This sermon was preached for the First Sunday in Lent, February 21, 2021 for an online joint service of St. Andrew's and St. Michael's. The texts for this sermon are: Genesis 9:8-17, 1 Peter 3:18-22, Mark 1:9-15, and Psalm 25:1-9.
We start this Lent with the story of Noah. Out of all the Old Testament stories, this is probably one you’re most familiar with – maybe the one you best remember from Sunday School. There are many things this ancient tale can be to us – children’s story with lots of animals and pretty colors, a reminder of the hope at the end of every disaster. I want to suggest that it can also be a parable for Lent, a warning for the best and worst ways we can approach our own spiritual growth in these next forty days.
On the seventh day of creation, God rested in the knowledge that it was good, that it was very good. But something happened to humankind in the intervening generations of old. And God saw with horror that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, “every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” The very ones God had made in the divine image grieved the divine heart. The brokenness was not just contained to humanity – the whole earth was filled with violence; all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. God regretted creation. God wanted to start over.
God’s impulse to blot out a mistake, to start fresh, comes from God’s inherent desire for justice, for peace and goodness. It comes from God’s disgust of violence and cruelty. But the story is also balanced by another essential piece of God’s being. In the end, God chooses grace.
The flood waters recede and Noah offers his gratitude to God with burnt offering. God, who once regretted the creation of humanity, now regrets its destruction. “Never again,” God says in the divine heart. Not because the human heart has been fixed in this do-over—no, God admits that still the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth. In spite of this, because of this, God chooses a new path forward. God changes God’s mind not because of who we are but because of who God is.
God makes a covenant to stay in this, with us, for all time. God will do whatever is takes to redeem this creation, however flawed and corrupt it might be. God will not give up on us ever again, no matter what it takes, even to the point of the cross. Even to the sacrifice of God’s very self. And for our part, God asks us not to give up on the project of caring for one another and creation. We are to promise to turn from violence and turn toward love, again and again.
Made in God’s image, we also carry the inherent sense of justice in our hearts. The great irony, of course, is that this instinct toward perfection and goodness, the desire to start over and wipe clean, has also led our species down terrifically violent, cruel, and ultimately unjust paths. The all-too-modern horrors of genocide, eugenics, and every social stratification you can name trace back to this urge to purge, this false dream of perfection. This is the lie that even God believed once, that if only we cancel certain aspects of ourselves, our society, it can all be fixed and good once again.
We could choose to start Lent from here, the beginning of the Noah story. We could treat Lent as a time to sniff out all the parts of ourselves that deserve to be destroyed or silenced. If only I could cut out this part of myself, my life, my diet. If only this person would quit. If only that person would keep their mouth shut. If only I left this behind and started over. In our need to blot out our offenses with the harshest bleach we can find, we may unintentionally poison ourselves with the very violence and cruelty we despise.
We could choose to begin from the end of the Noah story, which is in fact, the beginning of the story of salvation. Lent can be a time to renew our promise to never give up on ourselves, our communities, our species. Lent can be our commitment to stay in this relationship, no matter how angry and disgusted we make one another. It can be the renewal of our intention to turn from violence of exclusion and silence, and to turn instead toward reconciliation and repair.
This, then, is the work of Lent: we mend rather than discard, we start difficult conversations, we shift our habits bit by bit. We let go of the dream of the perfect solution and stick to the hard work of slow healing. We meet injustice with mercy, brokenness with love.
This choice between being a Noah or living the rainbow is not just a spiritual or internal one. In desperate moments, in the floods of our times, it can be a practical, physical, communal choice tied to our very survival. The beginning of the Noah story would have us leaving behind the weak to save the strong, but the ending would have us reaching out to grab hold of all our neighbors, noticing whose heads are slipping under.
Indeed, just this week two kinds of stories have emerged from devastating freeze and blackouts in Texas. There are the stories of Noahs, who got their families and got out, who locked the doors of their warm arks to the cold, who told their neighbors to fend for themselves with their actions and words. But there are also the stories of others who have taken God’s covenant to heart. James McIngvale, “Mattress Mack”, who opened his Houston furniture stores to cold and hungry Texans – who then came by the thousands to curl up on his showroom couches. Volunteers who rescued hundreds of paralyzed, frozen sea turtles and brought them into heated warehouses and cars. Neighbors with generators who reached out to neighbors dependent on electricity for their oxygen tanks, stepdads who rigged up crockpot meals in their cars, parishes transformed into warming centers. In truly desperate times, ordinary people made the difficult choice to stick together, to see each other through. Caring for creation and each other, despite our flaws.
Over the next forty days, the Holy Spirit will drive us in the wilderness. Do not resist being torn from your spiritual comfort zones. And when you look with honesty on the twisted inclinations of your heart, remember the rainbow. When you open your eyes to the injustice and wickedness of the world, remember God’s commitment to stay in this with us, to the very end, no matter what. God will not walk away from us, and neither can we.
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