It’s been a big summer for Noah and the ark, with the movie Evan Almighty hitting the theaters.. Have any of you seen it? I haven’t had a chance, but I understand there are some riddles that could have been in the movie, but ended up on the editing room floor.

Do you know what Noah said as he started loading the ark?
“Now I herd everything.”

Why did the people on the ark think the horses were pessimistic?
They kept saying neigh.

What animal could Noah never trust?
The cheetah.

What kind of lights did Noah have on the ark?
Flood lights.

Where did Noah keep the bees?
In the ark hives. Get it? The ark … hives.

And finally, why was Noah the greatest financial expert in the Bible?
He floated his stock while the whole world was in liquidation.

These riddles probably deserve to be on the editing room floor.

Today is the second of our summer gatherings for the whole Fairfax Presbyterian Church community, and our focus today is on promise and hope. Now this might seem to be a strange focus, given the fact that today’s Scripture lesson tells the story of the great flood. The “floodgates of the heavens were opened,” says the Book of Genesis. “And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights” (7:11-12). A flood like this is a terrifying thing — as Stephen Hunter wrote in his review of Evan Almighty, it is the first known “Weapon of Mass Destruction.” Many lives are lost when the waters rise up and sweep across the land.

Part of me would like to think of this story as a fable — a fictional story with a nice moral at the end. But almost every culture on Earth includes an ancient flood story, which suggests that some catastrophic event did, in fact, occur. The details of these stories vary, but the basic plot is the same: An enormous flood kills all but a lucky few.

Older than Genesis is the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh. In this story, a king meets a survivor of a great flood sent by the gods. Warned by Enki, the water god, this man built a boat and saved his family and friends, along with animals and precious metals.

In Ancient Greece and Rome, the story was told of a couple who saved their children and a collection of animals by boarding a ship shaped like a giant box.

Irish legends talk about a queen and her court, sailing for seven years to avoid death when the ocean rises and swamps Ireland.

And here in America, European explorers were startled by Indian legends that were very similar to the story of Noah. According to explorer Robert Ballard, some Spanish priests feared the devil had planted these stories in the Indians’ minds, in an effort to confuse them.

These are frightening stories — tales of death and destruction, and the survival of a few. So where is the promise and the hope to be found?

After the waters dry up, God says to Noah and to his sons, “I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth” (Genesis 9:8-11).

Let’s take a close look at these words: “I establish my covenant with you,” says God. A covenant is a promise-based relationship, an agreement that is designed to last forever. Humans enter into covenant relationships, such as “the covenant of marriage,” but since humans don’t always keep their promises, these relationships don’t always last. But with God, a covenant is going to last forever, because God always keeps his promises.

That’s good news, at the end of a terrifying story.

Next, in God’s covenant is the promise that “never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” The world had become pretty ugly in the early chapters of Genesis — so wicked that “the LORD was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (6:6). So God decided to destroy what he had made, by sending a flood and killing everyone and everything except for Noah, and his family, and his collection of animals.

God decided to start over. To wipe things out, and begin again. To press a giant reset button.

But now, after the flood, God decides to take a different approach. “Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth,” he promises. God decides to deal with evil in a different way. Instead of drowning us when we misbehave, God is now determined to forgive us.

That is some really good news. Now, when we make a huge mistake, we can turn to God and ask for help. He’ll respond with forgiveness, instead of with a wall of water.

This all becomes possible because Jesus took our sins on himself, and died on the cross in place of us. We learn in the New Testament that Jesus paid the price for our sins, so we don’t have to pay it ourselves. “Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God,” says the apostle Peter. “God waited patiently in the days of Noah,” he writes, “during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you” (1 Peter 3:18-21).

So our sins are no longer eliminated by a terrible flood. Instead, they are eliminated by the water of baptism. Baptism washes away our sins, and connects us to Jesus — connects us to the one who makes forgiveness possible for us.

That’s good news. That’s a promise. That’s hope. That’s enough to keep us afloat, even when the rough waters of life threaten to overwhelm us.

It’s been a joy to celebrate the sacrament of baptism today for Daniel Han, the son of Chul-Hee and Sae-Rom. Daniel has been cleansed of sin and connected with Jesus by the waters of baptism, and he has entered into a lifelong covenant with God. But there is still another symbol of God’s covenant that is given in today’s passage from Genesis: The rainbow. God says, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living thing that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth” (9:12-13).

This was an interesting choice for God to make. In the ancient Near East and Israel, the rainbow was seen as a divine weapon, connected to the lightning bolts that came to earth as a sign of divine judgment. But now, the bow in the clouds is seen as a symbol of peace and goodwill, a gift from God to the earth.

Now, every time we see a rainbow, we are reminded of God’s covenant. Contained in this covenant is God’s promise never to send a flood again, to wipe out sin from the face of the earth. God has made this promise to us, and to every living creature on earth, for all future generations. We can be confident that God keeps his promises, and will never deal with sin through flood waters again.

I find this rainbow to be wonderfully reassuring. It means that God has decided not to be a destructive God, but instead a forgiving God. It means that the waters of the flood have been replaced by the waters of baptism. It means that when I do hurtful and selfish things — as I do almost every day — I can confess my sins and receive forgiveness, instead of death and destruction.

The very same is true for you. Every time you see a rainbow, remember that God loves you and wants to forgive you. God has made a promise that he intends to keep forever, and nothing you can do will ever change God’s mind.

This is a promise that can keep us afloat. Even in some terribly stormy seas. Amen.

Sources:
“Robert Ballard’s search of the evidence of Noah’s flood,” National Geographic, nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/. Retrieved December 8, 2004.

Fretheim, Terence, “The Book of Genesis,” The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 400.