The story of Noah and the flood is one of the most widely known and best loved stories of the bible.  There is the sweet part of this story that we are all so familiar with. We decorate children’s rooms with ark motifs. (The quilts are from Brian and David Martin’s room.) The Noah’s ark toys on the worship center belonged to my grandson Cayden when he was 4. He’s now 14. We have two of an endless array of Noah pictures in the foyer. We know the story by heart – forty days of rain, the rainbow as a sign of God’s promise.

Betsy Harris sent me a cartoon of two angry elephants getting off an ark saying, “Some cruise. It rained the entire trip.”

When it rains a long time, someone inevitably says, “Looks like it’s time to build an ark.” And evangelical Christians are forever constructing arks in bible theme parks.

At the same time, we know that Noah and the ark could not possibly have happened. All the animals of the world could never fit into an ark of any size. And how would you feed them? The world certainly could not be repopulated by one extended family.  No flood ever covered the whole world, including peaks of 30,000 feet. And no remnants of an ark have been or ever will be found on Mount Ararat in Turkey.

And yet… And yet, because this story will not disappear, I believe there are ever new truths to unfold for us in this epic tale.

The first four stories of the bible, the Garden of Eden, Cain killing Abel, Noah and the Flood, and following, the Tower of Babel, were all meant to be heard together. They were meant to answer questions of why life is what it is today.  How did we lose our innocence, the golden age, when life was easy? Answer: The Garden of Eden.  Why do we hurt those who are closest to us? Answer: Cain and Abel.  What happens to us in times of great disasters, like a flood? Answer: Noah.  Why do we speak different languages, our tendency to build towers rather than communicate? Answer: The Tower of Babel.

These are stories of confusion, loss, and the problem of evil. There is no single curse; no original sin .There is a deep recognition, as the Buddha said, that life is difficult. Life is filled with suffering.  The bible stories of our beginnings seek to lay this out.

So today we’re starting with some bible study. I’m going to let you in on some surprises old and new about the bible and Noah.

First some bad news. Noah is the longest of the early stories of the bible. The good news is I’m not going to read all of it.

Here’s a surprise. The story is long because there are two stories of the flood woven together, which at times are completely contradictory. They come from two different sources, just like there are two different and contradictory stories of creation in Genesis 1 and 2.

You can tell in the Hebrew Scriptures or what we call the Old Testament when what is known as the J source is being used, because the name for the holy is Jahweh translated as Lord. In the P, the later, priestly source, the name of the divine is God.

In Genesis 6-9, the editor mixes these J and P stories of the flood together, because it would make no sense to have one flood and then another.

I’m going to separate the two stories for you and give you the details.

The story of Noah starts in Genesis 6:5 with the J source. (// indicates where the text splits) 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. And the Lord was sorry that the Lord had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 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.”  But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord.

Then the LORD said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household… Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, (not two of every animal) male and its mate, and a pair of animals that are not clean, male and its mate, to keep their kind alive on the face of the earth.”  And Noah did just as the Lord commanded.// Noah with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives went into the ark…  And on the seventh day the waters of the Flood came upon the earth.//The rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights…. // At the end of forty days, Noah opened the window of the ark.//And  sent out the dove to see whether the waters had decreased from the surface of the ground.  But the dove could not find a resting place for its foot, and returned to the ark… Noah waited another seven days, and again sent out the dove from the ark.  The dove came back to him toward the evening, and in its bill was a plucked-off olive leaf.  Then Noah waited another seven days and sent the dove forth; and it did not return anymore. // Noah removed the covering of the ark, and he saw that the surface of the ground was drying.

Noah built an altar to the Lord and offered burnt offerings on the altar.  The Lord smelled the pleasing odor, and the Lord said in his heart, “Never again will I curse the earth because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from its youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.

          As long as the earth endures,

         seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,

          summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.

          Noah, the tiller of the soil left the ark and planted a vineyard.  He drank of the wine and became drunk and he uncovered himself within his tent.

          Remember those details. Next is the P or priestly version. In the bible it is intermingled with the text above.

Noah was a righteous man; he was blameless in his age. The earth became corrupt before God…When God saw how corrupt the earth was…, God said to Noah, “I have decided to put an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with the lawlessness because of them: I am about the destroy them with the earth.  Make yourself an ark of gopher wood:  (And here is a long list of very specific directions and dimension of the ark, all the cubits.)

For my part, I am about to bring the Flood – waters upon the earth – to destroy all flesh under the sky… But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall enter the ark, with your sons, your wife, and your son’s wives.

And of every living thing you shall bring two of every kind (here’s where we get the two by two) into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female.

Noah did this; and he did all that God commanded him. //

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst apart, and the flood gates of the sky broke open. (Mention three tiered universe.  Much more detail about the flood follows here)

When the waters had swelled on the earth one hundred and fifty days, (not forty days!) God caused a wind to blow across the earth, and the waters subsided. And at the end of 150 days the waters diminished, so that on the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters went on diminishing until the tenth month, and on the first of the month the tops of the mountains became visible.// He sent out the raven (not the dove) And it went to and fro until the waters had subsided from the earth. In the six hundred and first year in the first day of the first month, of Noah’s life the waters began to dry from the earth, and in the second month… the earth was dry. (They were a year in the ark) God spoke to Noah, saying, “Come out of the ark, together with your wife, your sons and your son’s wives. Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you. (A long list of all the creatures of the ark follows with lengthy instructions on how to behave.)

And God said to Noah and his family, “I now establish my covenant with you and your offspring to come… never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood. I have set my bow in the clouds (the rainbow), and it shall serve as a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth…

Those are the two stories of the flood, which I have shortened as much as possible. In the bible they are all mixed together.  When we tell the story or sing the Noah and the Ark songs in our time, we collapse them. We use the P story of all the animals male and female, two by two. We use the J story for it raining for forty days and nights and then everyone getting off the ark. Realize that in the P story, Noah and all the creatures are in the ark for a year. We use the J story for the sending out of the dove. In the P story it’s a raven.  And then we go back to the P story for the promise of the rainbow.

The first thing to realize from these two stories is that the flood stories were never meant to be literally true.  If someone believes the bible literally, then ask if Noah brought all the animals two by two, or seven pairs of all the clean and a pair all the unclean animals?  Did they stay in the ark 40 days or a year?  You probably won’t change anyone’s mind, but you’ll feel better.

The importance of myth is embedded in all native cultures. And when asked if something in a mythical story could have happened this way indigenous people often reply, “I do not know if it happened this way, but I do know it is true.”

This truth emerges in stories that have many layers of interpretation.

I remember an art installation at Peddler’s Village in Lahaska, Pennsylvania which had sand carvings of Noah’s Ark with just enough fixative to keep the animals from washing away in the first rain. They would erode in about 4 months, but not right away.  The unique element of this display was that every animal coming out of the ark was of a species that has become extinct since the time of the ark, and if you looked closely you could see a terror in the eyes of each creature.

That’s how good mythical tales work. They allow more stories to unfold.

What truths in the story of Noah were useful and important to biblical people that are also important to us?         

First, this mythical tale probably came from a real experience. Archeology tells us that there was a great flood in Mesopotamia around 3,000 BCE. Flood stories are found throughout the ancient religions of the Middle East.  A flood did happen to ancient biblical people, and it was terrifying. People worried that it might happen again. Does God control good and evil, and does God send floods to punish the wicked?

What struck me about this question of God’s intervention in history was the J story and how the Lord felt when the humans the Lord had created became so evil.  The Lord wasn’t angry so much as just plain sorry to have created humankind. The evil of the people grieved the Lord’s heart.

This past weekend ten of us went to the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, in Montgomery, Alabama, which graphically details pain white America inflicted on African human beings through our era of slavery, and then continued through Jim Crow, to modern times through the excessive and cruel imprisonment of people of color. Then we went to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice where the names of 4,400 children of God who were lynched or otherwise tortured to death by white mobs from 1877 to 1950 were etched on hanging iron columns.  There are 33 names from Alachua County. Alachua County actually records 43 lynchings.

At the end of the day Sandy asked us to share a sentence of what stood out for us from this experience.  Jim Wagner said, “All that kept going through my mind was, ‘What the hell were we thinking, we the white dominant culture?’”

We, the white race who did this, and the black race who suffered were all created by the same God. And God whose heart must have been breaking was also wondering, “What the hell are my people thinking?”

I think that those who told this story of the flood in the bible sensed that God did what any of us might do if we had the chance, and that would be to correct a big mistake of humankind’s evil. If people could be this evil, then destroy them and start over. This is the first answer to the question of where was God in times of evil.

Then a second theme emerges within the story. We find an alternative way to answer the question. The second thing the writers of this story show us is a God who changes. It’s the same message we have in the United Church of Christ, which maintains that God is still speaking.  It’s the same message the John Robinson gave to the Pilgrims who sailed on the Mayflower, “God has yet more truth and light to break forth from God’s holy word.

The third thing we see in the story is that the consequence of God creating us with free will is that we will make mistakes, over and over again.  At the end of the J version of the story Noah plants a vineyard, gets drunk, falls asleep naked and curses the son who walks in on his nakedness. Here we go again. Humans have a chance for a fresh start, at a new world, and they often mess it up, right away.

All the pain of families and betrayal renews after the ark. God realizes there’s no way to fix us forever. That’s the price of our free will. God simply promises us through the rainbow (another A R C arc) not to intervene like this again, not to destroy us, but to be with us, always pulling us toward that (A R C arc) of history that Martin Luther King, Jr. said was long but bends toward justice.

Finally, this ancient story reminds me that we’re all in this lifeboat earth together – humans, animals, and plants. Note that God did not say, “Build a boat.” God said, “Build an ark.” An ark is a container. In Hebrew tradition, the Ark of the Covenant holds the Torah. It protects and cherishes the word of God. Noah’s ark holds the most precious word of God, creation itself – all creatures around us, the seeds for the future regeneration, and us.

It reminds me that in all manner of tragedy and disaster, God is with us, in the boat with us traveling with us toward new days, new light, and new hope.

Prayer

O God whom we know by many names and in many ways,

We pause now to imagine this sacred moment through your eyes.

We imagine you O God, watching each of us as we left our separate homes

and traveled in our separate ways on a pilgrimage to this place of promise.

And while much in this world must bring tears to your eyes,

We imagine you looking down upon this gathering and smiling,

glad we’re here.

We see you shining your light of grace upon us,

And we smile too, knowing that in this time together,

Something of our wounds has been healed,

And something of our brokenness has been made whole.

On this moment we reflect now in silence.

Bless this moment. Bless the world among us and around us.

Amen.