Noah Walked with God
Rev. Janice M. Tiedeck
Preached at Beckley Presbyterian Church on June
1, 2008
We have all heard this story before. Probably dozens of times. Some of our
earliest church memories might be of hearing the story of Noah and the ark during Sunday school. We all probably remember thinking of Noah with such admiration, he built this ark and he gathered these
animals and then God flooded the earth, but then the rain stops and the dove comes, and the rainbow is placed across the sky
as a promise.
That is the story I always remember hearing, but wow, God flooded the earth, wiping
out all of humanity except for Noah and his family, destroying all creatures, except for the two of each species. The trees and the houses were all washed away. I think this
is one of those old testament passages in which we all think of the happy ending, but don’t spend too much time thinking
about what had to happen in order to get to that happy ending. While thinking
about this passage, my mind went in so many directions, sitting down to reflect on just one seemed impossible, for which message
within Noah is most important for the world we live in today?
I think of all the natural disasters that have been going on around the world, the
tornados, the fires, the terrible cyclone, the earth-shattering earthquake and I wondered if that was where this passage was
leading me. To walk that fine line between natural disasters and God.
Then there is the common thread throughout the history of human existence, that we
continue to mess up so intensely but out of some great act, we are saved, and talking about Noah in the light of the cross.
But then I thought back to the talent show, and for those of you who were there that
Friday night a couple of weeks ago, you will notice that our lay reader today is a mighty coincidence. For those of you who weren’t there, Dan presented Bill Cosby’s comedy routine about Noah, I
did think about asking him to reprieve the role today but decided against it. That
routine puts yet another spin on the story of Noah, Noah was a man, just an ordinary man who was asked to do something so
big, and unlike the comedy routine, scripture doesn’t speak much about his hesitance to do such a huge task.
The story of Noah has such depth, it talks about human tragedy and loss, it talks about
God’s forgiving love and continuing promises, it talks about one man being given such an extraordinary task, and it
talks about God losing faith in humanity. Our text is immediately preceeded by
God limiting the years God will abide in us as individuals and taking away the life spans of 700 years and replacing that
with 120 years. How literal those numbers are, is up for debate, but scripture
says God is sad that he created man and beast.
We don’t hear that very often when we talk about the flood, for some reason the
purpose of God flooding the earth is ignored and replaced with the hope that follows.
But how can we truly come to understand that hope without seeing how devastating the flood was. I am timid in turning in the direction of natural disasters, but when it comes down to it, the flood was
the single greatest disaster of all time. It is a story that transcends different
backgrounds and faiths. Every group from the native Americans to tribes in Africa have similar stories about a great flood.
To set the stage as well as I can. Noah
was 10 generations away from Adam, within that time though, hundreds of years went by, for remember each person lived anywhere
from 300 years to 900 years and only 10 generations. After the garden of Eden
and Adam and Eve being expelled from, you have the birth of Cain and Abel, the first murder, and then Seth and Enosh. 4 generations later, Enoch is born, who is one of just a handful of people within
scripture who does not die, instead we hear of him walking with God and being no more.
And then 3 generations later Noah is born. It seems like such a short
amount of time for God to give up on humanity and creation. But scripture lets
us in on some of the things that have been happening in the interim.
Earlier in Genesis we hear about the daughters of man and the sons of God. This is an area in which scholars disagree, completely. Whether
the term sons of God refers to angels or kings or just a different way to say son, there is no definitive answer. But we know that the practices of marriage are not going according to God’s law, and we know that
the people seem to have forsaken the one who created them. The bottom line is
that in a very short amount of time, creation has disappointed God, but perhaps not in the clear-cut way the scholars like
to argue. I think of the God who created us out of love, who gave us the command
to care for creation, and how did the people respond, it wasn’t by saying thank you, it wasn’t by dropping to
their knees and praising God.
I think I might be going out on a limb here, but I would like to offer up the idea
that the first 9 generations of humankind treated God as the un-cool parent, much like (my apologies to them before I say
it) our children and teenagers. Any parent out there could probably tell stories
of their children’s demand for things and attention, that children get it in their minds that they are entitled to everything
with no regard for those around them. I know that seems harsh to say from the
pulpit, and I don’t want to say that they aren’t wonderful people, but from the very beginning of life, new life
needs to be taken care of completely, and it goes from need to want almost overnight.
Parents might begin to feel unwanted, unloved, unappreciated, but are still being asked to provide everything.
Perhaps God was raising children and teenagers, a new world with new life, needing
care and attention, became a demanding people resentful and unappreciative about what has been given to them. I don’t want you to admit it, but I can almost guarantee every parent out there has wanted to throw
their hands up in the air and say I give up!
But then, a glimpse of hope…the teenager begins to mature, and you hear a thank
you, or perhaps the dirty clothes get picked up off the floor. All of a sudden
you feel that maybe, just maybe, they are starting to get it. Noah, started to
get it, as scripture says, Noah walked with God. Noah matured into a relationship
with God, showing all the love that was possible, showing that perhaps, we can get it.
This however is where my analogy of the child must stop, for we know from our reading
today, that God told Noah to gather his family and 2 of each animal, male and female, giving creation a chance to continue
and to begin again. We also know though, that the rain came, and the waters rose,
and that anyone or anything that was not aboard the ark, perished.
How? How can we wrap our minds around it, how can we begin to understand, how a God who was so loving to create
us, destroyed so much all in a short time. This is one of those questions that
causes me to fall to my knees, for I don’t know. This is one of those moments,
when all I can do is trust God. To trust that in that despair there was hope,
and there was through Noah, but was everyone else truly that far beyond hope? This
isn’t the only account of this kind of destruction within the Old Testament. We
hear also about Soddom and Gomorrah, where Abraham’s nephew Lot is at these cities knowing that they are to be destroyed, and tries to make a deal with God, hey
if I can find a 100 people who are righteous will you save this city. After a
few rounds of that, God drops the number to just one, go into the city and find just one person who is righteous and they
shall all be saved. There wasn’t a single person to be found and the cities
were destroyed.
Can the world really lose all hope? That
they are beyond the point of being saved? To say yes would be to claim too much
power, to say no would be to abandon the information before us, so the only answer is, I don’t know, it isn’t
up to us to know. We are asked to just love.
One thing that cannot be ignored in this conversation is what happened later in scripture. God sent Christ for us. The world continued
to mess up over and over again, but God loved the world, he loved creation so much, he promised after the flood to never flood
the world again, the rainbow symbolizes that promise. And covenants were made
after that one, through Abraham which we will talk about next week, and then through Jeremiah and others. God would not leave us or forsake us. Noah found favor with
God, and even Noah later in life made some pretty bad mistakes, but God didn’t give up on us. In fact, he gave the greatest sacrifice, his own son, so that there would be hope.
I see the natural disasters around us, that are sometimes given the name of acts of
God, and I wonder sometimes where God is in that. And then I see some of the
most beautiful examples of love. That people turn out for one another to help
each other. That in these moments of fear and terror, they turn to God for help
and security, because they know God will not leave them. And sometimes we doubt,
we doubt whether God cares and whether God even knows we are there at all, and some lose hope in those moments of despair,
but the truth is this, that God is there. It might be hard to know it or feel
it, but God’s promises are sure and unbreakable. God promised through Jeremiah
that God would not leave us or forsake us, he promised through Abraham to make a great nation, greater even than the number
of stars in the sky, and God promised through Noah, to never destroy the earth. But
the greatest promise of all, is that of the empty tomb, that through Christ nothing is impossible. That being fully divine and fully human, Christ came to save us and to give us hope.
There is one important observation I need to make.
The world around us is so powerful. I see the pain and the despair, the
suffering and the perseverance. I watch people who are hanging by a thread put
themselves on the line to make sure someone else is ok. I encounter people with
such deep love and compassion for others that the love of God is flowing from them.
The world we live in, is so full of love, is full of people seeking God and wanting to love one another, following
Christ’s example and also portraying the characteristic of Noah, in walking with God.
Are there things the world could do better, most definitely, are there
things we each could do better, of course. But one thing to be sure of, is that
God is with us, and that God will not leave the world, but will constantly be walking with us and loving us, that the covenant
God made with Noah through the rainbow still exists.
Rev. Janice M. Tiedeck
