40

​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Lent I
February 21, 2021
 
Some close family friends recently birthed a beautiful baby boy.  Being thoroughly hip parents, their nursery is lovely, painted in neutral hues of blue and gray.  It is a far cry from the days of loud, primary colors when we figured that because children saw primary colors best, we used them everywhere, only to need a paint job when the child was old enough not to want to be a baby any more.  There is, however, one ubiquitous feature that seems to have spanned all of decorative evolution.  Right there in the hip nursery is a happy painting of the ark, complete with a rainbow, the animals, and a tiny self-satisfied looking Noah.
 
The story does make for some great children’s art, and provides an object lesson for thinking of animals, naming animals, and making their animal sounds.  Googling Noah’s ark books yields 18 million results, though I am sure there repeats in there.  Nevertheless, we have a curious relationship with this story.  If we dig even a little, telling that story is problematic.  As it goes, the people God created back in chapter 1 grew wicked, and now in chapter 9, God finds one righteous guy, Noah, and tells him to gather his family and two of each animal, build an immense ark our of gopher wood, and get ready for the rain.  Even the young children know this one.  They ark floats them to safety, and after forty days (which is Bible speak for a long time), they come to rest on dry land.  And now, cue the primary colors.  God sets a rainbow in the sky to serve as sign that God will never again send a flood.  The promise extends to all living creatures.  It is a reboot for creation.
 
What gets glossed over in the story is bound to raise questions as children age.  What about the people who perished?  Why would God send destructive weather to destroy God’s good creation?  This is an apt question for Texans this week, for sure.  And that rainbow, that bright sign that is set up as a sign of love and promise, well, is that not a warning too?
 
Here, we have to pull back a bit and see what the authors of this tale are telling us.  The original hearers were more than aware that in many cultures and religions that they encountered, there were epic tales of floods and other natural disasters.  These tales personified angry gods, fighting with each other, and exacting punishment to demand greater obedience and sacrifice.  It is all pretty grim stuff.
 
The authors of the Noah story were not literalists or fundamentalists.  They were story tellers.  They spin their narratives in concert with other stories in their library, connecting symbols of creation and redemption in loaded language.  Back in the beginning, God creates all that is out of the watery void of chaos.  Of course, anyone familiar with birthing babies knows that all of us emerge from the watery womb to breathe new life.   Look ahead, and we see the Israelites are delivered into freedom through the waters of the Red Sea.  They will be in the wilderness for 40 (there’s that number again) 40 years, and will be given a Promised Land.  Thus, the flood story takes a horror tale and turns it up on end.  It is not about fear.  It is about love and redemption, about one God, not many, a God who is creative, not destructive.  And that bow, the word is the one also used for an archer’s bow.  And as it appears, it is pointed away from the earth, thus the symbol of a weapon is transformed into a sign of peace.
 
As any student of children’s literature will tell you, stories work on many levels.  Their appeal is their universality.  They tell deep truth with creative artistry.  Not everything has to be literal to be true.  This is what all good artists know and practice. 
 
Consider Van Gough’s Starry Night painting.  It captures movement, feeling, and color in a way that a flat photograph or simple drawing never could.  Recently, I was forwarded a video of a number van Gough’s paintings set to music.  It is sublime and reminded me of the power that art has to capture thought, feeling, emotion, and deep truth.  That is one of the reasons to love poetry as it uses and economy of words to paint connective images in the mind.
 
With the rainbow story as a backdrop canvas, we move to another beginning story with Jesus in today’s Gospel.  Mark does not tell the Christmas story, rather, he begins with Jesus being baptized.  And as he comes out of the water -- you see where this is going – he hears God saying: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  It is said for Jesus to hear and Mark helps us eavesdrop.  With the strength of that affirmation, Jesus goes to the wilderness for, you guessed it, forty days.  Ding, ding, ding, the stories are connected.  God is about delivering Jesus through danger, discomfort, and potential tragedy, to be new life.  In the very next sentence, Jesus shows up in Galilee to begin his saving work, announcing: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
 
Jesus is off and running, and Mark will tell his story at a breakneck pace, using evocative language and familiar phrases, drawing on every connection he can make to the bigger story of God with God’s people.  Jesus’ story, while connected, is not just another story.  Jesus speaks in the present tense, rather than the past tense of fable.  The plan of new creation and redemption already embedded, but the truth to which all of the biblical stories point, becomes human, God among us.  We will follow this one, carefully.
 
It must be noted that Noah was a great guy, but he turned out to be a drunkard and wildly imperfect.  The Israelites, while lively and committed, can be weak kneed and downright self-absorbed, falling down and getting up before God over and over.  If God were to be destructive and vengeful, the story would tell of thousands of floods and arks.  Jesus knows this.  Jesus confronts this.  And still, he invites us, all of us, to turn around, see that God is not distant and removed, but very near, so we can believe the good news.
 
We are off and running in the season of Lent.  As I have said and written before, we do this season to make space for God to grow us in love.  For forty days, (forty, again!) we take on some discomfort, some deprivation, or some new discipline, not to become better or get more holy, but to live into the story, to be brought through whatever watery chaos may be drowning us, and plant our feet on solid ground. 
 
In beautiful summary, the Psalmist says:
 

I waited patiently upon the LORD; *
he stooped to me and heard my cry.
​
He lifted me out of the desolate pit, out of the mire and clay; *
he set my feet upon a high cliff and made my footing sure.

He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God; *
many shall see, and stand in awe,
and put their trust in the LORD.
 
And you guessed it, that is Psalm… 40.  Go figure.  Amen.