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?
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