In our scripture readings for Creation Sunday, we hear the familiar story of Noah's Ark. God is so upset with how his creation of humanity has turned out, that he wants to press the reset button, and start over. He selects the only righteous family he can find, and instructs them to build a ship large enough to save the family, and at least two of each land creature, plus all the food they will need. Then, God floods the earth with 40 days of rain like we have never seen since, so that even the highest mountain peak is under water. And after all flesh has died, and the waters have dried up, obedient Noah offers a sacrifice, and God has a change of heart....from now on, God will follow a different plan to establish righteousness on the earth.....
The angel food cake that refused to rise. The LEGO model with an error in step 3 out of 120. The painting that looks blotchy and smeared. As creators, we all know the frustration when what we were trying to create, does not go as planned. The natural instinct is to rage at it, destroy it, preferably violently, and then try again. But then, sometimes as creators, we figure out that what we were trying to create, DOES go as planned, but what was UNPLANNED is that what we have created....turns out to be a MONSTER. Robert Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb. Charles Kettering and leaded gasoline. Are Elon Musk or Peter Thiel and their AI technologies next? What if the creator CAN'T undo their creation?
After watching the first ten generations of humanity play out over almost 1700 years, God figured out that he had created a monster. And God had a plan to undo it. It wasn't going to be easy – humanity was highly adaptive and very intelligent. To ensure that only his selected righteous family of humans would survive, God would destroy ALL land-based life, saving just enough copies of the other species for repopulation in a giant ship that could float above a global flood of many months. And in case you think this was a knee-jerk emotional reaction by God, remember that God had the length of time needed by Noah to prepare the ark, likely years, in which he could have changed his mind. This was a planned, calculated, humanocide – with the exception of Noah and his family – and the rest of life on earth was acceptable collateral damage.
This is not a side of God the Father we like to talk about very much! We tend to drift into a picture of God the Father as Michaelangelo's greybeard grandpa type, reaching out to Adam from the clouds. He looks wise, and gentle, and kind, and ….harmless. God is love, we say ….but God is also GOOD, the source of goodness, and a prerequisite for goodness is the unwillingness to surrender to evil.
And when God looked down before the 600th year of Noah's life, what God saw predominantly in humanity, was evil. Specifically, in Genesis chapter 6, wickedness, corruption... and violence. The pattern was set with Cain's jealous murder of his brother Abel, and has just continued from there.
And continues to this day! We are blessed to live in a part of the world where wickedness, corruption, and violence are at a minimum... and yet our headlines are always full. We make a grave error when we assume that God the Father is no longer upset by humanity's evil, or that the God of love CAN'T respond with the destruction of his creation.
God has CHOSEN not to. After 370 sweaty and smelly days aboard the ark, faithful Noah disembarked and immediately offered a sacrifice to God, a significant sacrifice of 1/14th of the remaining clean animals and birds on the planet. This act of love and submission, perhaps second in importance only to Jesus' decision in the garden of Gethsemane, leads to a change in God's heart. In experiencing love from Noah, God remembers that free will is the necessary price of that love, and the consequence of free will, is that evil will abound. So God chooses a different strategy than destruction by flood to combat evil and encourage righteousness – first, he will choose one family on earth as a role model, headed by Abraham, instructing them on how to live in God's favour. And second, from a girl in this family named Mary, he will beget a son, who will sacrifice his life on the cross so that the evil acts of humanity can be forgiven. From now on, God gives Noah a promise NOT to destroy the earth with a flood – and will instead implement the strategy his son Jesus elaborates in a parable, “in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” This promise from God is a fact in which we and all of God's creatures can rejoice, each time we see the symbol of the rainbow in the clouds.
And in response to Noah's love, God grants to evil humanity, free reign to be fruitful and multiply, PLUS, God grants humanity dominion over the earth and all of its species.
We are blessed to live on a planet God has made to be reliable - we can count on seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night. And we are blessed to live on a planet where God has given his son for our benefit, so that we can turn to him and receive eternal life.
Heavenly Father, purge from us all of the evil in our hearts, and enable us to respond to you in love. Give us strength and opportunity to oppose the wickedness, corruption and violence happening around us, in Jesus name.... Amen.