But let’s look at them in chronological order!
The story of Noah is so familiar as
to need no introduction!
We all know how God thought that the
world he had made was so very wicked that he wanted to destroy it and
start again from scratch.
But as Noah and his family were good
people, he decided to save them,
and, while he was at it, to
save the animals and birds,
as they’d done nobody any
harm.
And so Noah was told to build the Ark, and he built it
and
took two of every sort of animal, and maybe even seven pairs of the
“clean” animals, and so on and so forth.
We know the
story.
But is it true?
There’s a theory that it’s a folk memory of the Black Sea being formed when the waters burst through the Bosphorus.
Or it’s possible that the flood myths came from people finding seashells and so on far inland.
Nobody really knows,
but we do know that in prehistoric times some areas that are now under water were dry land, and vice versa, as the world has changed.
It might be a folk memory of sea levels rising catastrophically after the end of the last Ice Age,
when all the waters that had been bound up in the glaciers melted
and many communities were submerged forever,
including the submerged country known as Doggerland, in the North Sea,
dating back as recently as ten thousand years ago,
when Britain was joined to the Continent by more than an undersea tunnel!
But whether
there was a real Noah, and a real Ark, who knows?
I don’t know
whether there would ever be any proof of the sort that would satisfy
archaeologists but does it matter?
There are truer truths than
historical truth!
As someone once said, everything in the Bible
is true;
some of it even happened!
What matters about
the story of Noah isn’t details like whether there was only one
breeding pair of each sort of animal, or seven pairs of some
(the
story isn’t very clear on that, as though two accounts have got
mixed up,
which is quite probable);
it doesn’t even
matter how the fish and sea-birds survived,
and what Noah did
about the insects and the kinds of animals that people haven’t even
discovered yet!
What does matter, of course, is what the story
has to teach us.
Is there anything we can learn from a story
that was old when Jesus walked on this earth?
I think
there is.
I think this story can tell us a lot.
Perhaps not
so much about God’s character –
do we today really believe
in a God who would capriciously destroy the world?
On the other
hand, of course, we are told at the end of the story that God
promised never to do such a thing again,
which we can remember
every time we see a rainbow.
There’s a children’s song on
the subject which finishes “Whenever you see a rainbow, remember
God is Love”.
Which is actually no bad thing to do, of
course.
But I think the story, appropriately enough for
this time of year, is about resurrection.
Whatever
happened, it is obvious that there was a terrific cataclysm, and
much, if not all, of the known world was destroyed.
And yet God
rebuilt it.
The world survived.
God used Noah and his
family, so we are told, to repopulate the earth.
God used the
animals, birds and insects that had been stored in the ark to rebuild
the ecology, and the world was raised from what must have seemed to
be the end of everything.
Historically speaking, I
suppose, this must have happened lots of times throughout the earth’s
lifetime;
we are told of cataclysm upon cataclysm,
asteroid
strikes that may have disposed of the dinosaurs;
ice ages that
may or may not have destroyed humanity,
but in any case made
life difficult for it:
plagues, wars, pandemics, earthquakes,
floods, droughts and so on.
But we never expected to be
confined to our homes for over a year!
We knew there would be
plagues,
but we didn’t expect them to impinge on our
lives!
The world isn’t designed to be stable and
concrete.
Change, often cataclysmic change, is the only
constant.
“Nothing’s sure,” they say, “Except death and
taxes”.
The Bible teaches us that one day this earth will come
to a final conclusion,
and there will be “A new heaven and a
new earth” and, one gathers, permanent bliss.
Well, that may
well be so, but meanwhile we have this life to live first,
a
life in which things can change as quickly as someone flies halfway
across the world and brings a virus into the country.
But
there is always resurrection,
always renewal.
Most of us, I
expect, have met with the risen Christ one way or another;
we
believe in the resurrection or we wouldn’t be here.
We know
the risen Christ,
and we know, because of Christ, that life goes
on.
And we can experience that, as Noah and his family
experienced it, in our own lives.
I don’t mean just life
after death –
although, as St Paul says,
we’re going to
look extremely stupid if that doesn’t happen –
but also
resurrection in our lives here on this earth.
Jesus said, after
all, as we heard in our Gospel reading,
that he came so that we
could have life and have it abundantly, to the full,
and I’m
sure he didn’t just mean “pie in the sky when you
die”.
Sometimes, if life is particularly difficult,
that
may be all we have to cling on to,
the hope that one day there
will be a better world.
But other times, who knows,
a
better life may be just round the corner.
We are beginning to
emerge, tentatively, from lockdown and we hope that this time they
won’t have to impose it again, but who knows?
Who knows what
will happen tomorrow, even?
Realistically, only God knows. But
God does know!
Maybe we will be allowed to come properly
out of lockdown; to stay with our friends and families, to go to big
parties, if that is what gives us pleasure, or to travel! Maybe. At
the moment, only God knows.
The Government has plans, but they
could be foiled.
Resurrection happens, and we see the
proof of it even here in London as the spring brings out the blossoms
and the leaves and the spring flowers.
Noah and his family came
out of the Ark into a changed world,
but one where they could
make a new start,
grow their families and their crops,
their
flocks and their herds,
and build a life for themselves and
their descendants.
They had been, as it were, raised from
death.
Of course, they had been given a place of
safety.
Noah had, we are told,
been given very detailed
instructions on how to build the ark –
incidentally, if he had
built it to the dimensions given, it would have been about the size
of one of today’s larger bulk oil carriers!
And he trusted
God,
and carried out the work as he had been told,
because
he knew how to recognise God’s voice.
And Jesus reminds us how
important that this is.
“The shepherd calls his own sheep by
name and leads them out.
When he has brought out all his own, he
goes ahead of them,
and the sheep follow him because they know
his voice.”
Jesus reminds us of the need to know his
voice so that we don’t go off at a tangent, following the wrong
leader.
I know that sometimes we worry about this,
being
scared that we are going to get things wrong,
but honestly, if
we are serious about being God’s person,
I don’t think it’s
very likely.
If Jesus is the gatekeeper, the door, then he’s
not going to let us go off at too many tangents, or not for
long!
There’s a lovely passage in Isaiah that was one of the
first I learnt when I became a Christian:
“And when you turn
to the right
or when you turn to the left,
your ears shall
hear a word behind you, saying,
`This is the way; walk in it.'”
“This is the way; walk in it”.
We
sometimes complain that we don’t hear God’s leading very
clearly,
at least, not as clearly as, for instance, Noah seemed
to.
But there are so many instances when we can turn round and
say,
“Oh, there God was leading me!”
even if we didn’t
see it at the time.
We’ve probably all known those times.
And
often, they have led to times of resurrection for us –
but it
is only when we are experiencing the resurrection that we can see how
God led us.
Noah and his family had to spend six weeks on
the ark before it was safe to land,
so we are told.
But
when they landed, they found the land had been raised from death to
new life.
They saw how God had led them.
And we, too, see
how God has led us,
raised us,
protected us,.
Jesus said “I am come that they may have life, and have it abundantly”.
Abundantly.
In all its fullness.
Let’s trust God for that fullness,
or, if life is too painful to do that right now,
let’s just trust him
for the touch that can call us back to life again.
Amen.
