Have you ever had to start over?
Have you ever lost everything?
Do you know someone like that?
Have you ever failed?
Have you ever been given a second chance?
Have you ever feared for your life?
Have you ever been rescued? Rescued from your self?
Do you live in fear of God’s judgment?
Do you live in hope of God’s salvation?
Noah.
The Ark.
These are the questions and themes raised up in this amazing story.
We treat it like a children’s story, decorating nurseries and bedrooms with colorful painting and toys of Noah’s Ark, the giraffe heads always sticking out through holes in the roof.
But this story is not for children.
It is about overwhelming violence and fear consuming the earth, so much so that God decides to start over and to rescue a few to colonize a new creation.
Did the ark rescue Noah’s family and the animals from a flood of water or did the water rescue them from the flood of violence that consumed all that was good?
Did the waters cleanse the violent earth, or did the waters do violence?
This is a story of Judgment, and of rescue, and of salvation, of second chances and starting over.
It is brutal, the punches are not pulled, but there is amazing hope and beauty as well, the hope and beauty of God creating a new world.
It gives us the dream of a better world.
It is a story of evil consuming the world, and it is the story of the water breaking as a new world is born.
It is the story of God, the God of second chances, the God of starting over, the God of rescue, the God judgment, the God of Salvation.
It is an amazing story, it literally overflows with meaning, it isn’t all pretty, some of it is gruesome and dark because it confronts a world that that is gruesome and dark.
The universe dissolves, reality falls apart, the heavens and the earth collapse and all that is left is a little bitty sliver of hope, a bubble of life floating amid ruin, a remnant at sea without anchor or rudder.
The monsters, the demons, the evil, the predatory, the violent are no more, left behind, washed away.
Did Noah cry in grief at the loss of the world he knew and loved, or did he sigh in relief that his family was finally safe from a world that had gone mad?
We are warned. Violence can consume the world so much so that a mighty flood is an improvement. Beware of unleashing the demons of abuse, and violence, of insult and harm, of war and terror. Once they are set loose they cannot be stopped, they consume everything, only the power of God can rescue us from our selves and rebuild the world.
Living in the body of Christ is like living in the Ark, it is a place that has been set apart where that devouring force that is destroying the world is held at bay, and creation has room to grow and flourish and be fruitful once again.
The Church has sometimes been called an ark, an ark of sinners being rescued from ourselves at our worst, where God is bringing out our best and setting us free, to start over.
We live in a world drowning in loss and grief, flooded by failure to care for the right things, washed away in a downpour of willful harm and neglect.
The Gospel, the good news is that God brings something else to the world. God brings second chances, redemption, starting over.
Stepping into God’s Ark we pass through baptism into Christ, leaving behind the ways of sin and death, and we step out of the ark into a new way of being alive.
Lets get some more people on the boat.