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Scriptures: |
Genesis 9:8-17 |
Those of us of a certain age, let’s say, will recall a classic comedy bit from the ‘60s – Bill Cosby as Noah having a conversation with God. First seen (by a very young Bill Cosby) on Jack Paar’s “Tonight” show, it was put on an LP (remember those?) and, I don’t know about you, but I played it over and over again. If you want, it’s available now on YouTube, which is where I listened to it again this week and started laughing all over again. Here’s part of how it goes:
Noah is in his workshop sawing away.
“Noah.”
“Somebody call?”
“It’s the Lord, Noah.”
“Right! Where are ya?” “Whadda ya want? I’ve been good.”
“I want you to build an ark.”
“Right! What’s an ark?”
“Get some wood. Build it 300 cubits by 80 cubits by 40 cubits.”
“Right! What’s a cubit?”
“Collect all the animals by twos -- male and female -- and put them into the ark.”
“Right! Who is this really? Am I on candid camera?”
OK, ‘nough of that. No one can really imitate Bill Cosby, nor should try. The point for our purposes this morning is that incredulity that Noah must have felt, which Cosby so wonderfully captures with his “Right!”, when God tells Noah to build this huge vessel. (Cosby has a second bit, not as well known as the original, in which a neighbor going to work sees and comments on the ark that is going up in Noah’s yard with an equal degree of incredulity.) Note: God tells Noah – doesn’t ask him. In chapter six it says, “And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh….. Make yourself an ark of cypress wood…..’” (vs. 13-14)
God is constantly making these demands that seem to invite incredulity. To Abraham: “Go from your country and your kindred…to the land that I will show you.” To Sarah: “You shall have a son even though you are advanced in age.” Again to Abraham: “Take your only son Isaac and offer him as a burnt offering.” To Moses: “Tell Pharaoh to let my people go.” To Joshua: “March around the city…when (the priests) make a long blast with the ram’s horn…the wall of the city will fall down flat…..” To Deborah the judge: “Go, take position on Mount Tabor…and I will deliver Sisera, the general of Jabin’s army, to you.” And of course to Mary via the angel Gabriel: “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.” Right! Is it any wonder we, along with so many of the characters in the Bible, want to ask, “Who is this really?”
God makes demands of us and our natural human tendency is to resist those demands as too outrageous, too burdensome, too…well…demanding. What would your neighbors think if they saw you out in your yard building a 300 cubit ark…especially with the amount of rain we typically get in Las Vegas (last month notwithstanding)? OK, let’s make this a bit more realistic: what would the neighbors think if they saw you putting a stand out in your yard to hand out free food and clothing and gas cards. And when they ask you (with that note of incredulity in their voice) why? you respond, “Just read Matthew 25 about doing it to the least of these and thereby doing it for Jesus.”
God makes demands of us. That’s part of what our Lenten journeys are all about – to discern which of God’s demands really do have a call on each one of us. But that’s not all that God does. God also offers promises and even more specifically: a covenant.
Our scripture passage from Genesis actually comes from the time at the end of the story of the great flood when the flood has subsided and Noah has taken his family and all of the animals and birds and creeping things out of the ark and they have begun to re-populate the earth. God promises to Noah that God will never again bring such a flood to destroy every living creature. [Note: every living creature; not just human beings.] God enters into a covenant with Noah and all his descendents in these words: “’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.’”
Do you believe that promise? After Katrina and the tsunami that swept over Southeast Asia and the hurricanes that are a regular part of our seasonal forecasts do such words ring hollow? What the Biblical writers are doing here is setting the context for the Israelites’ understanding of what God’s presence will mean for them down through the ages. Because of Noah’s faithfulness in meeting these outrageous demands of God, God will enter into a relationship with human beings and with all creatures such that God will protect and enfold them, not destroy them. That’s why any death – whether massively, such as in a tsunami, or individually, such as with Bruce’s aneurysm – is never, as I have said before, an act of God. God’s acts are the ones that are made in the covenant God has with God’s people – a covenant that will not be broken.
The sign of that covenant is something that is both familiar and at the same time rare: a rainbow. I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t love to look up at a rainbow when it appears, and even though, scientifically, it’s just light shining through a prism enhanced by wetness, there’s a beauty in that span of colors that does speak to us of God’s presence in our lives. The writers of Genesis were inspired to name this as the symbol of what it means to have God present for us.
For our Lenten journeys are also about discovering that presence along with discerning those demands. In order to do that we must sometimes have to go through our own wilderness wanderings.
Our lectionary text from the first chapter of Mark takes us all the way back to Jesus’ baptism and God’s identification of him, as we said last week: “’You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” Jesus has come to fulfill God’s promise, God’s covenant. But look at what happens next: “And the spirit immediately (there’s that word again that Mark so loves to use) drove him out into the wilderness (where he was) tempted by Satan…..” Where is God’s presence now? If we were there in that wilderness with Jesus would we not be imploring as the song from “Godspell” and the dancers did: “When wilt thou save the people. O God of mercy when?... God save the people, for Thine they are, thy children as thy angels fair; God save the people from despair.”
These lyrics point us back to the promise, the covenant that God made with Noah: we are no less to God than God’s angels, and God’s greatest desire for us is to be saved from despair. And so the angels ministered to Jesus there in the wilderness, just as God’s angels are constantly being there with us, affirming for us the presence of God.
The other two lectionary texts for today, which we didn’t read, also affirm this presence. Psalm 25, echoing the words of “Godspell” and the covenant with Noah, says, “you are the God of my salvation….. Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and of your steadfast love, for they have been from of old….. All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep God’s covenant and God’s decrees.” (vs. 5,6,10) In the letter of I Peter the writer speaks of Christ “being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit,” and then going to make a proclamation “to the spirits in prison” – which later interpreters came to believe meant that Christ visited hell before going to be “at the right hand of God” – thereby bringing the message of God’s love even to those who had died. All of our texts for today mold for us an image of a God who promises never to abandon us, never to leave us alone, always to be present: the covenant with Noah, the angels ministering to Jesus in the wilderness, the Psalmist who speaks of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness, and the understanding that Christ went even into hell in order to offer God’s mercy there.
Let me end as we begin to prepare our hearts and minds and spirits to receive communion with a story told by Nancy E. Topolewski about her friend, Jean, whose life, as Nancy says, “radiated this promise of presence”. I hunch that many of you will know someone like Jean and can identify here.
“As a young teenager, Jean had given her life to Christ. If times had been different when she was growing up in the 1920s and 1930s, I suspect that Jean would have clearly discerned a call to ministry. That possibility had not been available to her, so she became a teacher – a vocation she practiced all of her adult life.
“Shortly before she was to retire from teaching, as she stood on the corner by the church waiting to go inside for choir practice, a vehicle that was being towed around that corner suddenly broke loose and slammed directly into Jean. Both of her legs and several ribs were smashed. Many long, painful months passed before Jean could walk again. For the remaining 15 years of her life, Jean found pain a constant daily companion.
“Three years after this accident, I became Jean’s pastor. Jean spoke openly about the accident’s having driven her into the wilderness, which became her hell. Amazingly, her joyful faith never wavered. I asked her once how she had ever found the strength to endure multiple surgeries, increasing disability, and never-ending pain – all totally beyond her control. She said in response, ‘I know Jesus is here with me. He has been with me, even as God was right there with Jesus dying on the cross.’
“Shortly after I left that parish for a new appointment, Jean learned that she had cancer. For the next two years, Jean fought like a tiger. But even her steely will could not save her ravaged body. When I saw Jean two weeks before her death, she told me she was weary of persevering. At the same time, I knew Jean well enough to realize that her spirit and her faith were unaltered. ‘I’m not afraid,’ she assured me. ‘I know I’m not alone.’
“The quality of presence, of being there, of personal involvement of God in Christ in her life, enabled Jean to finish her course in faith, to endure to the end. Jean died on the afternoon of Ash Wednesday in the year 2000. On the day marking the beginning of Lent, Jean left the wilderness, the hell of her illness, and took her place among the saints in light.
“God will not take the temptations or the abandonment away. But God never leaves us to face such times alone. This is our faith, under the Mercy.”
Amen.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
March 1, 2009