St. Paul’s On-the-Hill Episcopal Church

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector

Lent 1; March 1, 2009

Genesis 9:8-17

1 Peter 3:18-22

Mark 1:9-15

ALL IN IT TOGETHER

God, Noah, Jesus, and Us

God was compassionate. God did not want to destroy all the earth. God didn’t want to start from scratch. Surely there was someone good to save, something good to save.

So God searched; and God found Noah, one righteous man, one good man, one caring man. God would not destroy him just because he was surrounded by a lot of bad apples, a lot of evil examples. God would save him, picking him out, giving him a way to rescue himself from the devastation and disaster that would afflict everyone else because of their actions.

So God said to Noah – ‘build me an ark,’ and Noah did. Now God also did something strange. He told Noah to build it big enough to hold him, and his family, and his relatives, and two of every kind of animal that lived on the earth – both the beautiful animals and the ugly animals, the edible and the inedible animals, the clean and the unclean.

I guess they all had a right to live. Just because they were on the earth with evil people didn’t mean they should die too. Just because they weren’t important to human beings doesn’t mean they should die too. Just because they were downright dangerous to human beings doesn’t mean they should die too.

So room was made for snakes and slithering things and black widow spiders. Room was made for everything on the ark, from giraffes to germs.

So they could all sail off together, and survive.

Now Noah must have been an interesting kind of person, an open-minded kind of person; because he listened to God, and he did what God said, even though it sounded stupid, even though it made him look stupid.

He built this huge ark, even though it was far more than what he needed for himself. Now imagine what the neighbors must have said – the wicked ones, who cared only for themselves.

Not only was Noah building an ark for himself and his entire extended family; he was building an ark for every animal and every creeping thing in the world too – clean and unclean.

A wicked person, who’s only in this world for himself, could understand building a boat so he alone could survive the coming catastrophe. A wicked person, who’s only in this world for himself, only making money for himself and his needs, could maybe understand building a boat for himself and his family – but for his in-laws?

A wicked person could understand building a boat big enough to carry food supplies until the catastrophe passed, but the idea of carrying animals so they would survive too because they have a certain goodness that is not tied to our need of them?

Beyond that, why does it make sense to carry animals that are alien to you, dangerous to you, creeping things and snakes and spiders?

Only someone weird would care for animals and creatures like that.

It was weird to be that good. It was strange, insane. In our world today it is seen to be strange, insane, weird to care about someone other than ourselves. Our financial catastrophe is the result of the work of people who thought it was ridiculous to care about the big picture, the human race, the global economy. People should think only of themselves, they said, make as much money as they could and forget the consequences.

Here are the consequences.

The only way to survive the consequences – as with Noah – is to listen to the words of the compassionate God who says: care for people different from yourselves, animals different from yourselves, even dangerous to yourselves. Build a boat big enough for them. Bring everyone on the boat together.

Then all will survive. All will propagate. All will diversify.

This makes sense to Noah. It should make sense to us.

So he builds an ark, and endures the laughter.

Peter refers to the time it took to build the ark when he says how “God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark.”

There is an old Jewish story that God waited for years, and let Noah build the ark for years, so that people would have a chance to repent as they looked at the ark, ask Noah questions, and take him seriously about the impending calamity.

They didn’t ask. They didn’t change. They didn’t get on board. Seems like just yesterday, doesn’t’ it, as we looked at our own global warning systems about the economy and everything else.

So Noah built the ark, and he got on board, and he brought on all these animals – and even then all these wicked, self-absorbed people must have watched all the animals get on board and made a lot of fun of Noah for having care and concern for someone other than himself.

Having care and concern for someone other than yourself – as Noah did for the animals, as God did for Noah and the animals – is the mark of goodness. If Noah’s watchers had imitated it, maybe they would have gotten on board and been saved, or saved themselves.

When we care for someone other than ourselves we save ourselves. We come into our full humanity. We act like God who cared for Noah. We pass on his love for others. When we care for none but ourselves we leave our humanity and the divine image in which we were created.

When I talked with the Youth Group about this story we worried about the fate of all these people and how it was different from Noah’s. We talked about free will. Any one of these people, at any time up until and after the catastrophe could have chosen freely to act differently than they did (in our present catastrophe too). Any one of them could have chosen freely to care for someone other than themselves.

Only Noah did – caring not only for other people but for animals, and not only for safe animals but dangerous animals.

We exercise our free will when we choose to love. We exercise no will at all when we care for no one but ourselves.

When we choose to love we act like God. When we act like God, by loving, then through us God can save the world.

So the recipe now, as then, in this catastrophe as in that one, is to love others and then all will rise in a big enough boat together; and outlast the storm.

Then when the storm is over, we can start again together, even though we are all pretty different from each other.

It appears that God likes diversity. Look at all the different kinds of animals, as well as the humans, he wanted on board the ark.

Jesus came to say the same thing that God said to Noah. Perhaps God had learned that you can’t trust that there is even one righteous person with the spiritual sensitivity to listen to God as well as to all the noise of all the people all around all the time. So God sent Jesus to be among us all the time - speaking all the words that would be put in that book, that Bible; always the same word in different scenarios – love, love, love.

This Jesus would be tempted by Satan in the wilderness to care only about himself and his own pleasure and success – the temptation we all fail. He didn’t.

Then he would come among us and stay among us and preach love for others, and he would love others, even unto death.

In Lent we reacquaint ourselves with his love. We turn away from all the things we do for pleasure or success alone. We turn back to following him and loving others. With every act of repentance, with every desire to change, Jesus pulls us on board the ark a little more.

There is a problem here. We have to be willing to associate with all the other animals, even the dangerous ones. They were created by God too, and he wants them on board just as much as he wants us on board.

We’ll just have to learn to get along. The recipe is love.

The Youth and the Mission Committee and I have come up with another mission for St. Paul’s, one that uses the diversity of talent we enjoy, and ministers to the needs of the world around us.

We’re thinking of a two week music camp on summer evenings – for those who don’t have time or opportunity or money to get away. We have a lot of talent here; in Voice or Drums or Guitar or other Percussion, or in the Electronics we need for musical presentations these days.

Imagine gathering young people into such a creative undertaking. Imagine building up the creative spirit within them – the one put there by God, the one the World tries to destroy. Enjoy the music they might make, which they might contribute to the spirits of others in this world, lightening the load of others and others and others still, in their homes and communities and lives.

So St. Paul’s becomes the center of a rekindled creativity. We already have so much here. Why not spread it around?

If you’d like to help in any way, see me.

This gets to an image I have of the church, which is the ark. Did you know that the historic name of the part of the church where you sit is the ‘nave’ and nave comes from the Latin for ship: ‘navis.’

The church is traditionally seen as an ark – an ark of so many diverse animals and humans alike. Diversity is of God. He’s not interested in uniformity or every creature for itself.

Imagine the ark, and all those animals, each with an instrument. The giraffes would naturally be playing trombones or oboes, since they have the neck length. The elephants would be blowing trumpets or using their own.

Every animal would have the appropriate instrument. The rabbits would be playing drums on the tortoises. The sun sets. The party boat, the party ark, drifts off under the night sky. It rocks on the waves.

The church rocks, making music for everyone around. Each one of us on our own instrument. Each one of us exercising our own gift, for the Master Conductor of all.

Eventually we come to rest, on Ararat, or Ossining. We all march off, making music for all.