Sermon For Ordinary Time 6 – Genesis 6-9

Genesis 6-9

Writing is difficult. I claim no particular skill, but I do like writing short stories for my own enjoyment (and the punishment of a few friends who I have give me feedback). Stories, like academic papers, newspaper articles, or books of all kinds, require multiple revisions to reach their proper form. Sometimes it is small revisions: a phrase here, a sentence there, a restructuring of a paragraph. Sometimes the whole structure has to be reorganized, like when I worked on my master’s thesis, and I wrote 15-20 page sections that my advisor told me were not directly relevant to my main thesis and so out the window they went, and the outline had to change. But sometimes, sometimes a concept might be good, but the execution? All wrong. Sometimes, the whole thing has to be thrown out, and that one, key concept is the only thing preserved, to be placed into an entirely new structure and narrative that better expresses it.

In Genesis 6-9, we see that humanity has reached a zenith of evil, a height of depravity. Following Cain’s descendant, Lamech, a man of murderous intent, is followed by a world filled with injustice, oppression, and violence: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” The seed of the serpent has spread exponentially in the story, and so God, seeing the utter disorder of his world, decides that the whole story needs to be re-written, the entire narrative of human history erased and restarted, renewed, re-created. 

This is an expression of justice, that the people with free agency have gotten to a place of unmanageable evil, and God is the only one with the power to diagnose and remove that cancer from the world. So, he takes the concept of the story, a people who trust him and will follow him, the seed of the woman, and determines to start the story over again, and in such a way that spiritually represents what God is currently doing, and will do with the return of Christ, for all creation: God will restore his broken world through a new creation. That is the core of the flood story: that God will act justly, cleansing and then renewing his creation. Placing this story in the broader context of Genesis, it falls directly in the middle between Adam and Abraham. Whereas millenia are covered in the stories between Adam to Noah and there to Abraham via genealogies, this story slows the action down significantly, taking time to set the tone before rushing to the real, central story of Genesis, that of Abraham and his offspring.

Now there are, of course, different ways to interpret this story vis a vis science and history. We can interpret it as strictly literal, the whole world covered, all people subsequently coming from Noah and his family; we could take the approach that it is purely mythic, a theological or spiritual story but not an actual one; or, some variation that combines the two, seeing the mythic and symbolic elements of the story, but as hyperboles of an actual event, a localized flood in Mesopotamia that did wreak great destruction but through which there were survivors, and which tells us deep theological truths about God, humanity, and the world. I incline towards this last option, but ultimately the theological truth set forth is the sharp, key focus of the story.

Here we see the first use of the word “covenant,” bereeth, a compact between God and humanity, an agreement where the author of the covenant obligates themselves to certain self-imposed commitments. God doesn’t have to covenant, but when he does, he must see it through. Noah must trust God, that he is not wasting his time, and that God will actually preserve him through the coming cataclysm; and God must rely on Noah doing what he is told. But if Noah believes, if he has faith to follow God, then to him will be given life, just as those who come to baptism trust that through the waters upon which God’s Spirit rests we too will come to regeneration, new life, new creation.

The waters signal not only judgment upon humanity’s evil, but as in all ANE literature, the coming of primordial chaos. Remember, Genesis 1, where the waters are described as “formless and void,” an image of terrifying, uncontrollable darkness. This is how these ancient people viewed floods and the rivers. Both the creation narrative and this use parallel terms: “Earth, Spirit/wind (ruach), deep, waters.” This is a creation 2.0, a reboot of the previous creation from nothing, a second chance for humanity. Where the waters were separated in the creation story, here they come back together, water from above and from below meeting in wiping the creation away in a torrent of destruction. We might here raise the ethical question surrounding this, the death of so many people and animals. Here we must recognize that to ancient peoples living amongst the utmost violence, this simply would not be a relevant question. Evil has to be dealt with, and this is how they would expect it. If, as I suggest, this story is rooted in history but hyperbolized to make a theological point, then the blurry boundaries of the story help us to refocus on the main point at the center: Through this flood, “God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark.” Just as the chaotic waters of the original creation were parted to bring Adam and Eve, God’s image bearing, covenant couple into the world, so now after the de–creating waters have come and then washed away, the re-created world is now ready to receive a new father and mother of God’s people, said to be image bearers in 9:6, who are then commanded to fulfill the original mandate given to Adam and Eve: “be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and have dominion over it.” God has taken a broken creation and recreated it.

The center of the Noah story and the flood is that God takes the broken and recreates it. Here, it is on the level of human society, a full reboot, whereupon he declares that he will never use a flood to destroy the world again, never let primordial chaos back into the world in this way. However, as is seen very soon in the continuing story of Noah and his children, the seed of the woman continues on with God’s promise, down through the ages, culminating in Jesus Christ, the one who defeats death and the devil, but so also from Noah does the seed of the serpent continue on. Noah and his kin are not cured of sin, but carry the disease themselves. 

God, however, has not given up his promise to humanity, to us. The world is terribly broken, and from the Roman conquests to the Mongol invasions, from the Turkish-led Armenian genocide to the Holocaust of WWII, we see the evil that humanity can wreak. From tsunami to volcanoes, from earthquakes to wildfires, nature too is poised to destroy. And us? We sin, too. How many broken relationships have we left in our wake, or do we still wrestle with today? How often do we curse others under our breath, or envy what our brothers and sisters have? How often have we wished cataclysm or suffering upon someone who has hurt or disappointed us? How often are we burdened by the sins of others, that seek to break or divide us, to crush our spirits? 

These are all forms of chaos that flow out of those primordial waters, evils that stem from human sin and our frailty in the face of an unforgiving world. But we, like Noah, going on faith, believe that God will restore his broken world through a new creation. In us, that means through baptism and faith we have been brought into the new life of Christ, the archetype to whom Noah points, the one who brings us through the chaos and brokenness into the New Creation. That New Creation is a promised future, when heaven and earth meet, when our tears will be dried and there will be violence no more, and like Noah we trust that our lives now mean something, have a future, and are not futile. Nestled in the ark of the Church, we are battered but not moved by the evils of the world. It also means that the New Creation has begun in us, that in faith we are not consigned or fated to be filled with violence and hatred. The Spirit who hovered over the waters of creation dwells within us, the dove of peace has found us, and we, united mysteriously into Jesus Christ, bear his New Creation life within. We are able to act with grace, with charity, with forgiveness, with love, even when our sinful inclinations try to push us off the side of the boat. When slighted, we can face it with sorrow and seek peace; when treated evilly, we can look to our future restoration and are able to forgive, even when we must also set boundaries; when we stumble, we are able to be forgiven, and to forgive ourselves, remembering we are first of all image bearers, all because God is just and right to forgive us when we confess and repent. We are a part of a different story, the new story, the one God has and is and will write, that ends not in destruction, but through the broken destruction of the world will be a New Creation, a holy place, and we the humanity that dwells in it with God, face-to-face, forever and ever. Amen.