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Genesis 6:11-7:1; 7:6-7; 7:
17-24 October 25, 2009
NOAH’S ARK: WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU THOUGHT This morning we continue our series of sermons on the old, old bible stories of our faith, with today’s story being perhaps the most popular, but also, at one and the same time, in my estimation, one of the most problematic of all those stories – the story of Noah’s Ark. Open up the Shaker Workshop catalogue or almost any catalogue of children’s toys, and chances are you’ll see something of this old story – the kindly Noah, being 600 years old leaning on his staff. A tall giraffe sticking its head out of a window on the ark, and all the other creatures, great and small, are all living together in perfect harmony with each other. Given how much children love their stuffed animals, it’s no wonder they love this story, and I’ve seen many children’s beds that resemble Noah’s ark with all the teddy bears, orangutans, giraffes, tigers and lambs that they so lovingly place on their beds. Recently, someone sent me an article about a man who built a replica of Noah’s ark over in the Netherlands. Believing as he does in the literal truth of the bible, he wanted to show how it was indeed possible to build such an ark. This ark, apparently, is “2/3 the length of a football field and as high as a three-story building.” And in it, he has “life-size models of giraffes, elephants, lions, crocodiles, zebras, bison and other animals.” There’s also on board a 50 seat film theater where the story of Noah can be shown. Even as large as this boat is, there are some who have compared it to the biblical story and have found it to be too small, saying that it’s perhaps only 1/3 the length of the original one; the original one being, perhaps, the length of 500 box cars, all depending upon how long a “cubit” is, for the bible says that the ark was “300 cubits long.” Furthermore, this Dutch carpenter built his ark out of cedar and pine; whereas the bible says that the original was built out of “gopher” wood, whatever that is. Now, those of you who are carpenters, tell me what kind of wood that is – “gopher wood.” My theory is that with the boat being a big as it was, Noah was forever telling his sons to “go for” for some more wood, “go for some more wood”, and so over time it came to be called, “gopher wood.” But the type of wood that Noah used is the very least of my problems with this story. We know from various scientific explorations, especially the excellent work of our own church member, Bob Ballard, that there was indeed a “Great Flood” in that region maybe 5 or 6 thousand years ago, probably caused by the rising waters of the sea after the ice age. But, of course, there’s a great deal of difference between saying that there was a flood and someone else saying that God was responsible for that flood. As some of you may have noticed, I frequently like to have a subtitle for my sermons, and for today’s sermon, I toyed with the idea of calling it, “Noah’s Ark” with the subtitle, “How God Got Such A Bad Reputation.” Theologians – or perhaps I should say – “bad” theologians have a way of reading history backwards. Something good or something bad happens, and wherever there is a question mark or some uncertainty, they are all too quick to plug “God” into the explanation. A terrible flood kills many, many hundreds, if not thousands of people 5 or 6 thousand years ago, therefore God must have done it, therefore those thousands people must have deserved it. But there’s nothing particularly ancient about this kind of “logical” or, as I see it, “illogical syllogism.” After the terrible devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, as perhaps you may remember, there were so-called Christian theologians who were saying that God was punishing New Orleans for its decadence and depravity. Even after the clearly man-made tragedy of 9/11 there were some well-known theologians who were saying that we brought this tragedy upon ourselves, that this was God’s punishment for the prevalence and the sanctioning of homosexuality in our society. Some people look at the story of Noah’s ark and see a cute and delightful children’s story, but I confess I must have insufficient blinders for I cannot read this story without feeling great, great sadness for all the people, all the innocent children, all the innocent creatures, great and small, that didn’t have the privilege of being on board the world’s very first cruise ship. I mean imagine Noah and his family on board this boat, and one of his children looks out and sees the neighbor’s child and a tiny little puppy in the rising waters of the flood, and so he pleads with his father to save them, but his father says, “no, we already have two of both of those; sail on, sail on, sail on.” Also, perhaps because I’m the son of a chemist and an engineer, I’m bothered by just too many practical questions with this story. I mean, for example, what do you do with all those carnivores? Do lions and tigers suddenly become vegetarians just because they’re on board the ark, and when it says there were two of every kind of creature, does that include micro-organisms as well, and what about ticks and mosquitoes, did they have a place on this boat? And after the flood was over, and everyone disembarked, what happens to the gene pool if there’s only Noah and his family? Now, I know that there are some that would tell you that you should take this story “on faith.” “It’s in the bible, and so it must be true”, but I say, I don’t think my faith has to be at war with scientific reasoning. I do not believe that in order to be a person of faith that somehow we have to suspend our ability to think and to be reasonable. Or, to put it another way, I think a reasonable person can also be a faithful person. But there is at least one thing that I do take on faith and that is what we find in our scripture lesson from the Gospel According to St. John: “For God so loved the world.” And the fact that I do take that on faith is the reason I have so much trouble with this story of Noah’s Ark. I mean why would God who so “loves the world” destroy it and destroy it with such malice and such cruelty? But actually I raise these questions not so we can dismiss this ancient story. Far from it. Rather I raise these questions, because I think we need to be reminded that this story of Noah’s Ark, like so many of the other stories we have examined, is, after all, a story, a story told around the campfire late at night, a story in which people tried to make sense out of the world in which they lived. Maybe they knew there had been a cataclysmic flood and they were trying to make sense out of that. Why did some survive and others did not? And in this regard, the story of Noah’s Ark may not tell us very much about God, but it tells us a great deal about the dark side of our human nature. In our computers, we all sometimes have to be concerned about viruses and spy-ware, and sometimes our theologies can be inflicted with a virus as well. In far too many theologies nowadays, there’s underlying element of fatalism and hopelessness. And if we’re not careful, these can be like a virus that can wreck havoc with our theologies and with our faith. Over in Israel, if you’re driving North up into Galilee, there’s a road sign that says, “Megiddo”, and if you were to take that exit, it would take you to the biblical place of Har-Ma Giddo or Armageddon, the place where the final battle between good and evil would be waged. Our friends over there tell me that frequently there are people that go there because they have read their bibles and they have it all figured out that the world is going to come to end and so they go there so they can be there at that apocalyptic moment. There were a lot of people, supposedly good Christian people, who took it on faith that the world was going to come to an end at the time of the new millennium, in the year 2000, but nothing happened, and I wonder how disappointed they were. And that disappointment should tell us something about the dark side of our human nature. What is it about our human nature that makes us vulnerable to this sort of negative thinking, this virus of fatalism? And now, there are those who think that 2012 is the date. And if these were just a few isolated instances, it probably wouldn’t be worth mentioning, but I’m afraid there are far too many churches that live and teach this aberrant and very pessimistic and fatalistic theology. A week ago on Saturday, for example, we had a service guy who came to our house, and as he was working on his project, he asked me what I do for a living. And whenever someone asks me that, and they find out I am a minister, almost invariably, I know I’m in for a sermon – not one that I would give but one that I would receive! As he was telling me all about the church, the “magnificent” church to which he belongs, a church up in Massachusetts, he asked me whether the theology of our church was “covenantal or dispensational.” Now, I’ve been asked a lot of tough theological questions, but this one surpassed them all. I really had no idea what he was driving at. But it didn’t matter, for he was very quick to enlighten me on the difference between the two and how all of our churches should be “dispensational”, by which he meant that everything that happens is happening exactly according to God’s plan. For him, the bible was a code book, and if we could just break that code, we could understand that God’s judgment is coming upon us and the end of the world is just around the corner. And according to this theology, there is a great divide between those who are citizens of this world – and this world is to be despised – and those who are citizens of the world that is to come, those who are the saved, those who have a ticket to get on board the New Noah’s ark, those who will sail off into their glory while the rest of us are “left behind.” As for me, I do not want to be a passenger on the New Noah’s ark. Even if I find myself up to my neck in the deep waters of calamity, I take it on faith that “God so loves the world, and I believe God will do everything and anything possible to save the world. And the most important and the most powerful thing that God does is rely upon the goodness and the nobility and the brilliance of the human spirit, and so, as I see it, if fatalism and pessimism are the enemies of God, then hopefulness and stubborn determination are God’s allies. And so rather than be on board the ark with Noah and his self-righteous family, I would rather take my place next to such worthies or :unworthies”, depending upon your perspective, as William Faulkner who in his speech when he received the Nobel Prize said this: I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.” Similarly, I’ve always loved how Martin Luther said, “If I thought the world was coming to an end tomorrow, I’d go out and plant a little apple tree today.” What better way is there to write your creed, your statement of faith, your belief in God’s Love than to allow yourself to be an ambassador of that Love, and not only an ambassador, but indeed, a conduit of that Love? What better way to respond to the fatalism of others than to go out and plant a little apple tree today? What better way to respond to all the very disturbing and very real threats to our world – the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the environmental threat of global warming – what better way to respond to all these warnings than to roll up our sleeves and make this a better world in which to live? We’ve got better things to do than read the bible as if it were a code book on when the world is going to come to an end; we’ve got better things to do with our time here on earth than to build some sort of theological ark for ourselves. And so as a model for what a church should be, rather than Noah’s Ark, I would rather have us fashion ourselves and what we do as a church after other kinds of boats, like that beautiful boat called the “Amistad” that now sails around the world teaching people about the evils of racism and bigotry and the joy of freedom. Not Noah’s Ark but the Amistad. I would rather that we use as our example that wonderful boat, the Ship of Hope, that travels around the world, providing medical care for those in need. Not Noah’s Ark but the Ship of Hope. Rather than build ourselves a church that would be a flagship for “dispensational” theology, a church that prides itself on its distain for the world – the World that God so much loves -- rather than be a modern day Noah’s Ark oblivious to the suffering of others, I would rather have us be a tiny little lifeboat doing all that we can for those in need. Not Noah’s Ark but a Life Boat. And rather than standing on a hill waiting for the world to come to an end, I would rather have us be people of hope, saying in all that we do, “with God’s love, something and something quite beautiful and wonderful came out of absolutely nothing, and so, I have to believe that with God’s love, we are more than capable of making this world as loveable as God created it to be. Amen.
David W. Good Old Lyme, Connecticut
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