This is the first sermon in a series dealing with the Old Testament covenants during this Lenten season.
Feb. 26, 2012
“Covenant One” Genesis 9: 8-17; Mark 1: 9-15
by Rev. Dr. Christine Johnson
It’s an amazing fairy tale.
God urges Noah to build a huge boat in order to escape a flood
that will destroy the earth.
God tells Noah to put two of every species on earth into this boat
so they will survive the destruction.
He listens to God and does what he’s told
and at the end of it, when the boat has settled on to dry ground,
when all are safe within, and everyone is free to be fruitful and multiply,
God puts a rainbow in the sky to promise no more destruction of the earth.
In this fairy tale, God literally hangs up God’s bow, as in bow and arrow,
promising never to use violence again.
Some call this fairy tale the third creation story.
In the first story, God creates the heavens and the earth and all its creatures, and it is good.
In the second story, God creates humans,
and it ends up badly.
In the third story, God’s humans get worse and worse and worse
until God can’t take it anymore.
God wipes out all of creation except Noah and his family and all the creatures of the world.
Then, after the flood, the earth is re-created.
By now, some of you, I’m sure,
are objecting to my use of the term “fairy tale.”
This pejorative term probably sounds demeaning to something as serious as scripture.
I use it to underline the fact that this story is written by human imagination
in order to address questions of real importance.
We’re not talking about history or science.
We’re talking about a people who are trying to make sense of the world.
And that’s our human task even today.
The insight that is most remarkable in this story
is the understanding that God does not use violence
in order to redeem the world.
This insight, however, hasn’t really sunk in.
For over and over again, humans attribute to God
the violence that humans themselves perpetrate.
If the point of the Noah story is to teach us something about God,
why do we blame God for our violence?
Indeed, why do we participate in this blame game?
Some say that in the second creation story,
the story in which humans eat from the tree of good and evil,
the original sin is blame.
Over and over again, in our newspapers, in our political arenas,
we want to find out who’s to blame.
The headline in Thursday’s Ottawa Citizen
is about inappropriate calls being made during the most recent federal election.
Who’s to blame, is the first question investigators ask.
In any situation, we cry out, “Who’s to blame?”
The great Czech poet, playwright and politician, Vaclav Havel,
had something to say about this when he received the
Mahatma Ghandi award.
I heard it read as part of the Third Wall Empty Space series,
that took place here just this past Wednesday
He spoke about how we cast aspersions on car manufacturers
blaming them for global warming, for concrete highways,
for advertising campaigns that promote the newest and the best,
all the while owning and driving our own cars.
And for those who don’t drive or own cars, you’re not off the hook either.
For if you take rides with others, or use public transit,
you too participate in a world full of cars and buses.
His point, is not that we shouldn’t have cars,
but that we are all complicit in the world in which we live.
We participate, whether through engagement or apathy,
in the human world, and we get nowhere when we settle into our smugness
and blame everyone except ourselves for the troubles in our society.
So where do we go from here?
By recognizing our own complicity in the issues of our day,
does that mean that we wear sackcloth and ashes?
No, but it does mean that we’re not so quick to blame others.
It means that we stop, contemplate and recognize the power we do have.
In this scripture passage, humans believe that God is hanging up God’s bow,
promising that destruction is not God’s way.
Is there any way we can hang up our bow, promising the same thing?
It seems that as soon as one country hangs up its bow,
another country rises up to take its place.
Theologians in the 20th century have repeatedly said this:
“there is no such thing as redemptive violence.”
In our fairy tale,
God tries to redeem the world through destruction.
It doesn’t work and so God promises to never do it again.
If it’s good enough for God, why are we such slow learners?
Why do we still believe God uses violence against us
when ancient tribes figured out a long time ago that it just isn’t true?
During Lent, we engage in spiritual practices that remind us of our own complicity
in the oppressive systems of the world.
When we tell the truth about ourselves and our communities
only then can we test out new ideas and new ways of being.
Jesus tested his calling in the wilderness.
This telling the truth is not about being demoralized and demonized.
It about being awake to who we are warts and all.
As Christians, we have the strength to do this because we believe in the power of forgiveness.
Not so we are off the hook,
but so we can be conscious to the spirit’s movement in the world.
Yes, there are consequences to past mistakes,
but they do not have to define the future.
Forgiveness frees us to hope even when it seems that things are hopeless.
Back to Vaclav Havel...
He says, “Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.
“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
This is what I want you to hear as we enter into this Lenten season,
a time of forty days and forty nights of internal testing.
What is the way of being that makes sense for the common good?
What is the way of being that makes sense for you?
What is that something that makes sense, that something that you’re willing to work for,
regardless of how it turns out?
For the ancient people of the Middle East,
it made sense to worship a God who had hung up a rainbow,
to signal the futility of violence in order to redeem the world.
During this season of Lent, I’m going to review the major covenants of the Hebrew scriptures.
Today we start with Covenant One:
The story of Noah teaches us that violence and destruction are not the way to reconciliation and peace.
If we truly believe this, we have a lot of work to do.
