Lent 1
Genesis 9:8-17
1st Peter 3:18-22
(prayer)
Six weeks today will be Easter Sunday. Easter is the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. That’s where we are heading. In six weeks, we’ll be there...again.
But...not yet.
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There is a liturgical tradition within many parts of Christianity that marks the significant times of the church year with special ‘seasons’. Today, we begin the Season of Lent. Lent is the season that leads up to Easter.
Unlike Christmas, which always falls on December 25th and can be any day of the week, the day of Easter is always on a Sunday and varies year by year, based on the Biblical assertion that Jesus death and resurrection happened at the time of the Hebrew Passover – on the first day of the week, the day after the Sabbath. Passover is a movable spring festival determined by the cycle of the moon.
Modern Christian Easter is always between March 22nd and April 25th and is based on the predicted timing of the vernal (spring) equinox and full moons as predicted by the Council of Nicea of 325CE. There is a formula and 1700 year old astrometric tables to consult, but...
I tend to just trust the modern calendar makers.
I have a sheet in my office that tells me the dates of Easter (and the days of the week on which Christmas will fall) all the way up to the year 2038 – if I’m not retired from active ministry by then, I’ll have to update the information.
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Easter 2012 is April 8th. Count back 46 days (that’s an even 40 days, if you don’t include the Sundays) and the official start date of the Season of Lent 2012 was this past Wednesday, February 22nd (since Easter is always a Sunday, Lent always begins on a Wednesday – aka Ash Wednesday).
The word ‘lent’ comes from an old English word for lengthen, because (in the northern hemisphere, where Christianity began), Lent always occurs as the spring days are getting longer.
Today is the first Sunday in Lent.
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These six weeks are a gift to people of the church. They are an opportunity for each of us to delve into the history of our faith; to explore the path that lead Jesus to the executioner’s cross; to examine how Jesus’ followers reacted to his teachings and example. And most importantly...for us to “take it to the next level” personally, and to challenge ourselves with the question: “so what?” How do these old stories and time tables impact my life today?
This opportunity is available to each one of us - regardless of the depth of our church connections or how spiritual we might describe ourselves to be.
I do assume that each of us is here because we have some spiritual yearning to connect to the mystery of our existence – to discover meaning and purpose in our lives. To find the courage and inspiration to be as good of people as we are able. We seek some level of communion with our creator, with God.
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And so, it begins.
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[Web note: each Sunday throughout Lent, St. David’s will add water from different sources to a common bowl to symbolize our connection to the water cycles of our world and the valuable place H2O plays in our existence, today the source of water was freshly fallen snow]
As I noted earlier, with that handful of fresh snow (now beginning to melt), water has always been a significant part of the story of life. Water is central to both of our scripture passages for today.
The letter of 1st Peter spoke to the early church about an interpretation of the symbolism of baptism – it was like a ritual washing, but not to remove dirt, but to remove us from ‘all that might stand in our way’ of a meaningful relationship with God (to cleanse us, spiritually). Baptism was the ‘rite of initiation’ into the early Christian community (as it is for the modern church). Water cleanses and welcomes.
From a biblical perspective, water is both life and chaos - it can be refreshing and suffocating - it is a source of nourishment and complicit in death.
We are all born of water and made of mostly water. We cannot live without it. But...violent thunderstorms, tsunamis, mudslides and floods can remind us all (too quickly) that water ultimately is not under our control.
As the weather patterns across our globe continue to change: shrinking glaciers, drying up river beds and wells in one place and flooding land in another, access to fresh potable water is poised to be the next battleground for the hoarders of the world (it’s already begun actually). Water is moving from being an essential staple of life to being a commodity for sale to the highest bidder.
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We may think we control water, but we don’t – it is the ultimate indigenous characteristic of our planet and like the dance of tectonic plates over magma, water has abilities that we can never control, no matter how smart we get.
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The people of antiquity knew that, as well as we do. The account of Noah and the Ark is a great example of this.
The story of Noah comes from (what is sometimes called) the ‘pre-history’ section of the book of Genesis: ancient stories that sought to explain some of the basic truths known about our existence.
[Chapters 1-11: creation legends, the good and evil within the growth of humanity, Noah and the flood and finally, the great tower of Babel.]
Although, many of these ‘pre-history’ stories have roots in some historical event or place passed on from generation to generation (and often culture to culture), they are wonderfully steeped in metaphor – AND are seldom meant to be taken literally - as they are written.
For example, the account of Noah is actually based on a cross-cultural tale; it is not a story unique to the Bible. It is a re-telling of part of the Epic of Gilgamesh (a Sumerian poem and one of the oldest surviving pieces of human literature with fragments dating from the 18th century BCE).
The relevant part of the epic concerns Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk who (having just experienced the death of a dear friend and fearing for his own eventual death) seeks out Ut-na-pish-tim, a person alleged to have been granted immortality by the gods.
Gilgamesh travels a long and dangerous journey to reach the island where Ut-na-pish-tim lives, only to see that this immortal one does not appear much different than him: except that he’s got a bit of an attitude: not concerning himself with trivial human concerns. When Gilgamesh asks about how he obtained immortality, Ut-na-pish-tim tells a story about a great flood, of which he, his family and craftsmen were the only survivors.
[(adapted from wikipedia) Utnapishtim explains that the gods decided to send a great flood (to destroy humanity, whose ‘noise’ had become annoying to the gods). To save Utnapishtim, the god, Ea, told him to build a boat. Ea gave him precise dimensions, and it was sealed with pitch and bitumen. Utnapishtim’s entire family went aboard, together with his craftsmen and 'all the animals of the field'. A violent storm then arose (so violent, in fact, that it caused the terrified gods to retreat to the heavens).
The goddess, Ishtar, lamented the wholesale destruction of humanity, and the other gods wept beside her. The storm lasted six days and nights, after which 'all the human beings [had] turned to clay'. Utnapishtim weeps when he sees the destruction. His boat lodges on a mountain, and he releases a dove, a swallow, and a raven. When the raven fails to return, he opens the ark and frees its inhabitants. Utnapishtim offers a sacrifice to the gods, who smell the sweet savor and gather around. Ishtar vows that (just as she will never forget the brilliant necklace that hangs around her neck) she will always remember this time. When another god, Enlil, arrives, he is angry that there are survivors; Ishtar condemns him for instigating the flood. Ea also castigates him for sending a disproportionate punishment. Enlil relents and blesses Utnapishtim and his wife, and rewards them with eternal life.]
Sound kind of familiar?
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The authors of Genesis, knew this ancient Sumerian epic well. They saw a deep truth within the story, and maybe even believed in a great historical flood, but told the tale (in their context) with the Hebrew God at the centre. In the monotheistic world of Israel, there is no divine battle, but the flood is still a divine response to human activity – the violence and corruption of the world: certainly a more valid and just reason than simply annoying noise.
The cleansing grace of water seeks to restore the world to its original blessedness.
Notice how, in the Genesis version, Ishtar’s brilliant necklace has been replaced with the colourful rainbow, visible to all - human and divine, alike. The bow in the sky is a reminder of the divine promise of God to remain committed to humanity and to all the creatures of the earth.
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If we are forced to take Genesis 9 literally, as a unique story of the actions of the Hebrew God, we would have to confront the ‘extreme’ reaction of God to the people’s corruption and wicked violent living – we would have to question our allegiance to a god who seeks to completely destroy: to drown all but one family. We would be right to ask: Was Noah really the only good person left? Did everyone else deserve capital punishment for the crime that was their life? What kind of ethic does God operate under?
But this is clearly not a story to be understood literally, but... metaphorically. Our best evidence of this is that the essence of the story is, in fact, non-biblical.
As well, when our eyes are open to the symbolism, when we allow the layers of literalism to wash away, we can see a greater truth about justice, renewal and promise.
JUSTICE – corruption and violence are counter to just living.
It is a noble desire to have corruption and violence wiped away from the human experience. We might long for some outer force to affect an easy and quick solution by just covering up the problems with a flood and let them wash away, but that’s not the way life seems to work outside of the storybook.
A quick glance at the newspaper or a news website will remind us
(far too quickly) that corruption and violence were not wiped out in some ancient flood.
But that does not mean that we should accept the selfish attitudes that give rise to those injustices. Jesus’ actions in his ministry were almost exclusively acts of justice, bringing people back into the fold of a just community. Noah can remind us to expose ourselves as people of Justice.
RENEWAL – a most wondrous part of the story of the Ark is that the flood is not the end of the story – waters recede to expose a renewed world – a world with a fresh peace. The dove returns with the very proof of that as it carries an olive branch in its beak. That biblical image still carries that meaning today – peace is possible when we are made aware of the new life that exists, if we are willing to look for it long enough to find it. Strengthened by the dove’s gift, Noah’s family can leave the Ark in confidence that the old ways of negative living can give way to new life.
This was perhaps the most obvious lesson for the people originally listening to the stories in Genesis. All agricultural societies know the value of the renewing waters: whether that is the nutrient-rich, cleansing floods of river basins or the gentle spring rains that fall on our first world farms – water renews. Noah can remind us to expose ourselves as people who believe in renewal.
PROMISE – some of the magic goes out of a rainbow, if all we think about is the refraction of white light through the prism of suspended rain droplets. Fortunately, rainbows are so wonderful to behold that even our modern scientific minds can just enjoy the beauty.
Three years ago, Patti and I walked out on a rock path into the harbour at Sooke, BC. It had just stopped raining and we were soaked to the bone when we reached the lighthouse at the end of the path. We turned around and saw this.
All the cold left my body as I looked at this wonder of our God-given world: the brilliant necklace of God that we all get to enjoy.
For as long as humans can remember, the rainbow has been a sign of promise – the rain is over, the sun is shining to the ground again. It is a peaceful and joyful promise. Noah can remind us to expose ourselves as people of Promise.
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This is how we are invited to begin our Lenten journey in 2012. We can erode away our old ways of ambivalence and wash us down to the basics of justice, renewal and promise.
Thanks be to God.
>>PRAYER>>
Let us pray:
O God, we still live in a broken world desperate for the grace of new beginnings. Help us to trust the rainbow sign, and share in the covenant of caring with all creation, in Jesus, the Christ. Amen.
#4MV “All Who Are Thirsty”
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