Thoughts on 9/11

            I heard an odd, dull thud.  Our church custodian was always making noises in some far off corner of the church building.  He’d drop a table or slam a trash can.  It was common.  Except, this thud wasn’t like any sound I had heard from him before.  It was distant and distinct. 

            I went back to the meeting I was in.  A church insurance salesman wanted to talk with me about our policy.  Our cordial conversation, after being interrupted by the distant thud, was interrupted a second time, by a phone call.  It was one of our church members, Bill B.  Bill asked, “Are you listening to the news?” 

            I now know what the thud was, the sound I heard that morning, September 11, 2001.  It was a plane slamming into the Pentagon which sits almost 4 miles east of Greenbrier Baptist Church, where I was serving as lead pastor. 

            Today is the 18^th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that changed America, my generation’s “Pearl Harbor.”  Now we have Department of Homeland Security.  The world has experienced “The War on Terror” and “The Arab Spring.”  America has elected its first black president and its first reality TV star as president.  Strongman dictators Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Saddam Huessein of Iraq, fixtures in world politics in the ‘90’s, are both dead. 

            On September 10, 2000, the Red Sox, White Sox, and Cubs had each been almost a century without winning the World Series.  Since then Boston has won 4 and both Chicago teams have won 1.  As of September 2001, the New England Patriots had never won a Super Bowl and Tom Brady had not yet started an NFL game at quarterback.  Since then, the Patriots have won 6 Super Bowls and Brady is widely considered the greatest of all time.

            There are four people now in my life that were not a part of my life in September 2001, my wife (married in January 2003) and my 3 kids.  Some of the changes from 2001 to now are trivial.  Others are significant and enduring.  The testament to the significance of the day lies in how well we all remember it. 

            As followers of Jesus, what do we do with that memory and how do we live as his disciples in the world as it is today?  I see the world as temporary, transitory.  It’s not going to be the way we know it to be forever.  Out of love of God and neighbor, we must care for the earth and work for humanity and creation’s thriving.  Recycling, ecological consciousness, and care for the environment are Holy works that honors God.  Exploitation of nature is sin.  And yet, I understand the Bible to say that at some unknown future point, God will restore the world in spite of man’s best attempts to ruin it.  No matter how well or poorly we do in combatting global warming, God will eventually fix it.

            Thus, I grieve the ravages of pollution and man-initiated climate change.  But I don’t fear it.  Humanity’s unchecked rebellion against God is no match for God’s plans for what God has made.  I shudder at the evils man inflicts upon man; mass shootings, institutional racism, terrorism, war, disregard of the poor; it is all awful.  Yet I also absolutely believe that on the last day, when Christ returns, all will be restored and his followers will be with him.

            What does that mean for how his followers are to live now?  We are to lean-in to the Kingdom that is coming.  We care for recreation.  We actively resist global warming.  We fight racism and classism and we work to uplift the poor and vulnerable.  We invite the lonely into community and we share God’s love with all people.  We encourage people to uphold Biblical standards for interpersonal relationships and family and community life.

            As Americans, we are forever affected by the events of 9/11/01.  As followers of Jesus, our calling is the same today as it was on 9/10/01.  We are to love others and share the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord and all people who turn to him in repentance and express faith in Him will be born again as sons and daughters of God.

https://www.amazon.com/Living-These-Days-Responses-Terrorism/dp/B000CPNBF4

One Life to Live (Hosea 1:1-11)

Sunday, June 10, 2018

            Be ambitious.  Don’t fear embarrassment.  Make messes.  Jump into the unknown.  We only have one life to live. 

            I agree with all these meme-worthy sentiments.  I say, live the way my high school football coach told us to play defense, with reckless abandon.  Try new things.  Go new places.  This life is the only one we get.

            However, that idea that we have but one life to live means more than just make the most of opportunities.  It is also true that we cannot separate our life into fragments.

            Bill is a lawyer, a golfer, a deacon and Sunday school teacher, and the father of a middle schooler.  On Sunday, he teaches his class the New Testament, the book of James, chapter 5, verse 12.  “Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no.’  For 45 minutes he solemnly extols the virtues of honesty and integrity. On Monday, he goes to trial where he knowingly violates the ethical standards he swore a vow to uphold.  Win the case at all costs! That’s how he justifies his actions. 

On Tuesday night at home, he verbally harangues his 8^th grade son when he hears the boy tell an off-color joke.  In his Thursday golf league, he tells the same joke to the 3 other attorneys in his foursome, and they stand on the fourth tee box, doubled over laughing. 

            In all those places, Bill is Bill.  There’s no separating lawyer-Bill from golfer-Bill from Bill-the-dad from Deacon-Bill.  Nor can we break up our lives.  We only have one life.  We don’t act the same way in all relationships.  But we are who we are.  There’s no leaving the religious me at home tonight so I can go out drinking and doing all the destructive things that come after too much alcohol.  If I get sloppy drunk, all that I have said I believe about God in more sober moments still holds.  Theology professor Michael Fishbane writes, “We are not one kind of person when we walk the earth feeling hunger or love, and then an entirely different sort when we listen to music or talk about [God].  We are always one and the same.”[i]

            When we talk about God, we speak of the boundaries of our existence.  Venturing beyond God is impossible and even nonsensical.  There is nowhere that God is not.  Our God-thoughts and God-talk, our theology, sets our reality.

            Everyone here made the effort to get out of bed on a Sunday morning and come to this building.  Along the way if someone asked, “What you doing?”  You’d say, I’m going to church.”  We’re here because we chose to be here, so we all probably believe in God or are at least open to the idea.  Many are even filled with passionate desire to worship God.  The Old Testament prophet Hosea would applaud such zeal for the Lord.  Hosea would also watch us closely after church, on Monday and Tuesday, on Friday night; Hosea wants to see if the songs we sing and the prayers we pray influence the words we speak and the things we do when we’re not here.

            Hosea was a prophet at a time when the ancient Jewish people had been divided into two separate nations.  The North was made up of the descendants of 10 of the 12 sons of Jacob whom we meet in Genesis 25-35.  Whenever you hear the phrase ‘the 12 tribes of Israel,’ it’s a reference to the descendants of Jacob’s 12 sons.  The nation was one people under the first three Kings, Saul, David, and Solomon.  Their stories can be found in the Old Testament books 1 and 2 Samuel, and also the first 11 chapters of 1 Kings.  In 1 Kings 12, the son of the deceased King Solomon, Rehoboam, alienates the 10 northern tribes, so they separate and crown Jeroboam as their king. 

            This event begins the period of the split kingdoms of the Jewish people with the north referred to as Israel and the south as Judah.  The stories of both kingdoms are intermingled in the Bible books 1 and 2 Kings.  The Northern Kingdom is lost to history when they are defeated by the Assyrian empire in 722 BC.  The Assyrians take of many of the Israelite people into exile and then force intermarriage with other peoples they relocate to Israel.  The descendants of these intermarriages are the Samaritans who figure so prominently in the stories of Jesus in the Gospels. 

            Thus the history of the Israelite monarchy is told from 1 Samuel through 2 Kings, essentially the years 1020 BC to 586 BC.  That period of history is seen from another angle in the books of the prophets, especially Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Hosea.  Hosea, who worked in the Northern Kingdom, spoke and wrote the word of God from roughly 780-730BC.  His writing is not to recount history but rather to reveal God’s truth in light of that history.  He wrestled with a terrible burden.

            Hosea was visited by God’s Spirit in a way that is unique to Biblical prophets.  The prophets mentioned in the Bible reveal the heart of God.  Even though the world different in our day than in Hosea’s, the heart of God still beats.  People today rebel against God in some of the same ways. Hosea’s burden was he could see it all – God’s holiness and the people’s rebellion.  What Hosea had to say in the 8^th century BC speaks in the 21^st century AD. 

            He jumps right to it.  God gives Hosea an absurd instruction.  “Take for yourself a wife of whoredom.”  Marry a prostitute and have children with her. Parents wants their sons to marry women of virtue and good character.  Parents want their daughters to marry men who are gentle, trustworthy, and faithful.  I can’t recall anyone I have heard say, “Man, I hope my boy finds a lady of the night when he grows up.”  No one says that. 

Everyone involved in the exchange that happens in prostitution is broken.  Life has led that woman to think that her best or maybe only option is to sell her body.  That man paying the money needs deep meaningful connection.  But he doesn’t know how to find it.  So instead, he pays money for sex without relationship, without intimacy.  Prostitution is sad.  And evil.  Everyone involved in it is deeply wounded.  God told Hosea, marry a prostitute and have kids with her.

Hosea’s first work as a prophet was to enter a marriage none of us would ever consider.  However, for Hosea, it is a prophetic act.  He is enacting what Israel has been doing for decades.  Marry a wife “of whoredom,” because “the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord” (v.2b).  The land – the Northern Kingdom – Israel is compared to a man who leaves his wife and goes to a prostitute.  The Israelites have worshipped other Gods.  That’s idolatry – turning away from the true God to worship stone idols.  Adultery is a having sex with someone other your spouse.  In God’s view, to worship anyone or anything other than him is spiritual adultery. 

And we do it all the time.  We cut God out of the picture and give our allegiance and our hearts to things: political movements; relationships; favorite past-times or hobbies; sometimes addictions.  Some people put their children in the place that belongs to God.  God wants us to love our families.  It is commanded in the Bible.  But we are not to worship our children.  They are not the ultimate.  God is. 

The Israelites of Hosea’s day obeyed some of the religious practices prescribed in the Law of Moses, spelled out in in Exodus and Leviticus.  They certainly believed in God.  But they also worship local Canaanite deities and Egyptian gods.  God was about as happy with this as you would be with your spouse sleeping with someone else and then coming home and acting like everything was fine. 

God told Hosea to live out the situation in his own life.  Marry a prostitute.  Name the first son you and she will have ‘Jezreel.’  This name means “God sows” or “God plants seed.”  The second child, a daughter, will be Lo-ruhamah, which means “Not pitied.”  When Assyria comes to destroy Israel, God’s going to let it happen.  And when the Israelites cry out for salvation the way they did when they were slaves in Egypt in the days of Moses, God will show no pity.  The third child of Hosea and his wife, the prostitute Gomer, will be a son called Lo-ammi.  That translates “not my people.”

God sends Hosea into a marriage he would not have chosen and tells him what his children’s names will be.  Those names tell us that God plants destruction.  When that destruction comes and the people are defeated and exiled, God will not be sorry. 

How do we suppose God feels about lawyer Bill who plays the good Bible teacher at church, but when Sunday ends, he becomes the unethical lawyer who beats competitors that naively play by the rules?  By week’s end, Deacon Bill, Christian Bill, has chastised his son and then repeated his son’s lewd speech, laughing all the while. 

It’s just an example.  Maybe the preacher is making too much out of something that’s not a big deal, a mountain out of mole hill.  Preachers tend to do that.  I wonder if Hosea’s critics dismissed him as being a holier-than-thou loud mouth who made a lot of noise over nothing.  How do we suppose God feels when the choices we make and the words we speak as we live our lives Monday-Friday fail to match up to the faith we proclaim on Sunday?

The book of Hosea is about an integrated life.  Who we are in our faith, who we are in the world – it is all a part of us.  The prophet asserts that God is truly furious when we try to carve our lives into segments. 

Now, you and I, each one of us chose to come to church and sing and pray and smile and hug and meet God and feel joy.  I bet no one came seeking the God who forces his best people into doomed marriages as a way of expressing his divine anger.  We didn’t come to hear God tell us, “I have no pity for you and you are not people.”

And we know that God’s not like that.  Two weeks ago, we heard the Gospel of John say, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not become exiles in Assyria, but rather might have eternal life in the Kingdom of God.”  Every week we hear the Gospel: in Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God has come near.  He went to the cross for the sins of the world and in his resurrection, death is defeated.  When we give our lives to Him, we have everlasting life. 

We know God is not vengeful.  God is not as weird as He seems in the opening of Hosea.  Hosea knew this too.  Hosea’s terrible burden is he could see the sins of the people more clearly than they could.  He could see God’s absolute fury when the people could not. 

Hosea’s glorious privilege was he was allowed to see the heart of God. 

Beginning in verse 7, we see a pattern that will be repeated in this book.  It is as if God vents the divine anger, but then suddenly remembers that he is God and God is love.  “You name that 2^nd child ‘no pity.’” But then, verse 7, “I will have pity on the house of Judah, and I will save them.” 

“You name that 3^rd child ‘Lo-ruhamah.’ They are not my people.”  Then verse 10 says, “The people of Israel will be like the sand of the sea.”  God made the promise to Abraham (Genesis 22:17).  His descendants would outnumber the grains of sand on the shore. Hosea 1:11 says, “The people of Judah and the people of Israel shall be gathered together … and shall take possession of the land.”

In 722 Israel went into exile in Assyria, with the only trace of the original people being the Samaritans.  In 586, the people of Judah went into exile in Babylon.  Before either of these events, the prophet promises God will reunite his people.  That’s the heart of God we see in Hosea.

By the time of Jesus, the Jews who made up Israel had disdain for their Samaritan cousins.  Yet, in both Luke and John, Jesus has moments in which it is clear that the salvation he brings is for these biracial people.  Jesus did not just come for Judah and Israel.  Jesus is the Savior in Samaria.  Maybe that’s one way the promise of reunification in Hosea 1:11 is fulfilled. 

In fact, in Jesus, all nations are drawn together into one family, united in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  We who know him as our savior are tasked to announce his salvation to the world.  We are not prophets with the authority and vision of Hosea.  But, we are heralds.  We are the announcers and the messengers.  We live our lives as people of faith – in all the places of our lives.  And in those places we invite the people we know into the salvation Jesus gives. 

The same God who called his people to live integrated lives in Hosea’s day calls us to one life today; a life of consistent, contagious faith.  May we live the one life we have to the glory of God, in Jesus’ name.

AMEN

---

[i] Michael Fishbane (2008), Sacred Attunement: A Jewish Theology, The University of Chicago Press (Chicago), p.13.

Waiting

“When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. ² And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous’” (Genesis 17:1-2). 

“When the days drew near for him to be taken up, Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51).

“As they were watching, Jesus was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. ¹⁰ While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. ¹¹ They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:9b-11).

Abraham’s wife Sarah was over 90.  They had waited their entire lives for a child.  Now God promised one, and they had to wait some more.

In Luke’s Gospel, we know that after Jesus arrives in Jerusalem come the horrors of the cross.  Luke tells us he’s headed there in chapter 9, but then we have to go through 12 more chapters before he finally arrives.

The scene in Acts is the Ascension.  The white-robed angels promise Jesus will return in the same way he was taken up.  That was 33AD.  It is now 2018AD.

Waiting.

As I write this, I am waiting for Easter.  Preachers always endure a thematic adjustment from February to early April.  Preaching during Lent is unlike preaching at any other time.

As I write this on a Monday, I am waiting for Saturday.  I am scheduled to fly to Ethiopia for a week with some wonderful children.  I will spend this week waiting for Saturday to arrive.

As I wait, I am waiting for a package in the mail that will have my passport in it.  As a part of our trip prep, we had to submit our passports to the embassy.  I can’t get on the plane without it.  Now I am waiting for it to return.  This may be the most nervous of all the waiting.  It is certainly the most immediate.

For what are you waiting?  While waiting, how will you sit in the time?  We Americans “pass the time.”  Or, being the consumers that we are, we “spend the time.”  I don’t think God wants that for me or for anyone.

Read Luke chapter 10-21.  There is a lot that happens in that stretch from knowing the cross is coming to it actually arriving.  Jesus tells the most re-told of all his parables, the Good Samaritan (Luke 10) and the Prodigal Son (Luke 15), in those intervening chapters.  Much of what we think about in the Gospel falls in Luke 10-21.  We may be going along waiting, but in that waiting space, God is working.  Read the Abraham narratives in Genesis 12-22.  A lot happens between God’s initial promise and the arrival of Isaac.

I am tempted to think, well, this mission trip is some big thing.  And it is indeed some big thing.  However, God might also have some things to do before the mission trip. 

Easter, now that’s important preaching.  Sure.  But God isn’t waiting for Easter to speak into my life and possibly through me into someone else’s life. 

What in your life has you waiting?  Waiting isn’t easy.  It can be excruciating.  But it can also be a space in life for God to work.  Don’t “pass” the time.  Don’t “spend” the time.  Sit in the time.  Sit and listen.  When we do that, we hear what God is trying to tell us.

"A God Story" (Genesis 9:8-17) - First Sunday of Lent

This weekend Black Panther opens, the latest blockbuster movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.             I remember the opening scene in the first Avengers movie, my favorite in the series of super hero films.  In Avengers, the villain Loki has been transported from Asgard to Earth.  Asgardians live thousands of years and possess superhuman strength. 

            Nick Fury, a military leader here on earth, senses that Loki has bad intentions and intercedes.  He says to the Asgardian, “We of Earth have no quarrel with your people.” 

            Loki responds with a smirk.  “An ant has no quarrel with a boot.”

            Concerned, Fury says back, “Are you planning to crush us?”

            Fury was eventually able to call on Earth’s mightiest heroes, the Avengers, to defeat Loki and his malevolent army. 

            Noah did not have any Avengers he could call.  Even if he did, the God he faced was much more powerful than Loki. 

            The Noah account begins in Genesis chapter 6.  “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 he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his 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” (6:5-7).

            But, God decided to spare Noah and his family.  There were no Avengers for Noah to call. Instead, God told him to build a vessel, the Ark.  In it, Noah, his family, and a male and female of each animal would ride out the flood. 

Producers of Christian children’s books and Christian children’s toys have made a lot of money on the flood story.  A child happily makes his little toy giraffes and little toy hippos and little toy kangaroos march and hop onto his little toy ark. 

The game changes when we imagine what’s happening outside the ark.  The rainwaters become floodwaters.  A child’s story?  No!  This is a story of the worst genocide in human history.  The perpetrator of the crime is God.  Yes, the floodwaters eventually recede.  Yes, at the end, the ark comes to rest on Mount Ararat and the animals come off and in no time, the world is dried up and repopulated.  Even so, this is the single-worst episode of mass-murder in human history.

Do we question God? 

The flood story is complicated.  I’ve read those delightful pop-ups books to my own kids, but when we close the child’s book, tuck the child into bed, and then in the dark house, we dare to sit in the night in our adult thoughts, and we find the story of Noah and the flood to be very troubling. 

The story begins with a parade of animals and ends with a sky filled with color – literally every color in the rainbow.  Enjoy the image. 

Now, ponder this: what is that rainbow for?  It’s a reminder.  Never again will the world be destroyed by a flood.  Who is the rainbow intended to remind? 

“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 the clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between you and me 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’” (9:12-16a).

A reminder for God?  What, is God going to forget and accidently flood the world again?  Does God forget things?  No?  Then why does God himself decide he needs a reminder.  We put post-it notes around our house.  “Remember the grocery list.” “Remember to pick I__ up at cross-country practice.”  God puts a rainbow in the sky.  Oh yeah.  Don’t the flood earth and bring complete destruction again. 

This is a God story.  This is not a story of water.  This is not a story about animals.  This not a story about a guy in a boat with his family.  All those things are in this story.  But, the force that moves the story along is God’s reactions to the emotions humans produce in Him.

Human beings have no say in the covenant at the end of the story, and no responsibility in the covenant.  God is having an internal conversation within God’s own self.  We could go extinct or continue on.  It matters.  But, we are voiceless and powerless. 

God initiates the covenant and we must accept God’s terms.  God declares what God will not do again.  We cannot prevent another flood.  We can only pray that God will keep the promises He made to himself.  But it is not just us.  This covenant goes beyond Noah and his family.  It is a covenant with all of humanity.  Moreover, the covenant expands beyond humans.  It is for all creatures.  God initiates the covenant, sets the terms, carries it out, and sets the reminder – the rainbow. 

The disturbing nature of the story as well as the complete one-sidedness of the covenant both declare the same truth.  God is much more complicated than we ever understood or considered. 

We read Hebrews 13:8.  “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

And the prophet Malachi, chapter 3, verse 6.  “For I the Lord do not change.”

We recall one of the praise songs we sing in worship.  “Incomparable, unchangeable, you see the depths of my heart and you love me the same; you are amazing God.”

Unchangeable?  Genesis 1:31: “God saw everything that he had made and indeed it was very good.”  Then, Genesis 6:6.  “And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth.”  From, “[the Lord] saw … indeed it was very good” to “the Lord was sorry” to “I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created.”

And God did blot out all life, except Noah and his families and his floating zoo.  From “I will blot out” we arrive after the flood at “Never again.  Never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”  Never again.

In our Ash Wednesday worship we heard the word of God from the prophet Joel who asked, “Who knows whether or not God will relent – change His mind – and leave a blessing instead of destruction” (2:12, paraphrased)?

In another Bible story easily adapted to children’s ministry, the story of Jonah and the whale, God clearly changes God’s mind.  The condemned Ninevites repent of their sin, and we read in Jonah 3:10, “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them and he did not do it.”

God is a distinct personality.  God is not an undefined force or a pantheistic realty.  God is distinct.  God is personal.  God experiences God’s creation dynamically.  Because God is paradoxical, we can read those quotes from Hebrews and Malachi and talk about God as unchanging, but at the same time all we need to do is read Noah or the account of Moses or the prophets, Joel and Jonah, or the agonizing life of the prophet Jeremiah, or the unanswerable questions in the book of Job, or the frustrations and joys, the highs and lows in the life of Jesus.  Throughout the Bible, one thread never ceases to be seen.  God is dynamic, not static. God has new experiences and reacts to them.

This is terrifying.  We don’t know what God will do next.  God is emotional.  On Ash Wednesday, we heard from the prophet Nahum that God gets enraged. 

Here in Genesis, we see God heartsick.  I wish I could see the pristine purity of creation before sin entered the world God made.  God, in Genesis 6, wishes He could go back a few chapters, back to that time when he looked at what he made and saw that it was very good.  All I can do is wistfully imagine such a paradise.  When God wishes something, God makes it happen, using the flood as a do-over.

I cannot rationalize the horrific notion of a God so angry he wipes out all life on earth.  There is no explanation.  If you want to take God to task on this, do so.  Through eyes blurry with tears and with a heart on fire, confront God in your prayers.  Demand answers.  I don’t have them.

What I have and you have is the story open before us.  In chapter 6, verse 6, God sees that “every inclination of the thoughts of human hearts was only evil continually.” 

Flip to chapter 8.  The flood waters have receded.  Noah is off the ark and offers up an offering.  It says in 8:21 God is pleased with Noah’s worship.  Then God says, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature on earth as I have.”

God does not apologize for the flood.  Human beings have not changed after the flood.  The condition that drove God to such a drastic do-over, the evil in every human heart, remains.  The only change in the story is the change that happens in God.  We sing “Unchangeable.”  Unchangeable?  Thank God, God most certainly did change.  Is it terrifying that God is unpredictable?  Oh yes.  Is the change that happens in God our only hope?  Most definitely.

God experiences the creation He has made.  God goes through things with humans, with animals, with the world.  We’ve referred to God as “enraged” in Nahum.  We can picture Jesus laughing as he tells some of the parables or holds children in his arms or jokes while fishing with the disciples.  We sense the pride of God as he sees the creation and declares it “very good.”  And in this flood story, we read that the Lord was “grieved” deep in his heart, sorry that he had made human beings.  But even in his frustration, we recall Hosea 11 where God says, “How can I give you up, O Israel?  My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender” (v.8).

God is emotional and personal, and God goes through these experiences in relationship.  Our hope is found in trusting that God stays true to God’s own self and God’s own word.  Easter is the best evidence that we can trust God.

After the flood, God saw that human beings are evil.  In the Exodus, as God rescued the chosen people, they sinned repeatedly.  Settled in the Promised Land, they ignored the prophet Samuel’s words that God should be their king and instead followed King Saul, whose reign was a disaster.  Crushing defeat to Assyria, exile in Babylon, and the humiliation Roman rule in the land of Israel all came, yet humanity continually rejected God’s rule.  But God continually loved humanity. 

So much does God love us, God came as one of us.  The Avengers’ enemy, Loki, compared humans to ants and himself, the boot.  The real God, creator of heaven and earth, became ant – condescended to walk the earth as a man, Jesus of Nazareth.  What did humanity do?  Crucify him.  What was God’s response?  He counted the crucifixion as a worthy sacrifice that covered the punishment for sins and took the place of death of all humans of all time.  He forgave all sin, rose from death, and invites all who put their faith in Jesus to be adopted as sons and daughters of God. 

In the flood story, did God learn a lesson about how to relate to humans, flawed creatures as we are?  I don’t know if your theology allows for God to “learn” things or even have new experiences.  At the very least, see that God feels deep, lasting love toward you.  God knows exactly who you are, all your good points of which there are many; all your foibles and faults; your beauty marks and warts; God knows you.  And, God loves you completely. 

When He sees the rainbow, he remembers to not allow his holy anger over sin lead to destruction.  When he sees Jesus on the cross, he remembers that he has forgotten – forgotten all our sins.  When he sees the cross and then looks at you and me, he sees us as righteous.  Our relationship with Him is made right. 

That’s how the God story ends.  Human beings, those created in the image of God, are reconciled to God by the death of Jesus and brought into eternal life in the resurrection of Jesus.  The flood story becomes a Lent-Easter story, the God story becomes our salvation story.  God draws us into an eternal embrace where death ends in “never again,” and life is without end.

AMEN