8Then God said to Noah
and to his sons with him, 9“As for me, I am establishing my covenant
with you and your descendants after you, 10and 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. 11I 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.”
12God
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: 13I
have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between
me and the earth. 14When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow
is seen in the clouds, 15I 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. 16When 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.” 17God said
to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me
and all flesh that is on the earth.”
The sheer power
of water is amazing. It can appear so
docile, especially since we use and control it each day of our lives. We use it to clean our bodies and we use it
for our enjoyment when we swim and quirt each other with eater guns, we consume
it each day and it nourishes our lives.
It can appear quite weak, not causing much damage at all. But then we look at the Grand Canyon, whose
majesty was patiently cut by water and we look at the devastation caused by
hurricanes, which takes years to recover from, and we look at the story of
Noah, when water is used to wipe out so many people and creatures, save those
on the ark.
God uses water to enact punishment
on the human race, for all of its Sin and corruption. He saves only a few, those whom he believes
to be the best of the best, out of the mercy and compassion that He has for His
creation, in order that it would not be completely destroyed. And he sets a
seal in the sky to show that He will never completely destroy the world again
with water. After all, it shouldn’t be
needed, since God had handpicked the ones who would be saved. Of course they would live to their utmost and
holy way and their generations would know the stories and everyone would treat
each other well, right?
Yeah, not so much. The first thing that Noah does is grow a
vineyard and make some wine. Now there
is nothing wrong with that. The he goes
and drinks a lot of his wine and gets drunk and passes out naked in his
tent. Ok, you know what, I can even
understand that. After all, everyone
outside of his immediate family is now dead, as are a vast majority of the
creatures out there, so I’m sure the man could use a drink. Well, His son Ham, which is one of the best
names in the Bible, walks in on his dad naked and instead of covering him up or
just letting him be, goes and decides to tell his brothers all about it. Not the nicest thing in the world, to try and
make a joke out of your dad, but you know what, he’s the youngest son, maybe
he’s just a teenager and I know how I was at a teenager, and we can kind of
understand why he thinks its so funny and wants to tell his brothers. So his brothers go and cover up their dad
without looking at him, and let him finish his rest. Now what gets me is what comes next. As punishment for his son Ham, for making him
the butt of his jokes, Noah declares that Ham will be the lowest of the
brothers, and the nation that arises from him will be slaves to the nations of
his brothers. He goes into overkill mode
quite a bit. I really think a stern
talking to would have straightened the kid out here, but instead he denounces
not only his son but all of the children that will come from him. It seems a bit overly harsh to me. I’m wondering if maybe God at this point is
wondering if he saved the right people or if this whole destroying the world
thing wasn’t quite the way to set things right.
One of the first things this group does is embarrass each other and
curse each other. Great way for us to
restart the human race.
The problem lies in the fact that we
are all sinners. None of us is perfect,
all of us have our own issues and immaturities.
Yes, Ham should have covered his father and not tried to make him a
laughing stock, and yes, Noah overreacted a bit by cursing Ham and all of his
descendents. They sinned, just as we sin
each and every day. It is sadly part of
human nature, since all of creation has been tarred by Sin ever since the fall
from Eden. Every major Biblical
character, outside of Jesus Christ, who even had some anger management issues,
had serious faults. Adam and Eve
directly disobeyed God, David had a man killed and stole his wife, Moses was a
murderer as well, and Abraham cast out his own son to die. Our greatest heroes are sinful human beings,
because we just keep falling into the way of the world, into seeking our own
pleasure and forgetting about the needs or others. No amount of destruction will change our nature. Each and every one of us has sinned and made
us unfit for the kingdom of God. And God
looked upon this world and knew this.
So what would He do? He had promised all of creation, not just
humans but each and every being on this planet, that He would not destroy it
again with water. He didn’t say anything
about earthquakes or fires, but He also saw that destruction lead to nothing
but more destruction. So what was there
to do instead? God decided to use water
again, but instead of destroying with it, he created and cleansed with it. Instead of reigning down destruction, He
decided to destroy the power of Sin and Death.
God decided to bring healing through the waters of Baptism, where our
sinfulness is washed away and we are filled with God’s Holy Spirit. Yes we still commit sins, but we are
changed. God stops seeing our Sin and
instead focuses on the Spirit that He has put inside of us, and He sees us at
cleansed of those sins. We still screw
up, but God only sees a beloved child.
After all, we are the children of
God. God loves us because we carry His
name.He saves us because we are His family.
Along with Noah and his sons and all people of all lands and all times,
we are brought together into the family of God because God wills us to be. We are tied together as one large family and
cared for and forgiven. Just like with
the flood, we are given a fresh start in our baptisms and we can do nothing to
ruin or defile that Sacrament. So as we
continue on our Lenten journey, let us be thankful to our Loving God, and may
we be glad for all the things that he has done for us, including making us
clean and whole in His sight.
Amen.
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