The other day, someone was asking me about the meaning of Lent, and why we do what we do. Why do we start with ashes on Ash Wednesday? Why do we give up something we enjoy, or take on something we're not so fond of? Why can't we say the "A-word"? I tried to explain that all of these customs were part of the our remembrance of Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness and his temptations while he was there. That the ashes are a symbol of our mortality, and that Lent is a season of confession of our sins to God and a time of repentance for our broken promises both to God and to our fellow human beings. "I've never given anything up for Lent," said this person. "I know I'll probably cheat anyway and I don't want to disappoint God. God might get angry."
Today's lesson from the Old Testament is about how God handles disappointment and human failure. Most of us know the story of Noah and the ark - about how, after driving Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, God saw that the perfect world he created had gone awry. Cain kills Abel. Folks start living lives that aren't very faithful. And so God decides that he's going to wipe out all life on the earth and start over. God causes a flood that covers the whole earth for a long time. But before that, God finds one family who is faithful: Noah and his wife, and their 3 sons and their wives. And God tells Noah to build a big boat, and to take two of every living thing into the boat with him. After Noah does this, God starts the rains, and the boat saves Noah and his family and two of every creature on the planet.
Now a lot of people hear that story and think, "Aha! I knew it! When God gets angry, there will be hell to pay! That's just what happened to New Orleans and hurricane Katrina! That's just what happened with that tidal wave in Asia!" In other words, they believe that this is a story about God's judgment and vengeance. But that ignores a very important part of the story. And that's the part of the story we read today... the part of the story where God creates a covenant:
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.
Now, a covenant is not an agreement; it's not like a contract where we negotiate the things that I will do, and the things that God will do. That would assume that we were on a more or less equal footing with God, which of course we're not. A covenant is more of a list of demands made by someone in a vastly superior position. A king who conquers a people might establish a covenant, spelling out his terms and conditions for payment of taxes. In exchange, the king guarantees to stop his hostile actions. In this case, God is the one making a covenant, not just with Noah, but with Noah and all living things on the planet: never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. And the really interesting thing about this covenant is that God doesn't demand anything in return.
Imagine - before the flood, God saw how wicked and sinful humankind had become. That was the reason he destroyed the world in the first place. Yet afterwards, he promises to never again do the same thing...without even asking for any change in behavior in return. In fact, just a few verses before our reading, God even recognizes that sin is part of human nature:
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 as I have done.
So what are we to make of this?
First of all, God's promise is universal and extends through all time. It is a unilateral obligation to all of creation by God. God doesn't say, "I'll save the world if you obey me, or as long as you do that." God's grace and compassion doesn't depend on us at all.
Second, God recognizes that the world is less than perfect, and yet still commits to its future. In other words, God decides to continue to live in relationship with imperfect creatures in an imperfect world. God desires a relationship with us regardless of our imperfections and sins.
Third, God is no longer willing to work from outside the world to redeem it. God will not destroy the world to save it. Instead, God's creativity will be redirected to working within the limitations of human nature. God's decision to limit God's own power over the world doesn't mean that sin and evil have won. But it does mean that God must find a new way to deal with them...a way that we as Christians understand as the power of the cross.
This is where God's story in Noah intersects with God's story in Jesus. Jesus is God's "new way." In the flood, God used what we might call "hard power" to overcome the sins of humankind; in Jesus, God used "soft power." God works within the world, and within our own weakness and limitations to restore us and all creation to a relationship with God. Jesus comes as the fulfillment of God's covenant.
Our Lenten journey is a journey with Christ. He was baptized and immediately banished to the wilderness where he confronted temptation and evil...the same weaknesses we struggle with every day...the same weaknesses God saw back during the flood, and yet promised to redeem. It is no surprise to God that we struggle; we don't "disappoint" God when we fail. Because God gave an eternal promise that our brokenness would never drive God away. God gave an eternal promise to endure a wicked world, and to continue to restore and redeem us. That is why he sent us his son. And that is why during Lent we follow Christ's journey to Jerusalem - the journey to the cross.
Thanks be to God.
LINK TO THIS ARTICLE - http://www.ecsssj.org/show_article.php?myid=53
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