Noah’s ark amid the chaos: A story about judgment, catastrophe and redemption
The preacher was right about the story of Noah and the Great Flood: It’s not for children, and that alone is worth pondering whether any of the Bible is really fit for children. It’s certainly not a child’s library of storybooks; and, in fact, most adults can’t or won’t take the enormous amount of time required to read and understand the Jewish and Christian scriptures upon which their faith tradition rests.
The Bible is an enormously complex collection of documents, and though we try to reduce it to a library of just-so stories, the truth ultimately will out – this is a book full of good and evil, suffering and violence, sin and death, injustice and warfare, dictions and contradictions. Yes, there are passages of great beauty and comfort that dwell upon love, peace, security and benevolence; however, just as the news of the day tends toward that which is disconcerting, horrifying and disgusting, so the narratives of Jewish and Christian scripture deliver stories of conflict, violence, cruelty and death, all overseen by an ancient sky god variously called Yahweh, El, Adonai, the Lord and even Our Father.
We certainly don’t want our children reading this stuff unattended; and, yes, it’s probably a good thing to acquaint them with the Bible, but only with this caveat: Don’t render the great epics of the Bible – and the Great Flood is certainly one of them – into saccharine stories that skirt the fundamental dynamics. Why in the world would we enjoy the beauty and brutality of Lord of the Rings with our children while imparting to them the story of Noah and the Great Flood as though it were about saving animals? It’s not.
As the preacher said, the Noah stories – and there are at least two versions woven into the Genesis account – are about judgment, catastrophe, redemption and, from a Christian perspective, eternal salvation. It’s a story about catastrophe wrought by God’s judgment and how a righteous man saves the world from itself. It’s about the power of God who created all things, including humanity’s moral sense and freedom to choose good or evil, peace or violence. It’s about redemption and humanity’s dependence upon that which is greater than itself, and our vulnerability to natural forces well and forever beyond our control.
(Incidentally, I can’t recall the last time I heard a sermon based on Genesis 6-9. The story of Noah and the Great Flood doesn’t appear at all in the Sunday lectionary of the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer and only once in the Revised Common Lectionary. Go Figure. Also, I know not what to make of the first four verses of Chapter 6, except that they seem to relate to the wickedness God wants to destroy. Those “sons of God” seem to have been the bad boys of their day.)
Judgment Day: The wicked fall victim to the chaos (Engraving by Gustave Dore)
Science tells us there may well have been a catastrophic flood in that ancient part of the world comprising the nations we Americans call the Middle East – and in that I would include Turkey, though some would not. (Here’s a good, brief account of the science. The book-length version is here: Highly recommended.) The scientific account doesn’t read at all like Genesis, which in turn bears but faint resemblance to earlier ancient stories archeologists believe were inspired by a legendary inundation 7,500 years ago. This scientific account, too, is a complex story indicating how cultures evolve to give a meaningful account of human existence on this dangerous, life-giving planet.
What we have in Genesis is what might be called Jewish spin, the way this particular culture interpreted the story of The Great Flood – and it is important to keep in mind that this is, first and foremost, a story about a catastrophic flood. In Jewish recollection, it is a story about God and God’s judgment upon “the wickedness of humankind [that] was great upon the earth.” Everything else is ripple effect – the fate of all living creatures and, of course, Noah, who in the text seems like an afterthought: “But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord.” And so begins the saga of how a righteous man saves himself, his family, and all the critters, including those to be sacrificed after the flood, an aspect of the story that seldom makes it to Sunday School flannel boards. The moral? We’re here by the skin of our teeth.
The Great Flood is God rebooting creation. Genesis thus far is the story of human failure and descent into the wickedness that finally tips God into punishment mode. From Adam and Eve through Cain and Abel and their descendants, Genesis seems to lead inevitably to the comeuppance of Chapter 6. God, fed up with humanity, decides to take us out but then seems to come up short, because there amid all that wickedness is Noah, a righteous man, blameless, who “walked with God.”
The flood, then, is chaotic but not a return to the utter chaos from which God made the heavens and the earth. It’s judgment day, a spiritual trope that echoes and replies throughout Jewish and Christian scripture and rebounds from pulpits to this day: There are two kinds of people, those who are saved and those who are not. Those who walk with God are saved; those who don’t, aren’t. Pretty simple, no?
No. It’s not that simple, as every human life attests, because our lives are complex, stormy events in time and space, and though we try and try to get them under control, the truth is, finally, we don’t. Even those who seem to have everything under control seldom do, for their conscious and subconscious minds are just as susceptible to the rough and tumble of human existence as those of us who seem to be living on the edge of an abyss.
Arky Arky: Beware trivializing the story of The Great Flood and Noah
All of which makes the flood and the ark emblematic for how we get from here to there in life. I’m awed, as the preacher was, by the Genesis description of “that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.” (Genesis 6.11) The flood is said to have come not only from above but from below. I’m sure some of our fellow Americans in the Carolinas and Virginia, in the path and wake of Hurricane Florence, can identify with the kind of terror this inspires. Surging, unpredictable, rising water and all it brings. The need to escape. The need to be rescued. The yearning for all to be well and the hope for a way forward that will deliver us from the chaos.
If we’d only known, we might have built an ark.
Is there one of us in this life who hasn’t experienced the rising waters of anxiety and the fear of what they bring? Has anyone not hoped in the darkness for all to be well and to find a way forward that would deliver us from the chaos?
If we’d only known, we might have built an ark.
Well, the preacher might have said, we do know, and it’s up to us to build an ark. He would say, and to some extent, I would agree, that our ark ought to be built from childhood of the sturdy cypress wood of Love writ large in the community of faith, the kind that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (I Corinthians 13.7) I might add that it heals and reconciles all things, and that it’s the only path to true peace – and let us hope it never ends. Would it have to be Christian faith? No, and here the preacher and I probably would disagree; still, the point is to acknowledge the need and to ensure that an ark, a realistic, loving disposition toward one’s self and one’s neighbors be fundamental in the rearing of our children and the constitution of our society.
Life in the ark probably wasn’t always pleasant. The preacher displayed a dramatic painting of Noah’s ark as he preached. It was storm-tossed amid giant waves – but it was still on the surface. Its occupants were not adrift and drowning in the chaos that, according to the Bible, covered the mountains “fifty cubits deep.” (Genesis 6.20; 50 cubits = about 75 feet) That’s not history, but the image is compelling and susceptible to meaningful interpretation, even if one’s religious faith is not especially great.
Like most of the Bible’s many yarns, the story of The Great Flood is a cautionary tale, even though its Angry Yahweh theology is unappealing and largely discredited. Let us hope to find ourselves in Noah’s shoes – righteous in whatever way we’ve found for that to be true; responsive to a well-formed conscience, one rooted in love of neighbor as one’s self; and wise enough to have constructed an ark that will keep us afloat amid the chaos.
The pelican papers 