watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO7UDLEhhQU
Second Sunday of Lent,
February 28, 2021
You’re out walking and bump into a neighbor. You two discuss the weather, neighborhood
gossip, and then you exhaust the “small talk,” and the conversation veers
toward politics. You get nervous. You’re pretty sure this friend’s political
views are different than yours. He
starts talking about “those evangelicals” and “crazy religious nuts.” You’re not sure where he’s going with this,
but one thing becomes clear to you. The
religion he’s condemning is very different than the faith you practice. As he rails on, you think, ‘yeah, I’d condemn
that too.’
If he’s willing to listen, how you help him meet the
Jesus you know? First Peter 3:18 might
help. “For Christ suffered for sins once
for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.” Sin cuts us off from God. Jesus took the penalty for our sins on
himself so that we could have a right relationship with God, a relationship not
stained by our sins. Jesus’ death on the cross covers
every act of rebellion against God by every person who ever lived. Never again will God have to intervene in
human affairs in order to overcome sin and death.
Never again is something God has said before, in a
familiar story. In Genesis 9, Noah and
his family and a male and female of every animal has just stepped off the ark,
the flood waters having receded. Noah
sacrifices an animal as burnt offering to God. In response, God says, “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 [humanity] and every living creature of all flesh; and
the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.”
The first time I preached about the flood I focused on
sin. The global damage of the flood, the
complete destruction, showed how seriously God takes sin. So, we should take sin seriously too. In my 2018 message on the flood story, I was
struck by this thought; the Genesis flood is single biggest genocide in human
history and it’s perpetuated by God.
We see different angles in the flood story: the
seriousness of sin; a God-caused event of absolute destruction; and, the idea
of “never again.” God will never punish in this way again. How do we bring together these vantagepoints
as we turn to God in search of a deeper relationship with him?
The story begins in Genesis 6. “The Lord saw that the wickedness of
humankind was great … 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). Noah’s family and
the animals would survive on the ark.
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.
Outside the actual ark, rainwaters
become floodwaters. A child’s
story? This is genocide perpetuated by
God. The floodwaters eventually recede,
the ark comes to rest on Mount Ararat, and in no time, the world is dried up
and repopulated.
When we close the children’s
book, tuck the child into bed, and then sit in the dark house with our adult
thoughts, does this story that begins with a parade of animals and ends with a
sky filled with literally every color in the rainbow disturb us?
The rainbow is a reminder,
but who is it intended to remind? “God
said, ‘…When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember’” (9:16a). Is
God worried he will forget and accidently flood the world again? Does God forget things? We put post-it notes around our house. “Remember the grocery list.” “Take the trash
out.” Are rainbows God’s post-it
notes? Oh yeah. Don’t the flood earth
and bring complete destruction again.
We see the image of a
serene rainbow hovering over a huge boat full of animals. However, this story is not a set shot. This story moves, the action jolted along by
the turbulent emotions that humans produce in God. In Genesis 6, God has an internal conversation
within God’s own self. We could go
extinct or continue on. Humans are
voiceless and powerless.
God initiates the covenant. We accept God’s terms. God declares what God will not do again. We can only trust that God keeps his promises. The covenant covers all of humanity and all
living creatures. Humans bear God’s
image, but all animals are precious and, in a sense, in relationship with
God. 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 show how God
complicated is.
Hebrews 13:8, “Jesus
Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
Malachi 3:6, “For I the
Lord do not change.”
In one praise song we sing
the line, “Incomparable, unchangeable, you see the depths of my heart and you
love me the same; you are amazing God.”
Yet, we remember Genesis
1:31: “God saw everything that he had made and indeed it was very good.” We read that verse alongside Genesis 6:6,
“And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth.” From, “[the Lord] saw … it was very good” to
“the Lord was sorry” to “I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have
created.” Then from, “I will blot out” we arrive at “Never again will there be
a flood to destroy the earth.” Never again.
The prophet Joel asks,
“Who knows whether or not God will relent – change His mind – and leave a
blessing instead of destruction” (2:12, paraphrased)?
After that big fish spits
up the prophet Jonah and he prophesies destruction in Nineveh, God clearly
changes God’s mind. The condemned
Ninevites repent, and Jonah 3:10 says, “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 allows God’s self to
be affected by what we do. The quotes
from Hebrews and Malachi that tell us God is unchanging are true, and they are
truth. Yet we see this unchanging God
affected by people in the stories of Noah, Moses, and the prophets, Joel, Jonah,
and Jeremiah. With its unanswered
questions, the book of Job, leaves us conflicted about how God deals with
humanity. The frustrations and joys, the
highs and lows in the life of Jesus offends our sense of fairness. So many different angles on the God-human
relationship pop up in the Bible. God is
unchanging, yet rarely does God appear in the same way.
It’s no wonder your
neighbor is confused about what exactly the Gospel is. The Gospel is true, but cannot be reduced to
a formula any more than the irreducibly nuanced notion of love can be
defined. The same praise song that says
God is “unchangeable” also claims God is “untamable.” The Gospel is the good news that God loves
us, and at the same time, it’s terrifying to realize God has new experiences. We can’t predict what God will do next. God is emotional. Nahum 1:2c, “the Lord takes vengeance on his
adversaries and rages against his enemies.”
In Genesis, we see God heartsick.
At the baptism of Jesus, God delights in his Son. God is a living being, the eternal one, not
confined by any law or fixed principle.
We must be receptive to
God’s Spirit and we must enter the story.
In the flood portion of this story, we see the Lord was “grieved” deep
in his heart. Yet, in Hosea 11 our
grieving 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 experiences the relationship he has with us. We have to believe God stays true to God’s
own self and God’s own word. Easter is
the best evidence that we can trust God.
If God does not change,
God’s tactics do. In the flood, God
wiped out sin by destroying nearly all life, and starting over. In Jesus, God tried something different. In Jesus, God came as one of us.
We responded by crucifying
him. Instead of destroying the earth
because of sin, God took all the sin on himself. God took the utter destruction on himself and
then counted the crucifixion as a worthy sacrifice that covered the punishment for
all humans of all time. Why? God loves each one of us. God loves you completely.
The rainbow helps God
remember not to destroy everything again.
The cross helps God forget 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 where God’s story goes. Human beings, God’s imager-bearers, are
reconciled to God by the death of Jesus and brought into eternal life in the
resurrection of Jesus. The flood story leads
to our salvation story in which God enfolds us in His eternal embrace where
death ends in “never again,” and life is without end.
AMEN
