and void, to the time
before Eden,
when all was chaos. These are the waters Noah must look at over. This is the
story we are actually telling our children. Horror and violence is the image of
God we see as the waters rise.
Yet, if God created all the earth, does then God
have the right to take it away? With our violence and sin did we deserve the
fate of the flood? Chapters before describe,
“The Lord saw
that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth,
and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only
evil continually. And the Lord was
sorry that the Lord had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved the Lord to
The Lord’s heart. So the Lord said,
‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—
people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air,
for I am sorry that I have made them.’”
We, as humanity, were evil to our very hearts, and we deserved to be
punished. The punishment seems to fit the crime. We were given life; we insulted
the life we were given, the Giver of Life took our life away. It seems as
though God is, if nothing else, just, and fair. For what right do we have to
demand this life from the one who gives it? Is life ours to keep and to decide,
or are we ultimately God’s own? I wonder how in our life today how we might
be like the ones left behind? Do we not return to God thanks and praise? Do we
keep for ourselves the gifts of this life, which were never ours to being with?
How are we like the ones left behind? Do we deserve to drown in the flood? What
do we think we deserve that is purely a gift from God?
I tell you, we did not
deserve the bow in the sky. We were violent, and we deserved a flood of
violence. We had blotted out the beauty for which God created us, and God had
the right to blot us out. God had a right to shoot arrows of lightning and cry
tears of flood, and God did. This was what we deserved. We did not deserve the
bow in the clouds. That was God’s gift.
God hung up the bow of
divine violence, and made a covenant to us, to all flesh and all the earth,
that God would never again destroy the earth by flood. It was covenant to Noah
and his family, and to all the creatures, and to all the earth, and to all
future generations. It was a covenant promise of God’s peace, and of God’s
presence. It is a covenant God has kept.
God repeated this covenant in the gift of
God’s Son. The Holy Spirit like a dove descended and with it we are reminded of
God’s promise of peace. The heavens tore apart and God said, “You are my Son,
the Beloved.” and with those words we are reminded of God’s promise of
presence. Despite our violence, our wickedness, and our evil, Jesus brought
peace, and the presence of God to us. Despite our being slaves to sin, Jesus
brought life anew, and continues to bring life anew.
We remember this gift of
life anew in the waters of baptism. In baptism we too are called Beloved, we
too are claimed as God’s own. In baptism we
are covered in the waters of the covenant, a flood of God’s presence and
peace to us. We are given a story to tell to our children, and it is a story of
a benevolent, forgiving, and loving God.
