Luke 24:1-12: Easter is Seeing the Unseen

When we celebrate Easter, we celebrate the reason for our hope.  Despite the yearly reminder of Jesus resurrection, we are often tempted to look for hope elsewhere.  Easter forces us to ask the question anew, with each passing year, where is our hope found? 

Sometimes upon asking the question, we realize that our hope is placed in things other than God.  We are tempted sometimes to look for hope in our rulers; kings, prime ministers, presidents, rulers of nations and shapers of our world.  It makes sense, at least according to how the world thinks.  After all, rulers have power.  They can conquer other lands, defend us from our enemies, build the roads, schools, and hospitals we need, and create laws to govern our society.  If we have a problem, surely they can find the solution.  This is sound logic until we realize that even good rulers are mere human beings.  To put it plainly, they die before they finish their work.  Alexander the Great conquered much of the known world, only to die before he could reign over his consolidated empire.  Our own history provides its own examples.  Abraham Lincoln was assassinated before he could bring the Civil War to an end, and guide us through Reconstruction.  FDR died before the war in the Pacific was concluded, leaving Truman with the decision whether or not to use “the bomb”.  We can even find examples in our Bible.  Think about how much the early church leaned on the apostles for a direct line to Jesus teaching.  The Gideons’ were not on the street-corners passing out Bibles in those days, so the first Christians relied on the apostles, those who walked with Jesus, to pass on his teaching.  It must have been terrifying for them to think of life without these leaders, as the church witnessed one after the other suffer martyrdom.  Even in the church we tend to put too much stock in our leaders.  We would be wise to consider the words of the psalmist, “Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.  When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish.” (Psalm 146:3-4)

Maybe we have witnessed enough politics, both in Washington and in the church, that we no longer put a lot of trust in our leaders.  That does not mean that we don’t have other idols in which we seek hope.  How many of us place our wealth above all else?  If we simply see wealth as the ultimate source of security, that is enough for it to supplant God as the center of our universe.  On one level it makes sense.  After all, money buys us food, clothing, shelter, and helps provide the medicines many of us rely on for good health.  But Jesus warns us in that most famous of sermons, the Sermon on the Mount, that when we trust in riches, we trust on something that is temporal.  He reminds us, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  (Matthew 6:19-21)  And it is not just that money is temporary, but that it also seeks to control us if we allow it, by making it too much of a focus in our lives.  Paul would write to his young disciple Timothy, “But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.” (I Timothy 6:6-10)  If our hope is in our wealth, then sooner or later we will be worshiping our wealth as the god of our life. 

Maybe we don’t trust in our leaders, or in our wealth.  Maybe we trust in our own power, whether it is ours individually or collectively.  Power does have a way of making us seem less vulnerable.  In Jesus’ day, there was something referred to as the Pax Romana, or “Roman Peace”.  In essence, it was a way of referring to the internal stability, and security from external threats that was a result of Roman military might.  In a post-Cold War, pre-9/11 world, American citizens had much the same feeling of peace and security.  However, a group of determined terrorists showed that no matter a nation’s military might, no country is invincible.  There are other issues with seeking hope in our own strength.  For instance, what happens when power is in the hands of the unrighteous?  Right does not make might, and often it is the righteous who lack the power.  Even if power is in the hands of the righteous, if such a group exists is highly debatable, power is never permanent.  There was a time when no one envisioned a world without the Roman Empire.  There was a time when the “sun never set on the British Empire.”  History tells us that if the Lord tarries, there will almost certainly come a day when America is no longer the world’s super-power.  If we live to see that day, will all hope be lost? 

David writes that “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.” (Psalm 20:7)  Chariots and horses were the tanks and fighter jets of ancient times.  It would be easy to try to amass as many as possible as a source of strength.  And yet, David reminds us that the Lord our God is the only one capable to giving us hope.  He is the only one in whom we should trust. 

So what does all of this have to do with Easter?  We have looked at a lot of things that claim to provide hope.  Leaders, wealth, and even power are seductive options when considering where to put our trust.  The Resurrection however, reminds us that real hope is in seeing the unseen.  Our hope is found in what the women don’t see in the tomb.  The word find is used twice in the story; once it refers to a stone that has been rolled away, and once it refers to what they did not find- a body.  It was simply referred to as the body of Jesus when Joseph of Arimathea asked for it from Pilate, but when it cannot be found in the tomb, it is suddenly referred to as the body of the Lord Jesus.  Jesus has conquered death, and his lordship is now beyond dispute.  It’s a scene that transforms the women into angels.  The root word for “told” is the same as that of angel, which is from the Greek word for messenger.  While they don’t have wings, harps, or halos, these women return to the disciples to speak a word worthy of announcement by an angelic chorus.  It’s a word that sends Peter running to the tomb to see, or not see, for himself the truth of what he has heard.  Our encounter with the risen Lord must be a personal one.  Our faith cannot be sustained on the testimony of others, so like Peter we run to the tomb each year, to discover all over again that it is indeed empty.  It is true that unlike Peter, we cannot see the scene for ourselves, but then again, that has never been the definition of faith.  We have read our Bible from an early age, and whether it has sunk in or not, we have been told that faith is different from knowledge.  The author of Hebrews would say that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)  In some sense this makes it difficult for us, even more difficult than it was for the apostles.  Jesus acknowledges as much when he tells “doubting” Thomas, “You believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29)

The Resurrection invites us to enter the story of God’s goodness and work in our world.  It invites us to find our place in God’s story.  It challenges us to read the Bible, the story of Jesus Christ not as a history book, but as our story.  John Steinbeck provides some insight into how that might be done in a passage from his book The Winter of Our Discontent.  He writes:

“That Saturday morning seemed to have a pattern.  I wonder whether all days have.  It was a withdrawn day.  The little gray whisper of my Aunt Deborah came to me, ‘Of course, Jesus is dead.  This is the only day in the world's days that he is dead.  And all men and women are dead too…But tomorrow.  Just wait until tomorrow.  Then you’ll see something.’

I don’t remember her very clearly, the way you don’t remember someone too close to look at.  But she read the Scripture to me like a daily newspaper and I suppose that’s the way she thought of it, as something going on happening eternally but always exciting and new.  Every Easter, Jesus really rose from the dead, an explosion, expected but nonetheless new.  It wasn’t two thousand years ago to her; it was now.  And she planted something of that in me.”

Easter reminds us that God’s work is something happening eternally, always exciting and new.

The challenge of Easter is to see Jesus’ resurrection not just as an event that happened 2,000 years ago, but as something that is happening now, and to take that way of viewing the world, and to plant it in as many other people as we can through the way we speak, through the way we act, and through the way we love.  

Psalm 22: Has God really forsaken us?

If you did not know the rest of the story, you would wonder why they call it “Good Friday”.  The Son of God is on a cross, and sin and death seem poised for the ultimate victory.  Even Jesus’ words on the cross seem to foreshadow defeat, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  It begs the question, has God really forsaken us?

One of the beautiful things about the psalms is their ability to express multiple emotions, almost simultaneously.  After all, how many of us are entirely happy, or entirely sad.  I have been to a number of wakes in my time as a minister, and one thing I have found is even in those moments of deepest loss there is laughter to be heard.  That’s why the psalm that Jesus references while hanging on the cross, Psalm 22, is so appropriate.  It weaves together lament and praise in such a way to reflect the situation that Jesus is in. 

Psalm 22 is an accurate reflection of both intense sorrow and pain, and also praise.  The first, and largest, is lament.  There are actually more lament psalms than any other type.  James L. Mays would say that, “their abundance in the Psalter is an eloquent witness of the way in which Old Testament piety bound the tribulations of mortal life to faith in God as savior.”  Often, like us, they simply ask the question, “why?”  In asking that question, the lament psalms disclose our humanity.  The vulnerability, mortality, anguishes, and questioning of the laments is part of the universal human experience.  The laments take on a personal aspect, conveying the ways which our troubles affect us.  In this particular psalm, we read of tears building up inside of the psalmist until they spilled out, forming a strong connection between emotional and the physical distress.  There is also a social aspect to the laments.  Our troubles do not just affect ourselves; they affect our relationships with others.  Too often our problems become their problems, whether they ask for that burden or not.  Sometimes it’s not that our problems affect others, sometimes others are the problem.  In Psalm 22 we read of a metaphorical description using animals as predators.  Our enemies circle us sometimes, and we begin to feel an awful lot like prey.  Both the psalmist and those who watch him are expecting his death.  It forms another connection to Jesus on the cross, as he looks down at those who put him there knowing that they are just waiting for him to take his last breath.  Finally, there is a theological aspect to lament. How do our troubles affect the way we see God?  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is a question uttered not into a vacuum.  In his book The Trouble with Being Born, Emil Cioran writes that, “A cry means something only in a created universe.  If there is no creator, what is the good of calling attention to yourself?”  So then the problem is not the absence or non-existence of God, but the reconciling of the present experience of sorrow, grief, and pain to the existence of a loving God.  What are we to do when our present experience of pain comes into conflict with who we believe God to be?

I spoke earlier of the way the psalms in general, and Psalm 22 in particular, weave together lament and praise.  The smaller, and yet decidedly final words of Psalm 22 are words of praise.  The act of praise brings the psalmist from isolation to community.  The thanksgiving toward God we see (vv. 22-26) spills over into communal worship (vv. 27-31).  Deliverance, and even the hope for deliverance, is a motivating force for our acts of worship.  Those acts of worship are shown to be something universal, something that transcends time to include the living (v. 27), the dead (v. 29), and all future generations (vv. 30-31).  As we struggle to come to grips with this idea of praise so close on the heels of lament, the words of Mays are again helpful: 

“The psalm tells us that the resurrection does not cancel the cross; it validates and reveals it as the central moment of God’s reign.  The resurrected one is the crucified Jesus.  Faith is not relieved of mortality and suffering.  Anguish and death in faith are rather transfigured by their absorption into the coming reign of God.”

The existence of God does not alleviate suffering.  Rather, it insures that suffering can at most win the battle, but never win the war.  Consider the case of Jesus, our Lord.  If we truly follow him, then surely there will be times in our life where psalms of lament frame our existence.  The cry of Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” becomes Jesus cry on the cross (Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46).  The social ostracism of Psalm 22:7, “All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;” is fulfilled in Jesus crucifixion (Matthew 27:39-40; Luke 23:35-36).  There are other connections between Psalm 22 and Jesus suffering, but I want to draw your attention to what I believe should be the defining link.  The psalmist would write in Psalm 22:22, “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.”  Notice how the author of Hebrews uses that part of the praise portion of the psalm to express Jesus triumph over death. 

“For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, ‘I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.’” - Hebrews 2:10-12

Jesus identifies with those, before and after him, who speak the words of this psalm in their own moments of crisis.  Jesus engages God in dialogue at the lowest moment of his life not because he feels abandoned, but because through it all and despite it all, he knows God is there.   Because we know that Jesus experienced Psalm 22, suffering changes for us not empirically, but experientially.  We do not experience less suffering because of Jesus, we experience suffering differently.  Jesus suffering results in an invitation to the entire world, not to run from the cross, but to pick it up knowing that like the words of lament in Psalm 22, death will not have the final say.  I leave you with Paul’s words to the Romans, words which are underwritten by the hope we find in Jesus death, burial, and resurrection.

“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” - Romans 8:38-39 

Genesis 11:1-9: Unity in God rather than ourselves

In the Bible study curriculum “The Story” developed by Max Lucado and Randy Frazee, there are two perspectives of the Biblical narrative.  There is God’s perspective, what they refer to as the “upper story”, and there is the human perspective, which is referred to as the “lower story”.  Ideally, these two should come together as a unified way of seeing the world, but humanity insists on its own agenda, so the two perspectives remain.  Theologians would refer to them as the “transcendent” perspective, and the “immanent” perspective.  The Apostle Paul at times would refer to it as living according to the “Spirit”, or the “flesh”.  We find in the specific incident of the tower of Babel, a microcosm of the continuing battle between these two points of view. 

The human perspective in the story is revealed by the words “come let us…”  Humanity has its own agenda, apart from and sometimes in competition with God’s.  Humanity desires unity, the type that can be found in large cities, and in shared language.  The city of Babylon is believed to be the site of the tower of Babel.  One of its landmarks was a huge ziggurat, whose name Etemenanki, suggested the linking of heaven and earth.  But for all the effort on the part of the Babylonians to demonstrate humanity’s advancement through its own glory, we are also told that there is a dark side to Babylon.  It might be a great city, but it is also a city of persecutions (Daniel 3); hedonism (Isaiah 47:8-13); and wealth that leads to eventual destruction (Revelation 17-18).  While the Babylonians thought they could build a tower to reach the heavens, the only thing that actually makes it that far is the knowledge of their sin and corruption.  We are unsure if they only had one language, or if they had many languages but were all fluent in one language that brought them together, a lingua franca of the ancient world.  It was the first documented case of globalization, except instead of removing barriers to bring humanity closer together; humanity brought itself into conflict with God because of its ambition.  What was motivating this ambition?  It was fame, glory, and a desire to be remembered.  They said, “let us make a name for ourselves”.  No human project undertaken for the sake of human glory, whether it is an individual’s or ours collectively, can be trusted.  Interestingly enough, God in his justice gives them a name that becomes famous, but the name of the Babelites will not mean “glory”, but “confusion”.  F. S. Frick would say that the story is an example of “man’s futile attempt to gain security apart from God through city-building.”  Despite God’s commission to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, man chooses to settle.  It is no coincidence that just a chapter after the story of Babel, we have the beginning of Abraham’s story, a man who is willing to leave the safety of numbers and venture out in faith. When summarizing the Babel account, theologian Walter Brueggemann would say that “the narrative then is a protest against every effort at oneness derived from human self-sufficiency and autonomy.”

The divine perspective is also revealed through speech, specifically the words “come let us…”  However we see the truth in that God is not portrayed as a rival, but a concerned Father and creator.  Humanity thinks that all their problems will be solved if they speak the same language.  However, it is not simply that they do not understand one another, it is that they do not listen.  The Hebrew word used to refer to such successful communication, or lack thereof, is shema.  It is familiar to the faithful Jew as it is the name of one of Judaism’s most famous prayers:

“Hear (shema), O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.  You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.  You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” - Deuteronomy 6:4-9

John Calvin understood what those at Babel did not.  It is more important that we hear and understand God, than that we hear and understand each other.  When speaking of different Christians from around the world, he would say that “although their language may differ in sound, they all speak the same thing, while they cry, ‘Abba, Father.’”  In other words we are unified, even when we don’t speak the same language, if we are conversing with the same God.  In a fitting finale to the Babel story, Genesis tells us that “the Lord scattered them there”, reversing their intention when “they settled there.” (11:2)

The scattering is seen as punishment, but in fact it is a fulfilling of God’s original intention for mankind to fill the earth.  God is pushing humanity out of the metaphorical nest.  You see, God is against human unity only when we seek that unity on our own terms.  If we fast-forward to the New Testament, we see God bringing people together and enabling them to communicate in ways much like what humanity envisioned at the tower of Babel.  Consider the description of Pentecost in the book of Acts.  The connection between the events at the Tower of Babel, and those at Pentecost are emphasized by words like hear, heard, or ear:

“And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language…And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?...  both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God… But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words…Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” (Acts 2: 6, 8, 11, 14, 37)

God’s Spirit is again moving in humanity, bringing about unity through a shared understanding of God’s redemptive purpose in our world.  The Spirit again blows over the chaos, bringing a renewed capacity to listen.  The difference is not just that the unity of Pentecost was initiated by God, but is also seen in humanity’s response.  As formative as that day in Jerusalem was, they are content to remain scattered, not imposing a false unity.  In other words, all those people from all those places go home, to houses and villages far and wide to live out God’s vision of inhabiting the earth, and joining in the work of building God’s kingdom here.  The Christians on Pentecost understood something we desperately need to hear as a church today, and that is that we cannot live in the church, but we can live as the church.  

Genesis 8:1-9:17: Worshiping in God's New World

Have you ever gone out on a limb to meet someone half way?  If you knew the person, maybe you didn’t feel like it was that much of a risk.  But if you didn’t, the experience was probably an anxious one.  There is a period of time when you feel vulnerable.  You’ve laid your cards on the table, and you wait for what seems like an eternity to see what the other person has in their hand. 

That’s probably what it was like for Noah.  He builds the ark in obedience to God, and then he leads his family onto the gigantic boat.  No matter how great Noah’s faith, there had to be that small voice that seemed to get louder with each moment that the rain didn’t come, “God has forgotten you, and you’ll look like a fool”. 

That voice was silenced with the coming of the rain.  Did it start with just the trickle of a few rain drops, and then crescendo into a downpour?  Or, were the full might of the rain and the fountains of the deep bursting forth unleashed in one moment, one powerful deluge?  We don’t know exactly how it happened, but one thing we do know is that God remembered Noah.  When we say that God remembered Noah, it doesn’t mean that for a while God had forgotten him.  In Hebrew, “remember” means to act on a previous covenant, not “to forget”.  God had made a promise to Noah, and in sealing Noah in the ark, God remembers and acts on that promise.  Remembering is not just a corrective action taken after something slips our memory.  Remembering can be proactive in nature.  When we greet a friend with a card on their birthday and they respond, “You remembered!”  Or, when we stand by the graveside of a loved one and promise ourselves that we will always remember the impact that they made on our lives.  Old Testament scholar Brevard S. Childs would say that “God remembering always implies his movement towards the object of his memory”, so that in a way when we say God “remembered” Noah what we are really saying is that God drew near to him. 

When God remembers Noah, He by extension remembers humankind.  When the flood waters subside and Noah worships, God is “reminded” of the positive side of humanity.  Because Noah demonstrated humanity’s ability to be faithful, even if that faithfulness isn’t perfect, God’s heart was transformed.  Whereas before the flood “the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Genesis 6:6), after the flood “the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth…’” (Genesis 8:21).  After the flood, the new history begins with an altar.  Noah’s first act is to build this altar and worship God.  It is the first time an altar appears in the Bible.  Lest we think that the construction of the altar sanctions the sacred/secular divide, we should take note that part of worship is obedience not just at the altar, but during the whole period leading up to our arrival there.  While the altar isn’t built until the end of the flood, Noah’s whole life was worship because of his obedience.  Noah was so obedient, that he didn’t even leave the ark until God commanded him to do so.  In the words of noted theologian and church reformer John Calvin, “How great must have been the fortitude of the man, who, after the incredible wariness of a whole year, when the deluge has ceased, and new life has shone forth, does not yet move a foot out of his sepulcher, without the command of God.”   What would the altar have meant if Noah had approached it in disobedience?  What if Noah had come to the altar simply to go through the motions, all the while living his life in disobedience and open rebellion towards God?  Even more important, what does our own worship mean if our lives don’t mirror our actions at the altar?  In worshipping, genuinely and wholeheartedly, we express our gratitude to God for the new beginning that he has brought about, not just in Noah, but more importantly in Jesus Christ. 

As residents of this new world, worship is not just our response to salvation, but something we enter into as we live out our redemption.  In Noah’s case, part of the reminder was not just in worship, but in nature itself.  God places the rainbow in the sky so that when humanity gazes upon it, they will remember their collective experience through Noah of judgment, but also redemption.  When commenting on the rainbow, Franz Delitzsch said that, “Stretched between heaven and earth, it is a bond of peace between both, and, spanning the horizon, it points to the all-embracing universality of Divine mercy.”  Many believe that the rainbow is meant to symbolize an actual bow turned on its side, a weapon of war hung up never to be used again.  According to Franz Delitzsch, “The symbol of divine bellicosity and hostility has been transformed into a token of reconciliation between God and man.”  This is not the only reminder we have of judgment and redemption.  As Christians God has given us two acts which inform our identity as the redeemed people of God.  The first of these acts is our baptism.  When we remember our baptism, we should at the same time remember our identification with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The Apostle Paul writes to the Romans, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:3-4)  In addition to this initiatory act, we regularly gather together as Christians around our Lord’s Table, all the while proclaiming the truth about what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.  Paul reminds the church in Corinth of this when he writes, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.” (I Corinthians 11:26)

These reminders come to us not just to bring comfort concerning what God has done, but to convict us of what should be doing as His people.  They remind us that God has opened up the possibility of a new world.  However, the possibility of a new world will forever be a dream deferred unless we adopt Noah’s faith and obedience for our own life.  God calls us to bring forth a new world where the worth of every human is respected.  God’s image in man is why he saves humanity, and is why the worth of every human must be maintained.  When human lives are taken, John Calvin says, “God deems himself violated in the violation of these persons.”  God calls us to boldly live out the reality that the Holy Spirit abides with us in this world.   Despite our failings, God is committed to His promise to never again destroy the earth with a flood.  Theologian and Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann said it this way: “The only thing the waters of chaos and death do not cut through (though they cut through everything else) is the commitment of God to creation.”  Finally, and most importantly, we are to go tell the world that God continues to save.  The story of the flood shows us that redemption has happened before.  Redemption however, is not limited to the past.  Redemption is in the present as well, with God bearing us through the waters in an ark as sturdy as any ship ever built.  The Apostle Peter would write to a group of Christians persecuted by the world, and encourage them to imagine how they were living as present-day Noahs:

 “For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.  Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.”(I Peter 3:17-21)

Do we trust that God can bear us through the waters of sin and death just as surely as he bore Noah and his family through the flood?  If we truly trust in God’s redemptive work, will we worship not just at the altar, but with lives of obedience as a present-day Noah?  Or, will we be washed away by the consequences of our own rebelliousness and pride?       

Genesis 6:1-7:24: the ark of grace in the flood of judgment

Noah and the ark is perhaps one of the most well-known stories from the Bible.  If you also take into consideration that many other Ancient Near-Eastern cultures had stories about great floods, it becomes obvious that something happened, with the shared experience of that event being recorded in various ways, by various peoples.  So what does the Bible tell us about the flood, Noah, and the ark?

The flood was not so much an act of destruction by God, as it was an act of self-destruction by humanity.  While it’s true that it was God’s might that drove the flood waters, it was man’s wickedness that made the flood a reality.  Who were the sons that so offended God?  The possibilities include descendants of Seth, angels, or a dynasty of tyrants who succeeded Lamech.  Whatever the answer, the result was the same.  Their actions followed in the footsteps of Adam and Eve’s original sin.  Our Bibles say that they saw something beautiful, and they sought to make it their own.  If you read the passage in the original Hebrew, the phrasing is literally what we find in Genesis 3:6 when Adam and Eve’s sin is described: they “saw” what was “good”, and they “took” it.  This selfish behavior passed down through the generations, has caused God to look down and see not the goodness and beauty that was present in creation, but the wickedness that is the result of human sinfulness and rebellion.  Man’s wickedness has spread from being reactionary, to being of the proactive sort.  The heart, the locus of thought, feeling, volition, and morality has turned to planning methods of carrying out the wickedness found in its inner depths.  After seeing this disastrous turn of events, God responds.  The Spirit of God hovered over the waters during creation, now that same Spirit is about to be withdrawn.  Why doesn’t God act immediately?  Why does God delay 120 years?   The truth is that even when God is prepared to react to human disobedience with vengeance, He withholds His wrath long enough for Noah to build the ark.  The word used to describe God’s intention, “destroy”, is the same word used to describe human actions in Genesis 6:12, though it is often translated “corrupt” instead of “destroy”.  The use of the word “corrupt” or “corrupted” makes plain that what God intends to destroy has actually been self-destroyed already.  Nahum Sarna would say, “The idea is that humankind cannot undermine the moral basis of society without endangering the very existence of its civilization.  In fact, through its corruption, society sets in motion the process of inevitable self-destruction.”

In the midst of all the wickedness and God’s plan to destroy the earth, we find obedient faith in the person of Noah.  God has delayed His plan to wipe out mankind because in Noah He sees a glimmer of hope.  Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and through him we found grace as well.  It isn’t that Noah is perfect, but he is obedient. When God speaks, Noah listens.  The delayed entrance of Noah in the story opens up a new possibility, that of obedience and faith.   With Noah’s appearance on the stage, the words “righteous” and “blameless” are used for the first time in the Bible.  Righteousness is a combination of piety and ethics, while blamelessness denotes an abstention from sin, even if one is not entirely without fault.  Noah is described as one who “walked with God”, which links him with Enoch.  While Enoch is saved from death, Noah is saved from the flood.  If Noah isn’t perfect, he is a man of action.  He is not a man who professes something, but then fails to validate that profession with his actions.  The simple statement that “Noah did” underscores his living by faith.  It also puts the emphasis on God’s actions, rather than Noah’s, because Noah simply does what God tells him.  Today’s Christian should note that Noah’s fulfillment of God’s plans would have been a life-long endeavor, not one emotion-filled response.  Noah didn’t agree to build the ark after his heart-strings had been plucked by a well-orchestrated combination of emotional appeal and mood-lit praise music.  Noah’s “yes” to God is one that will cost him dearly.  One-hundred and twenty years Noah labored to build the ark.  How much did he have to pay for materials?  Did he have to go chop down every tree with the help of his sons.  What did it cost him in terms of his social standing?  How did people refer to this crazy man whose faith led him to build a huge boat?  A better question is ‘What if we were more like Noah, caring more about God’s plans for our world rather than our popularity with the world?’    

God sees Noah’s faithfulness, and responds in-kind.  No matter how faithful Noah was, that faith could never save him without God’s intervention.  In Noah’s case, God intervenes in three major ways.  First of all, God designs.  Noah receives from God plans for a boat 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.  In the Babylonian flood epic, the boat used by the hero is a 180 foot cube, hardly a vessel likely to be seaworthy.  Here however, we find a boat that is large, and yet proportioned to sail.  Its plans make it bigger than the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, and yet with a 20 foot draft it is shallow enough to not ground on the mountains.  Noah’s obedience brings God’s expert design to fruition.  After God designs, God guides.  There are no navigational aids, so that once in the ark the humans are totally reliant on God.  While there is relative safety inside the ark, there is also a degree of helplessness, as Noah and his family rely on God to deliver them safely through the flood.  Even the animals seem to be guided to Noah.  Just as God brought the animals to Noah’s ancestor Adam to be named, so He brings them now to Noah to be saved.  After God designs and guides, we see that God saves.  God shuts them in the ark, showing the grace and salvation of the ark to be a result of divine action rather than Noah’s.  The ark serves not just an immediate purpose, but also a more enduring one as it serves as a prefigure of the salvation that God will deliver to humankind through Jesus Christ.  While in Noah’s day God blots out humanity, when Jesus Christ comes, God blots out our sins.  It’s the same exact verb used in both instances!  The ark, in many ways, foreshadows our own salvation.  God opens the door to the ark and offers to bear us safely through the waters of sin and death, which threaten destruction just as surely as those torrents did so many millennia ago.  Will you, like Noah, have the faith to step inside?