A Promise for All...and All Time

I don’t know about you, but whenever I read the flood story and think about the wickedness, evil, and violence that existed in the world, I can’t help but think about those same themes in the context of our own world today. After all, it is the world we live in and experience on a daily basis. What my mind always ponders is whether or not our world today is better, about the same, worse, or way worse than the world in which God decides to cause the great flood on the earth. If you think about it, there are not many things that are recorded as happening from the end of the creation story to the flood. But what we do hear doesn’t set humanity in a good light. After God has created everything declared it all very good we have Adam and Eve disobeying God. Then we have Cain kill his brother Abel and beyond that we have the world being populated by the descendants of these families.

While that is not a great start to the beginning of the world, it also doesn’t in my mind necessarily compare to the kinds of things the world has done since then. The countless wars that have raged since then and culminating, in my mind, to the two great world wars of the last century. Plus all the other ways that people have figured out to cheat, lie, steal, and generally treat one another. So again, I wonder if all of these things that go through my mind compare to what the new world was like.

What does stick out to me in the text is that God sees the world as thoroughly evil at the time of the flood and that every idea that their minds thought up was always completely evil. To me that says that the people were always choosing to do evil instead of doing good things. That people were always choosing self over others. A Jewish scholar helped me understand this concept. She says that in Jewish thinking, a person has a good and a bad side to them. That wasn’t her exact terminology, but that we shouldn’t try to rid ourselves of the ‘bad’ side of ourselves because that is the side of ourselves that drive us to become better. It reminded me of what Christians have traditionally called the 7 deadly sins and how things like pride and the others are not bad things as long as we don’t let them take over. So she said that perhaps it was that one side that people were always choosing that drove the world to be so wicked and evil. That they on a constant basis chose to be that way an to treat the rest of creation and humanity that way.

So imagine God remembering the goodness of creation and then seeing the wickedness it had become and it makes sense that God was so brokenhearted at what had happened in such a short amount of time. And while the flood was a terrible event, I want us to also see the movement of God through the story. It starts with what we’ve just been talking about: how people were completely wicked. Then God feels regret and is brokenhearted at what creation has become. God wants to destroy everything in response, including the animals. Then God remembers Noah and how Noah was moral and exemplary man who walked with God. God moves from complete destruction to sparing Noah and his family and the animals as well.

What that tells me is that despite God’s regret and being heartbroken, God remembers that potential for goodness in the world when God remembers Noah. God remembers the point of creation was to be in relationship with God so God chooses Noah to continue into that relationship with God after the world has been reset. We see that relationship between God and Noah play out when we hear that Noah did everything exactly as God commanded him. We even hear that phrase repeated a few verses later in chapter 7. Even though it isn’t in our reading we even see that word of remember in Genesis 8:1 when God sends the winds to recede the waters. I believe it is that desire to be in relationship with us and the good that does exist in the world that God makes that covenant with Noah and his family and all the animals. Of course there will be the potential for evil and much evil has existed since the flood, God chose to see the good in the world rather than the evil in it. God chose to be in covenant with us rather than be at odds with us.

That covenant is shown in a promise made by God, with none of it being contingent upon us. Nowhere does God say that we must do anything in order to be in this covenant. There are two other elements about the covenant that really stick out to me. First is this covenant is made not just for Noah, his family and the animals that come off the ark, but for all future generations, meaning that every time that you or I see the mark of the rainbow in the sky that it reminds us that God looks at that same rainbow and remembers God’s covenant with us. The other is that God twice states that something like this will never again happen. God is firm in God’s commitment to never doing this again to the earth and all it’s inhabitants.

So when I think back to all the terrible things that the world has done since the flood. Of all the death and destruction, of all the hate and evil the world has perpetrated upon itself and creation, God has promised, has covenanted with us to never do it again. Which means that while we are limited in our ability to love and limited in our ability or desire to care for one another, God’s love and care for us and all of creation is limitless. God’s desire for us to be in relationship with God is limitless. We see throughout the Bible and most clearly in the gospels that very fact. God will do anything to show us that we are loved by the one who created this world and everything in it, including you and me. God sent Jesus as the final covenant to make between us. God’s own son paid the price for our sake. Once again nothing we had to do, nothing we can ever repay, for the love and grace that God shows us. Despite our limitations, God’s love knows no bounds even in the face of evil and rejection. That is what a loving and gracious God is like, and that love and grace extends for all generations. Amen.