The Power of Water

Genesis 9:8-17

Lent 1 – February 26, 2012

Water is one of the most powerful forces on earth. We need it to live – too little, and we dehydrate; too much, and we drown. People have always known this power, have feared and respected it for what it can do. Ancient writings conceive of water as the power of chaos, always lapping at the shore, always menacing peace and stability. Stories of water are a profound part of our faith. Beginning at creation, when the Spirit hovers over the waters, to the great flood, which we hear a tiny bit about today, to the parting of the Red Sea so that the people of Israel could leave behind slavery and enter into freedom. God makes water spring from the rock in the wilderness, and turns bitter water sweet. There are the waters of the River Jordan in numerous stories – Old and New Testaments, stories of Jesus turning water into wine, Jesus walking on water. Water figures heavily in the Biblical narrative.

Today, too, our assigned readings are rich with stories of water, and I want us to focus this morning on the Old Testament lesson from Genesis this morning. We come into this familiar tale after the flood has already passed. The non-stop rain of 40 days and 40 nights has stopped some time ago, and now, many days - months later really, the waters have subsided, they have been reabsorbed into the earth. Noah's ark has come to rest on a mountain, and God has called him and his family and all the animals to come back out onto the dry land. And we hear God speak to Noah and his sons, establishing God's covenant with them and their descendants and with every living creature on the face of the Earth, that God will never do this again, that never again will a flood cut off all flesh, that never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.

And this is good news. But in order to understand this story in its fullness, in order to really get what's going on here, we have to back up a little bit, because we need to know why it is that God sent the flood in the first place. And we find that in Genesis, chapter 6. This is what it says there:

The LORD saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.  6 And the LORD was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.  7 So the LORD said, "I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created-- people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them."

“And the LORD was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.”

God saw what had become of the people he had created. Now the Bible doesn't give us any specifics, there's no detailed list of their sins, no way for us to know exactly what it was that they had done and were doing – it just says that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. It started way back in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve turned away; it continued with Cain murdering his brother Abel, and we can only assume that it got worse from there. God sees this, and it breaks God's heart. It seems that God, in God's grief, can see no alternative but to start over, and so God sends the waters of the flood, washing the face of the earth, cleansing the world so that God and earth can begin again.

All of creation is given a new beginning. God seeks, even out of this destruction, to transform and save the world through the cleansing, life-changing power of water.
But the truth of the matter, the truth that God realizes even as the waters are still receding, is that even this massive flood has not solved the problem. Even the mighty, overflowing waters could not manage to cleanse the human heart entirely from sin. No sooner are they off the boat than God recognizes that “the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth” (Gen. 8:21) still. Sin still holds sway in human lives. Sin still warps humanity and keeps us from being the people God created us to be. Sin still keeps us separated and distant from the God who created and loves us.

And that is still true today. Our world has much in common with Noah's world. There is plenty of good, of course, but there is much evil at work in our world. Sin still holds on to us and our lives; it is a power that holds us in its grip. We see the evidence of this all around us – in our personal lives, in our communities, in our nation, in the world.

And God is still grieved. God still mourns over the brokenness of what God created and called good. God grieves over the ways that we hurt ourselves, the ways we hurt each other, the ways we hurt this planet and its creatures that we were given to tend and care for.

What is amazing about this story of God at the end of the flood is to hear the promises God makes – to Noah and his descendants and all living creatures – the birds, the domestic animals and every animal of the earth, for all future generations – that God will never send a flood that like that again. To witness God hanging God's bow in the sky as a reminder to God of this promise. And what's cool about that, what I never realized about this bow, is that it's not just a rainbow. It's not just a pretty sight to see after the rain. It's a symbol of a bow, as in bow and arrow. It represents a weapon of war – and when God hangs this bow in the sky, it is God declaring God's retirement from battle. What it means is that no matter how else God may try to win us back, to restore and redeem us, destruction is no longer an option.

But don't think that means that God has given up on us! God's heart is still grieved, and God still longs to transform us, to redeem us, to be in relationship with us – for us to love and trust and rely on God above all else. And God will not stop until that happens. But God realizes that destroying us won't set us right. So, where once God used water to destroy, God now uses water to bring new life! God used the waters of the flood to try to cleanse the earth from sin, but that didn't work, and so now God uses the water of baptism. In those waters, we are cleansed. Our sins are washed away, and the power of Sin within us is put to death. Our old sinful selves are put to death, but when we rise from that water, we enter into new life, life in Christ, life that will never end! In these waters, waters that offer healing, not destruction; hope, not despair; forgiveness, not punishment -- in these waters, we see how God now chooses the way of love, Love that lives to die, Love that gives itself up so that we need not be destroyed, Love that chooses its own death so that we may live. May we trust our whole lives to this Love, and may we feel these baptismal waters flooding our lives, rejoicing that God now uses water to save! Thanks be to God!

Amen.