Noah in the Real World
06-01-08
One of my favorite Saturday morning activities as a child was watching cartoons on television. I would grab a pillow and lay right in the middle of the living room floor to watch Bugs Bunny confound Elmer Fudd, the Wylie Coyote chase Road Runner, and Tom interact with Jerry. I loved how they would never catch each other. I would laugh every time good old Wylie would shoot of the edge of a cliff, hang frozen in the air, and then plummet down to the canyon floor…where all you could see was a puff of dust as he hit the ground. Poor Wylie, I did root for him, but I was always secretly happy the gleeful Road Runner got away.
All my favorite cartoons had someone chasing someone else…someone desiring to eat someone else. There would be crashes and falls, there would be explosions and punches, there would be brick walls, canyon floors, and heavy objects, and yet, no cartoon ever got hurt. There were never terrible consequences for actions, they would just pick themselves up and start again.
Cartoons don't live in the real world. The real world is messy. The real world includes holocausts and genocides. The real world includes plane crashes and car wrecks. The real world includes brick walls, canyon floors, and heavy objects. The real world includes terrifying natural disasters such as Tsunami's and floods, hurricanes and earthquakes. The real world includes violence and deception. Only our violence and deception and our crashes and floods include some serious life-altering consequences.
Maybe this is why Noah, his ark, and his animals have become so cuddly over time; the story more a cartoon than a lesson. At Noah's time the real world was very messy as well. There was drunkenness and violence, sexual promiscuity and materialism. There was abuse of relationships, self, and others. And yet a cursory tour of the local mall will reveal numbers of precious moments Noah's ark figurines with joyous smiles on their faces, cuddly stuffed animals, pop-up children's books, and wooden cribs. The Noah's ark motif has become especially popular for decorating nurseries and preschools, minus the part where most every one dies. Whatever the motivation for this popularity, the commercial success of cuddly Noah toys points to a remarkably consistent human trait: our need to domesticate and tame troubling, often terrifying reality.
But the Noah story, itself, resists domestication. It is troubling. When we really take time to look at the story, we see that most of it is quite frightening. This story shows an angry wrathful God, and a fearful urgency to build an ark. This story shows and uncontrollable flood. This story in its entirety is terrifying. It confronts some of our most cherished security blankets. This story challenges neat and long-held assumptions.
Now, we Methodists don't like to talk about an angry, wrathful God. The wrathful God belongs in other denominations. We are so used to hearing about God as loving, compassionate, and patient with us that a story like this can scare us a little. God is disappointed by the condition of humanity at Noah's time. No doubt, God is disappointed about the corruption and the selfishness, like parents would be disappointed over the wrong choices their children are making. Abusive choices and relationships mock the very purpose of creation. God's decision to bring on the flood of chaos, and to start all over may be merely a lesson and/or story, and yet, from the human perspective, this massive destruction is very difficult to understand and very difficult to accept. Did not God give God's creatures free choice to begin with? God must have known that there was a possibility that people would make wrong choices.
Every time I read this story I want to rescue, not the sinful people, but the image of God. I try to save God from being an angry, tyrannical, and vengeful God. My rescue attempts point to my need to domesticate and soften anything that may have serious consequences for my life. The truth is, God has every right to be frustrated and disappointed. We are in relationship with the very Being that created us, has high hopes for us, that loves us, and wants the very best for us. So often people live as if God does not exist, except for when we are comfortable.
But it is because we are in relationship that this story not only points to God's disappointment, but also why it does not end with tyrannical destruction. This story is transformed into a story of salvation. The fact that Noah was to build a huge ship nowhere near a lake or an ocean was really a message of salvation to the people of the earth. The fact that a portion of all of God's creation lived through this disaster meant that there was hope, and new beginnings, and the possibility of faithful and just living. In fact, God sets a rainbow in the sky and makes a covenant with Noah never to wipe the slate clean again. God has hope for all of Creation's potential goodness.
That hope continues, despite the fact that when we look at scripture, we see that the basic persisting message of the Bible is the story of God's effort to rescue God's creatures from the effects of poor choices, disobedience, and violence, and bring them back into a redeemed relationship with God. The story continues. God still seeks to be close to us, a part of our every decision and action. And like those who came before, we sometimes still make intentional and unintentional stupid choices that tear down God's purpose and build up selfish desires.
The Noah story, in its unsanitized entirety, is an important reminder of our purpose in God. Noah’s story teaches us of God's caring love and grace. At the same time, these stories remind us that each of us are given a responsibility in covenant with God. We are responsible for our actions. We are responsible for societal actions and consequences, when we do nothing to promote peace over violence, moderation versus decadence. We teach the messages of love, justice, and grace, in the way we live our lives. Our level of decadence is passed on to our children and grand children and their children. Our tendencies of emotional, verbal, and physical violence are passed on to our children and grand children and their children. When we are unaware of our choices there comes a point when we will be unable to fully see the consequences of those choices. Then we end up wondering where it all went wrong. Every choice has a consequence. We live in the real, messy world.
And when we live a version of Christianity that sees God working in the world and our lives in relation to stuffed animal toys and cartoons, we really seek to tame God, Creator of the universe. To not fully acknowledge the consequences of violence and decadence, human judgment and complacency underestimates the horror of human evil and seriousness of God's response. God is no cartoonist. God persists in God's good purpose for the world…the real world, and you and I are meant to be a part of that purpose.
You see, my friends, because God made a covenant with Noah, we are not called to save the world by ourselves. Yet we have the very important opportunity to leave this world a little better than it is now. Every single day, no matter how old or how young we are, we have that opportunity. The people in Noah's generation lacked that opportunity, when God decided to start over…to wipe the slate clean…to recreate the world. We are called in this time, to be co-creators with God. Together we have the opportunity to re-create the world into a more holy shape…one action…one class… one word…one prayer…one letter…one event…one smile…one tear…one day…one person at a time.
So let us resist the temptation to soften those stories that are most difficult to understand, that speak to the places of our lives and hearts that we don't want to think about. In life there is destruction, but in God there is salvation. Believe, participate, create a better place for those living and for those to come. Thanks be to God. Amen