Reflection by Rev Anne Ryan O’Connor  11/6/23

Genesis 9 - Noah and the Ark   

I often wonder why God perseveres with us – look at Ukraine at the moment – and wars and civil conflicts in Sudan, Congo, Ethiopia, Myanmar – and the rest     - horrific things – in a long line of horrific things through all history – And even in my own life  I often wonder why God perseveres with me - despite my unfaithfulness and just plain bungling – why does he still choose to work thru me?

Noah and the Ark – captured people’s imagination – children’s toys even for people with no religion – see it as part of our cultural stories.

Diff ways of understanding Gen 1-11 

Lib vs Conservative.   Conservative – tend to see them as history and science, the record of things that actually happened.   Liberal Christians view these stories as myth. 

Meaning of “Myth”.  The word myth is a difficult one.  It is used in our common language to mean something that is commonly believed but isn’t true.

But in the more formal or academic sense it doesn’t mean that.  It means a story told in order to tell a deeper truth.

Those of you of a more conservative bent in relation to understanding these stories – please bear with me. 

Myths are sometimes thought of as ways to explain how things come to be the way they are, or they can be seen as a bit like really complex parables designed to impart a deep truth that ordinary language can’t capture.

In the end it doesn’t matter very much if you take a conservative or a liberal position, what matters is the truths that underlie the stories. 

We can wonder about the origin of this story in a time pre-writing.  These stories were told and shared around campfires and kitchen tables for generations.   There is evidence of 2 different versions of the Noah and the Ark story here. Like someone embroidered the story in this place so it was a bit different than the story in other places.  So when they came to write these stories down they had two versions of the story, so instead of having to choose between them they put the two together and made one loose narrative.  In the main part of the story we have 1 pair of every animal – later the story refers to 7 pairs of clean animals and 1 pair of unclean animals.

As we wonder about the origins of this story, we can ask ourselves was it designed to answer a question like “Why does God stick with us?  Surely the human race hss too far gone – too irredeemably evil – why does God continue to bother with us?  Why doesn’t God just wipe us out and be done with it?”  You can imagine people in pretty well any age asking those sorts of questions.

God has just promised Noah and his family that "even though human beings are evil from their youth" (Gen 8:21), God will now refrain from destroying them. despite the fact that God has just done precisely that. (Gen 6:5)! As we can see, humanity did not change because of the flood; it was God who changed, or, if that is rather too hard an idea to swallow, then perhaps, it was the perception of God that changed from a divine judge using strict and immutable rules - to a God who is "slow to anger."

Then in chapter 9, the promise of God not to destroy humanity again is extended to the entire creation.  Our creating God is the sustaining God who loves and cares for the entire cosmos.

"I am about to establish (or "set up") my covenant with you (pl) and with your (pl) seed after you, and with every living creature with you, the birds, the domestic and wild animals, all those that left the ark, every last creature" (9:9-10). The grammar of this sentence is somewhat tortured in Hebrew, but the implication is extremely important: the covenant, the contract between God and God's vast and extraordinary creation, is thoroughly and completely inclusive of all those made by God in Genesis 1. No one is excluded; no one or thing is left out. The horrors of the cataclysmic flood are never to be repeated. "I now set up my covenant with you that never again will all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood and that never again will a flood corrupt the earth" (9:11).

So if the origin of the story is trying to answer the question “Why God bothers with us at all?”   Then the answer is an extraordinary leap of the religious imagination.  Despite the dominance of images of a vengeful God in the OT, the people who began this story give a very different view of God – this is not an angry God –even when he decides to destroys the earth – he is not angry but a grieving God – God with a broken heart if you like – searching for an end to the grief  perhaps – so sure he has made a terrible mistake in creation, he decides to wipe it all out – save a faithful remnant and have another go.  Then afterwards God seems to regret his choice to wipe out creation – perhaps his grief at the death of all creatures but the few left – was way more than the earlier grief of their evil?  

Anyway God changes – makes a firm and binding commitment to never do anything like that again.  God makes this commitment – this covenant – out of his grief – out of the pain in his heart.  He changes, making that covenant out of a now unwavering commitment to hope – hope that humanity and indeed the whole creation will show some signs of the love in which he created it – hope that his love will have the power to conquer that evil – at least in the end.   God now commits himself to live out of that covenant that he will never break, a commitment the re-establishes the reign of his love on earth. 

If this was what those people who originated the story had in mind – what a wonderful powerful view of God they represent for us.  What a powerful gospel declaration they make for us here.  Think God won’t persevere with you – or with our world?  Wrong!!  This God they came to know – this God they came to experience is a God of never ending love and never ending hope - the God of the rainbow – is the God of Jesus Christ – the God who committed himself to do everything necessary to make his love available and real to his world.