Floating On The Flood
Sermon
"It never rains," said the old lady, "but it pours." She wasn't referring to the weather. She was doing her best to be sympathetic and supportive, by responding to a long tale of woe. Her nephew had just lost his job, his wife had had a miscarriage and they'd just heard that the wife's father had died suddenly. It seemed that all their misfortunes were happening at once, hence the old lady's remark.
It does often seem as though misfortunes don't come alone. I remember when my paternal grandfather died. Exactly a week later, my maternal grandmother died and precisely a week after that, an uncle died. I remember my parents not knowing quite what had hit them; it seemed like a time of complete chaos. And the multiplicity of misfortunes can often strike in more mundane ways as well. I once had a windscreen replaced three times within the space of a month. I'd never lost a windscreen before and have never lost one since.
Sometimes for some families, the misfortunes are so awful that all their friends find themselves wondering how on earth this family can survive all the blows, coming so fast on top of one another. It all seems very unfair when everything happens to some families and nothing at all happens to other families.
Perhaps one of the earliest lessons we have to learn as Christians is that life is unfair. Life is never neatly parceled out in equal quantities of good fortune and misfortune so that we all suffer exactly the same and all have exactly the same degree of delight. Life is no respecter of persons and Christians are not immune from bad times. The difference for Christians is that we have a means of coping with bad times and surviving them. We are enabled to ride the storm, and the ancient story of Noah's Ark is a wonderful parable of life and how to survive it.
Already, in those earliest of times, God looked at human beings and saw that on the whole, they were pretty corrupt. But Noah was a good man and God gave Noah the opportunity to save himself and potentially, all humankind. God told Noah that he was going to flood the earth and gave Noah precise instructions as to how to build a huge boat, big enough to save representatives of all known species of animal, and Noah's family.
Despite the fact that during the building of the boat there wasn't a cloud in the sky, Noah persevered. Since it would be impossible to build a boat of such magnitude in secret, presumably at this point other people could have followed Noah's example and built a boat for themselves, but nobody did. They didn't see the need. Probably Noah didn't see the need at this point either, but he heard God's voice and he followed God's guidance no matter that what God was calling him to do - with a clear blue sky overhead - seemed to be ridiculous.
The flood came out of the blue and was so severe that all those who hadn't reached safety were drowned. None of them could cope with the ferocity of the surging waters. Only those on the ark were saved. Not that they had a very good time of it on the ark. Can you imagine six weeks living in such a confined space and sharing that space with representatives of every kind of animal on the earth? And all this in the unrelenting dreariness of constant rain and grey skies.
When things are going well it can be quite difficult to see our need of God. Many people are much more concerned to make a good life for themselves than they are concerned to make a relationship with God. The sky is blue, there are no clouds on the horizon and anyone who suggests that God might be important is regarded as ridiculous and sad. Few people bother to build an ark for themselves. But like the flood, troubles arise from nowhere and are almost always completely unexpected.
By then it's a bit late to seek God's help. When there's a flood, those who don't have a boat inevitably drown. Those who do have a boat, no matter how primitive or pathetic that boat might seem, at least have a chance of survival. The better the boat, the more comfortable the experience of surviving the flood should prove to be. Even for Noah it was uncomfortable, and troubles which arise from nothing can never be pleasant. But those who have invested time and effort in getting to know God will survive much more easily and more certainly than those who don't know God very well.
However, there is hope even for those who don't know God. After the flood, God made his first covenant with human beings. God promised that "never again would all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again would there be a flood to destroy the earth." God made this covenant not just with Noah, but with all Noah's descendants after him, that is, with all human beings. The sign of the covenant was the rainbow, hence rainbows have always been regarded as special and a sign of hope. God didn't promise that there would never again be any flood, but he did promise that floods would never again destroy the earth. So if we regard this story as a parable we can perhaps conclude that God didn't promise that human beings would never encounter troubles in their lives, but that those troubles wouldn't destroy them.
The story of the great flood is ultimately based on an ancient Mesopotamian story of a great flood, preserved in the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic. In some respects this is remarkably similar to the biblical account, but in other ways it is very different from it. Most ancient civilisations had stories of great floods and most of them inevitably had similarities.
For Christians, this story of Noah's Ark is one of the earliest stories with themes of salvation and resurrection. After the death of the earth, living things began to grow again. After all had been wiped out in gross destruction, life started again. And for the writer of the epistles of Peter, Noah's ark becomes the symbol of the Church, by which Christians are saved from destruction through the waters of baptism (1 Peter 3:20-21).
How comforting it is to realise that from the very earliest of times, God has been saving human beings. There has never been a time when God has abandoned human beings to their fate. Quite rightly, we remember and celebrate the saving act of God in Jesus and the resurrection that Jesus experienced on behalf of all of us, but the early, primitive tales which were originally handed down by word of mouth around campfires also have much to teach us about God and God's love for human beings.
That love never fails. Whatever the floods that we experience today, we can be assured that they will never drown us. Even if our ark isn't very good, God still holds us in the palm of his hand. But those who are wise will build an ark while the weather is good , so that when the bad times come they are as ready as they can be to work with God in floating on the flood.
It does often seem as though misfortunes don't come alone. I remember when my paternal grandfather died. Exactly a week later, my maternal grandmother died and precisely a week after that, an uncle died. I remember my parents not knowing quite what had hit them; it seemed like a time of complete chaos. And the multiplicity of misfortunes can often strike in more mundane ways as well. I once had a windscreen replaced three times within the space of a month. I'd never lost a windscreen before and have never lost one since.
Sometimes for some families, the misfortunes are so awful that all their friends find themselves wondering how on earth this family can survive all the blows, coming so fast on top of one another. It all seems very unfair when everything happens to some families and nothing at all happens to other families.
Perhaps one of the earliest lessons we have to learn as Christians is that life is unfair. Life is never neatly parceled out in equal quantities of good fortune and misfortune so that we all suffer exactly the same and all have exactly the same degree of delight. Life is no respecter of persons and Christians are not immune from bad times. The difference for Christians is that we have a means of coping with bad times and surviving them. We are enabled to ride the storm, and the ancient story of Noah's Ark is a wonderful parable of life and how to survive it.
Already, in those earliest of times, God looked at human beings and saw that on the whole, they were pretty corrupt. But Noah was a good man and God gave Noah the opportunity to save himself and potentially, all humankind. God told Noah that he was going to flood the earth and gave Noah precise instructions as to how to build a huge boat, big enough to save representatives of all known species of animal, and Noah's family.
Despite the fact that during the building of the boat there wasn't a cloud in the sky, Noah persevered. Since it would be impossible to build a boat of such magnitude in secret, presumably at this point other people could have followed Noah's example and built a boat for themselves, but nobody did. They didn't see the need. Probably Noah didn't see the need at this point either, but he heard God's voice and he followed God's guidance no matter that what God was calling him to do - with a clear blue sky overhead - seemed to be ridiculous.
The flood came out of the blue and was so severe that all those who hadn't reached safety were drowned. None of them could cope with the ferocity of the surging waters. Only those on the ark were saved. Not that they had a very good time of it on the ark. Can you imagine six weeks living in such a confined space and sharing that space with representatives of every kind of animal on the earth? And all this in the unrelenting dreariness of constant rain and grey skies.
When things are going well it can be quite difficult to see our need of God. Many people are much more concerned to make a good life for themselves than they are concerned to make a relationship with God. The sky is blue, there are no clouds on the horizon and anyone who suggests that God might be important is regarded as ridiculous and sad. Few people bother to build an ark for themselves. But like the flood, troubles arise from nowhere and are almost always completely unexpected.
By then it's a bit late to seek God's help. When there's a flood, those who don't have a boat inevitably drown. Those who do have a boat, no matter how primitive or pathetic that boat might seem, at least have a chance of survival. The better the boat, the more comfortable the experience of surviving the flood should prove to be. Even for Noah it was uncomfortable, and troubles which arise from nothing can never be pleasant. But those who have invested time and effort in getting to know God will survive much more easily and more certainly than those who don't know God very well.
However, there is hope even for those who don't know God. After the flood, God made his first covenant with human beings. God promised that "never again would all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again would there be a flood to destroy the earth." God made this covenant not just with Noah, but with all Noah's descendants after him, that is, with all human beings. The sign of the covenant was the rainbow, hence rainbows have always been regarded as special and a sign of hope. God didn't promise that there would never again be any flood, but he did promise that floods would never again destroy the earth. So if we regard this story as a parable we can perhaps conclude that God didn't promise that human beings would never encounter troubles in their lives, but that those troubles wouldn't destroy them.
The story of the great flood is ultimately based on an ancient Mesopotamian story of a great flood, preserved in the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic. In some respects this is remarkably similar to the biblical account, but in other ways it is very different from it. Most ancient civilisations had stories of great floods and most of them inevitably had similarities.
For Christians, this story of Noah's Ark is one of the earliest stories with themes of salvation and resurrection. After the death of the earth, living things began to grow again. After all had been wiped out in gross destruction, life started again. And for the writer of the epistles of Peter, Noah's ark becomes the symbol of the Church, by which Christians are saved from destruction through the waters of baptism (1 Peter 3:20-21).
How comforting it is to realise that from the very earliest of times, God has been saving human beings. There has never been a time when God has abandoned human beings to their fate. Quite rightly, we remember and celebrate the saving act of God in Jesus and the resurrection that Jesus experienced on behalf of all of us, but the early, primitive tales which were originally handed down by word of mouth around campfires also have much to teach us about God and God's love for human beings.
That love never fails. Whatever the floods that we experience today, we can be assured that they will never drown us. Even if our ark isn't very good, God still holds us in the palm of his hand. But those who are wise will build an ark while the weather is good , so that when the bad times come they are as ready as they can be to work with God in floating on the flood.
