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

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector

3 Pentecost; June 1, 2008

Genesis 6:9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19 (Noah)

Matthew 7:21-29

GOD'S ATTENTION

Attending To The Entire Natural world, To Individuals, Ourselves, Neighbors

AND OURS

God is looking out over Creation, and he sees terrible things. He sees corruption and violence, and that was in Noah's day and not just in ours. Twice the bible lesson on Noah tries to elaborate on how bad the corruption in the world is, and twice it says the earth is filled with violence. That's what seems to bother God most and that seems to be why he's willing to destroy the earth, because both human beings and creatures – “all flesh” it says – are filled with violence.

There's nothing in there about sexual immorality which is what worries these days when we contemplate God's punishment. Its violence that the bible picks out – people and animals fighting each other over goodness knows what in a dog eat dog world; not paying attention to goodness, and not paying attention to God.

Only Noah is paying attention to goodness, and to God. It says: “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God.”

Its interesting that the bible puts Noah's treatment of other people first. Righteousness refers in the bible to how you treat other people. He treated them right! He did right by then. He was righteous.

Relationship with God comes second. And there's nothing in there about the rituals and doctrines he followed; just that he walked with God.

Noah was just this good guy. The Jews do not say Noah was the first Jew or even the first truly religious person. Abraham was the first truly religious person. Moses was the first Jew. Noah was just the first good person – noted and pointed to in the bible.

He was just this guy, just a good guy who treated other people right and was aware of the presence of God.

But he was the only one; and the only one who wasn't being corrupt or violent.

Not a religious fanatic; just a good guy.

So God calls on him, because he has a job for Noah. He's going to save Noah – or he's going to have Noah build an ark so he can save himself; but not just himself but his family; and not just his family but 2 of every animal on the earth; and not just himself and his family and the animals because they've been good – but so that they can repopulate the whole earth when all of this is over.

God does not save Noah for Noah's self-preservation. He does not save Noah as a reward. He saves Noah because Noah has a job to do. He saves Noah – for the sake of the job! He saves Noah for the sake of others, other people and other animals. He saves Noah because he knows he can count on Noah to save others.

Noah's a good guy. He's not just into himself. He's into helping others, even if – for now – he's the only one.

And do you notice another reason God wants to save the animals? “To keep them alive,” it says. Not to be a resource to human beings, but just so they can be alive. They have rights as creatures too. And God trusts Noah to look after those rights, to care for these creatures which, you'll recall from the Creation story, is the reason God created humans in the first place, to care for everybody else, and not just themselves.

So God saves everyone, in the entire natural world, through Noah, this good guy – not this hyper-religious guy but this good guy – who just happens to care for everyone else too, and to be aware of God's presence too, even if we don't hear anything about doctrine or worship.

And God calls them into the ark.

The ancient Rabbi's say it took Noah 120 years to build the ark. The reason? So passersby would ask him what was going on, and he would tell them, and they'd have a chance to turn away from their violence and corruption and reconsider their lives and help other people and not be so self-absorbed.

But they didn't.

Even if it didn't take 120 years – and that's a long delay for any construction project – there still would have been time for the curious bystander to look at the project and think again about their own lives.

Nobody did.

Up came the animals, two by two. You see them here. On top of each other practically, but God designs an ark that will hold humans and animals of all kinds in one harmonious unit.

Kind of like the earth was supposed to be – and can be again because we are all descended from the humans who were paying attention to God, and doing right by our neighbor. We are all descended from Noah.

One harmonious unit floating over the waves.

One harmonious unit here in church – full of people doing the best we can, bothered enough by the world to come here, trying to get away from violence, hoping there is a better way, aware of the presence of God even if we are not as doctrinal and hyper-religious as sometimes we think we should be.

We are imperfect disciples, imperfect disciples. But we're trying to be disciples of God in the best way we can, gathered together as one family on the earth.

Now what?

We are called to preach the same words and give the same help to others that Jesus gave when he taught and worked and witnessed and called us to himself.

The problem is, we often don't. We keep his words, his power, his love to ourselves, thinking its only for our good, and not that of others.

So he says: “Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven;” all that stuff about helping the poor and needy and lonely and loveless. Only them.

What? We say. We thought it was because we were so good, so deserving.

No, indicates Jesus. I called you, saved you, loved you, helped you to teach you to call, help, love, others too. It wasn't so you could do cheap magic tricks like drive out demons, but actually help real people, such as Jesus helped.

Jesus wanted people like Noah – who was called because he could be trusted to save other people too. As the Spiritual says: “throw out the lifeline, throw out the lifeline, someone is drifting away; throw out the lifeline, throw out the lifeline, someone is sinking today” – sinking in violence, sinking in corruption, sinking in poverty or hopelessness. Do something about it. Throw out the lifeline.

Onward Christian Soldiers – sings the last hymn. Onward, against sin, poverty, hopelessness, violence, all those evil things that afflict and destroy the creatures of God. Onward Christian soldiers against that. Any good guy can do it, anyone who does right by their neighbors. Jesus expects it, and hopes for it, from all of us.