Eric Lemonholm

July 17, 2011

Proper 11 A – with alternate Scripture

Genesis 6:1-22, 8:15-9:17

 

The Rainbow of Peace

Children’s Message:

This week, I helped the Park Players with their program on nonviolence in Liberty Park, which they put on for up to 75 kids each day. 

There, I learned this Park Players’ Chant:

Anger is okay.

Violence is no way.

Come together and be kind.

Solve your problems with you mind.

Say it after me…

The story of Noah’s Ark has a lot to do with the Park Player’ chant…

 

When you hear the story of Noah’s Ark, what questions are raised for you?

 

The Bible is a collection of inspired confessions of faith in God, written over more than 1,000 years.

Part of what makes the Bible so awesome is that it is not written from one person’s perspective, but from many perspectives.

Each writer of the Bible is an eyewitness or recorder of God’s character in the world.

 

There were many flood stories in the ancient world.

In ancient times, there was a belief that there was an ocean above the dome of heaven, and an ocean below the earth; so that when the flood happened, as Genesis 7 says, “all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.”

That must have been how it seemed to people when the rains fell and the floodwaters arose around rivers like the Tigris, the Euphrates, or the Nile.

Think of the floods in North Dakota this year.

I remember an older man named Isel telling me how his father canoed 10 miles overland from his farm to downtown Fargo during a major flood.

When you are in the middle of a flood, it must feel like the whole world is underwater.

 

When you hear the story of Noah, don’t get hung up on practical, scientific questions, like

Where did all that water come from to cover all the mountains of the earth?

Or Where did all that water go after the flood? 

Or How did two of every kind of animal in the world fit into a 450 foot boat?

 

In the story of Noah, we hear a confession of faith about God’s heart for peace and justice.

In other ancient flood stories, the gods flood the earth because the rapidly multiplying people are too loud and annoying.

In the Bible’s flood story, it’s different. 

God looks at the violence in human society, and God is sorry that God created us.

People are hurting people.  The powerful are preying on the powerless; the rich are exploiting the poor.

So God thinks, “I’ll just wipe out the world and start over.”

It’s like when a computer gets taken over by a virus: it’s time to wipe the hard drive, reinstall, and reboot!

The flood, however, is not effective.  It simply does not work.

The flood does nothing to change the human heart’s inclination to violence.

Violence does not cure violence.

God is going to have to find another way to defeat evil and violence.

 

So, God promises to not destroy all life on earth again.

God makes a covenant agreement with humanity and all living creatures never again to respond to the violence of creation with divine violence.

In fact, God sets down the bow of violence.

When you see a rainbow, it’s a sign that God has set down for all time the weapon of violence against creation.

Our God is not Mars, the God of war, but the God of peace, the God of nonviolence, the God of the rainbow.

 

To repent means to have a change of heart, a change of mind.

When you take the story of Noah seriously, it is a story of God’s repentance, God’s change of heart, about violence.

Violence still grieves God and angers God, but God is not going to answer human violence with divine violence.

When you talk about evil, much of what is evil is some form of violence – people hurting people or themselves.

 

If a destructive flood does not solve the problem of violence, God is going to have to find other strategies.

That’s what much of the rest of the Bible is all about.

 

The Hebrew prophets speak God’s word against injustice toward the poor and oppressed, the widows, the orphans, and immigrants: the usual targets of the violence of injustice.

In Jesus, God enters the world of violence in the flesh.

In Matthew 25, Jesus paints a picture with words of people coming into God’s peaceable kingdom based on how they treat the least of their brothers and sisters – the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned.

Jesus calls us all to repent, to have a change of heart, about all forms of violence.

And the reaction of the powers of the world to Jesus and his message was violent indeed.

 

Jesus, however, did not meet violence with violence.

Jesus did not respond with vengeance.

Instead, even when he’s nailed to the cross, Jesus asked God to forgive everyone involved with his crucifixion.

 

On the cross, Jesus takes upon himself the violence of the world.

When God raises the crucified Jesus from the dead, it’s the beginning of the end for violence.

The Peaceable Kingdom of God is breaking into the world.

Violence will not have the last word; love will.

Amen!