One of the dangerous myths
that has been propagated since Wednesday’s killing of seventeen people in a
Parkland, Florida high school is that God wasn’t there when the bullets were
flying. The storyline is that because our elected officials have upheld
religious freedom in our public schools and no longer require prayer, God got
mad and left.
Thankfully, Scripture
offers us a different picture of the world and the character of God.
The reading from
Genesis picks up the flood narrative near its end. The three chapters preceding
this morning’s text describe how God witnessed the ways that humankind
repeatedly turned to violence and God expressed remorse at creation.
From Eden onward, God
has desired relationship with creation, and intended “that creation’s comfort
is found in God’s own care and promise.”[i] But instead of
recognizing how we belong to God, humankind continually distances ourselves
from God and insists upon living in a world that is in-dependent of God.[ii]
In Chapter 6, the author of Genesis writes,
“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.” (Gen. 6:5-6)
While we like to
remember the ending of the flood story with images of brightly colored rainbows,
its beginning is rooted in a grieving God who first decided to blot out all
creation. But that’s why it’s so important to get the
whole story!
What begins as a story
of violence that begets violence has a surprise ending. As this story unfolds, God’s own heart
changes.
While God allowed Noah
and his sons and their wives to find safety from the floodwaters, the waters
swelled on earth and killed “every [other] living thing that was on the face of
the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air”
(Gen. 7:23)
Then, the text tells
us that “God remembered Noah” and sent wind over the earth and the waters
receded. Later in Genesis, God remembers Abraham and spares his nephew Lot from
the destruction that rained down on the cities where he lived and he remembers
Jacob’s wife Rachel and opens her womb.
While the world continues to be battered and bloodied by
violence, the Word tells us that God remembers and is merciful.
Our reading today
describes how God responded to Noah and to all creation after the flood. It is
the first of five covenant stories from the
Hebrew Scriptures that we will hear during Lent.
In Scripture, “covenant”
is a word used to describe how God interacts with us and enters into
relationship with us.[iii] It is a promise or
set of promises made between two parties and accompanied by a sign.
God promises and we
respond. Or at least that’s the hope.
Sadly, more often than
not, just as we did before the flood, humankind rejects God and lives in a
world without reference to God.
Thankfully, unlike us,
God upholds God’s promises. “Gracious and
merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, [God] relents from
punishing.” (Joel 2:13) The “evil, death and
destruction [we witness in the world] are not rooted in God’s anger or
rejection.”[iv] It is human arrogance
to think that we have the power to “allow” or “not allow” God anywhere and it
is ignorance to think that our human impulse to answer violence with more
violence is anything new.
After the flood, God
promises 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.” (Gen. 9:11) God surrenders
his bow of battle, placing it undrawn in the clouds, pointing away from the
earth.[v] God’s promise, or
covenant, is that God will not be provoked.
God’s heart has
changed, not humankind. “[God is] fully
aware that the inclination of every human heart is evil from youth, still.” [vi] But “God decides to
endure a wicked world while continuing to open up the divine heart to that
world.” [vii]
This same God who
places a rainbow covenant in the sky for us is the God who bears witness and
suffers alongside us when evil disrupts and when violence destroys.[viii] This is true in
Parkland, Florida and it was true two thousand years ago when Jesus was
crucified. On the cross God shows that human violence is “impotent compared to
God’s life-giving power of love.”[ix]
As we draw near to God
this Lent and repent for of our rejection of God’s loving intention for each
one of us, may we remember that God’s everlasting love is what creates life and
reconciles us in a world that kills.
Let us pray.
Holy God,
We pray with thanksgiving
for your everlasting covenant with every living thing in creation.
Overcome our human impulse
to respond to violence with violence and teach us to depend on your steadfast promises
and abounding love.
Restore us to life this
Lent and give us courage to follow Your Son Jesus,
In whose name we pray.
Amen.
[i] Interpretation, Brueggemann, 21.
[ii] ibid,
19.
[iii]
“Covenant” in Crazy Talk. Rolf
Jacobson, Ed. Minneapolis: Augsburg Books. 46-47.
[iv]
Brueggemann, 84.
[v] ibid,
84-85.
[vi] Cameron
Howard, WorkingPreacher.org
[vii]
Terence D. Fretheim, WorkingPreacher.org
[viii] “February
22, 2015: First Sunday in Lent”, Paul Nuechterlein. Christian Century.
[ix] ibid.
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