Sermon - Covenant with Noah

Noah

“A New Creation”

            The story of Noah’s Ark is one that most people know, whether they attend Sunday School or not.  It is a story that has found its way into our childhood, whether through the cute ways in which we design a baby’s nursery, or the toys our toddlers play with.  Noah’s Ark is cute and fun because it is filled with animals and a rainbow and children love animals and rainbows.  But that might be the level of understanding we have for this story.  God instructed Noah to build an ark, he does.  God tells Noah to gather two of each animal, he does.  And it rains and rains and rains for forty days.  Noah and these animals are all safe from the flood waters until the water recedes and God sends a rainbow and promises never to flood the world again.  Cute story. 

            But there is so much more to this story.  This is a story of God’s grief, of God’s loss, of God wiping the slate clean and trying once again to create.  God creates the world, and sees that it is good, but over time, God sees less and less that is good.  People seem to be doing whatever they please and there is a loss of goodness, except for Noah and his family.  And so, instead of just wiping the world clean of all living things, this is a story of second chances.  Noah and his family and a boat full of animals are given a second chance to be what God intends them to be: good. 

            And so, just like in the first creation story, the world becomes a chaotic void of water until God is ready to separate the water from the land.  Water cleanses, water brings new life, water is used by God to mark the end of one way of living and bring God’s people into a new way of living.  In the Noah story, water wipes away a world that had forgotten God and had forgotten their purpose. 

            This is a story of what it means to be faithful to God.  What must it have been like for Noah?  For his family?  In their day to day living, not conforming to the influences of everyone else’s behavior?  What did Noah do differently that gained God’s attention?  That God realized that there still was a person of faith in the world?  In the book of Hebrews, the writer names Noah in the list of those that were faithful to God and states:  By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith. 

            He condemned the world, Noah seemed to be able to see what was right and what was wrong and chose to live his life focused on righteousness. 

            Just in this much of the story there is so much we can learn and apply to our lives today.  Noah was part of a new creation, we too are a part of a new creation.  Our scriptures tell us that in Christ, we are a new creation, the old is gone.  We use water in baptism to represent the washing away of the old, and how the church is called to nurtures us in the new.  But do we live with the faith of Noah?  Are we able to see the rights and wrongs of this world and discern what faithful living is?  Or are we so blended into our culture that we have a hard time deciphering through the grey and where we should draw a line? 

            Noah was protected by God, was able to float through the chaos that consumed the rest of the world.  The ark was a protective shell that kept this family from harm.  Although I do not believe we should isolate ourselves from the world, we do, at times, need to enter into God’s protective ark and allow ourselves to be safely carried from one chaotic moment into God’s peace.  Do we have those places in our lives?  Places that allow us to leave the wrongs of the world behind and find a moment to embrace God’s presence in our lives?  Do we have those places that remind us that in Christ we are a new creation, that the old is gone? 

            God gives us the Sabbath as a weekly ark, as a weekly reminder that the chaos of the world does not have to overwhelm us but that we can be in a place of sacred presence and holy peace, and as a weekly reminder that in God there is a new creation, a weekly reminder that there is still good in the world despite the negative we hear.  \

            Noah was not just faithful in listening to God and building an ark, but God places the future of God’s creation in Noah.  Talk about a big responsibility.  The future of God’s creation rests in the life of Noah.  After the waters recede and Noah and his family are able to walk on solid ground once again, God makes a promise.  God gives a covenant.  First God blesses Noah and his family and tells them to be fruitful and multiply, an echo from the creation story.  Then God gives God’s covenant:  I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you ¹⁰ and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. ¹¹ I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”  And with the covenant comes a sign. 

Covenants and signs go hand and hand.  God’s covenant to Noah is marked with the sign of the rainbow.  And all these years later, a rainbow manages to stop the crowd.  Time after time, I have seen people busy doing whatever it is they are about just stop and look up into the sky at the beauty of a rainbow.  Covenants and signs.  When we see a rainbow God calls us to remember the covenant with Noah, the promise to never destroy the world again with a flood, but do we also remember that this is a covenant given to all creation?  This covenant involves the animals too.  Some view this covenant with Noah as a call to sacred stewardship in today’s world.  That we must find better ways to care for our world, for our planet, for all living things.  God did not just create us people to be a part of God’s plan, but God created all living things and we have a responsibility to ensure that all living things have a viable future. 

The covenant God establishes with Noah is an eternal covenant and is one sided.  Some covenants, as we will see over the summer, are agreements between two parties, but this one is from God, with no clause with how we humans can nullify it.  Because we hold it as an eternal covenant, we should spend time discerning what it means to us today, how we can be faithful like Noah and how, just possibly, the future of God’s creation rests in us.