Flood, Grace, and the Winding Road to the Cross
July 8th, 2007
Kevin Derksen
Text:
Genesis 9:8-17
God at the Crossroads
When I started to think about the image of the crossroads as a summer theme, I imagined us, as God’s people, walking down the road of our lives, and coming to the inevitable intersections that open to us the uncertain possibilities of the unknown. I imagined God looking down benevolently from some vague ‘up there’ – directing traffic, in a sense – and assuring us that even the unknown of the future is safely in his hands. But the lines separating us from God were pretty clear. We’re down here on the road, God is up there watching over everything. The problem, of course, is that the whole ‘down here-up there’ division is a rather unbiblical one. It’s far too clean, far too sanitized. Our God is one who came and took up flesh to live among us, who intervenes in the messiness of human affairs. The New Testament claims that God is interested in the body, and in its resurrection. Paul likes to talk about being ‘in Christ’ as the indication of a whole New Creation. The seer of Revelation describes the descent of the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, down to the earth while a loud voice proclaims that the home of God is among mortals.
This is good New Testament, incarnational thinking. But if we’re ever tempted to forget this, even a quick return to the epic sagas of the Old Testament provides a ready reminder. Reading the story of Noah and the flood again, my picture of the crossroads image suddenly failed. In the book of Genesis, God is not simply directing traffic from above – God is part of the traffic. You see, Genesis is much more comfortable portraying God as some sort of a person than we tend to be. The God of Genesis walks with humankind, talks with them, experiences joy and delight, as well as sadness and anger. This God is interactive: you can plead with him or you can provoke him. The Old Testament is certainly clear that God is Holy, almighty and unfathomable: alone worthy of worship as the Creator and Sustainer of all things. But the Old Testament also gives God a healthy dose of personality. God has a good sense of humour, and a keen sense for irony. Sometimes God changes his mind, and sometimes you even get the impression that God is figuring things out as he goes along.
And so, it seems to me that the covenant made with Noah after the flood is indeeed a sort of crossroads, but its one that involves God as much as it does his people. When God says after the flood that he will never again destroy all flesh on the earth, this is a new beginning and a new direction in the tumultuous relationship between God and his creatures. This relationship obviously isn’t an equal partnership, but it is negotiated between both parties. God is part of the traffic at the crossroads, and at stake is the future of salvation-history. Will God be able to redeem the fallen creation? How can it be done?
Experiments
In a sense, the flood was experiment number one. We know the story well. Human sin had taken over and corrupted the whole creation so thoroughly that God decided to destroy everything; all flesh upon the earth. All except Noah and his family, that is, whose righteousness found favor in the sight of the Lord. And so they build that famous ark, and fill it with two of every animal on earth, as God commanded. The rains come, the windows of heaven are opened, and the earth is returned to the swirling watery chaos of the time before the first days of creation. All flesh on the face of the earth is destroyed. But, the text says, God remembered Noah and all who were with him in the ark. The rains subside, and a wind begins to blow over the waters, and they start to recede. Eventually, the water dries up, and the ark comes to rest on the dry ground of an earth cleansed of all life. As the animals file out of the ark, Noah makes an altar to the Lord and offers a sacrifice. God smells the pleasing aroma and says in his heart “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from 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”.
At the very least, the storyteller wants us to know that the flood has been a tragically painful experience for God. The first words God speaks are not of triumph or satisfaction, but of sorrow and perhaps even regret. And so God establishes this covenant of the rainbow with Noah, promising never again to destroy all flesh. The rainbow is to remind God of his commitment to the earth. Unlike other covenants God makes with humankind, this one with Noah and his descendents doesn’t come with a list of reciprocal obligations. This covenant isn’t conditional on the behavior of the other party. It’s an unconditional commitment on God’s part never to do this again.
The text of Genesis seems to make it quite clear that destroying all flesh by the flood wasn’t ultimately going to solve the problem. And God appears to realize this pretty early on. The inclination of the human heart is to evil from youth, and the flood hasn’t changed that. The flood has dealt with the worst manifestations of the problem, but not with the problem itself. The corruptions of human sinfulness will work their way into the whole of creation once more. Starting from scratch with one righteous family won’t finally do the trick. And so it seems to me that the rainbow covenant which ends the story of the flood is a bittersweet experience for Noah and for God. The covenant God makes with Noah and all flesh on the earth is good news, but it comes in the wake of the tragic destruction of God’s corrupted creation. I can’t help but hear overtones of lament in God’s repeated refrain ‘never again’…. ‘never again’.
At the end of the flood story, we find God at a crossroads with his own creation. Experiment number one in dealing with fallenness turns out not to be the direction God finally wants to go. This is a bit of an unnerving conclusion to come to. Can it really be the case that God is figuring this all out as he goes along? That feels dangerously close to admitting that God is fallible, that God makes mistakes, or that God somehow is not perfect. And yet, the Old Testament scriptures insist on describing a God who is decidedly more complicated than we’re often comfortable with. A God who in Genesis 6 is sorry that he ever made humankind upon the earth. And then a God who after the flood gasps that never again will he
bring about such destruction on his creation. This is a God who has changes of heart, and changes of mind. A God who reaches a crossroads, and scratches his head, asking ‘what next?’.
Claiming the Flood as Grace
Reading the flood as something of a ‘failed’ experiment in redemption, however, doesn’t leave us with a whole lot to go on in terms of hope. If the flood was in fact a mistake, itself beyond redemption, there’s no guarentee that the next attempts will go any better. The paragraph in the announcement sheet describing our summer theme makes the claim that the crossroads can be a hopeful place because in Christ we follow God from grace to grace. The experience of grace past gives us confidence in hoping for a grace-filled future. But what if tragedy overwhelms the grace past, disrupting hope for the future? The question is whether there is any way for us to claim the flood as grace, or whether it must remain in the realm of pure tragedy. How ought we to hear God’s voicing of the ‘never again’? Does it condemn what has been to its painfulness, or does it call forth new winds of redemption?
I do believe that the flood can be reclaimed as grace, and even as grace towards a confidence in God’s future. If the Old Testament is surprisingly comfortable with personifying God in ways that sometimes sound too human to our ears, it’s also remarkably consistent in its affirmation of God’s absolute faithfulness to his creatures, even when such faithfulness seems unwarranted. God will not finally give up on creation, no matter how badly corrupted, no matter how many times God has to try. And I think the story of the flood makes this claim about God’s faithfulness in at least two important ways that we ought to pay attention to.
Not All is Destroyed
The first is that God took pains to save the family of Noah, along with a sampling of every creature inhabiting the earth. Perhaps this sounds like a bit of a strained attempt to see the glass half full: “Well sure, God did destroy an entire planet-worth of life, but look on the bright side – he saved Noah!” The good news rings shallowly in the face of such monumental disaster. And yet, I think that one of the most important claims the flood story tries to make is that while God’s anger and judgment is entirely justified, it will not come completely – some will survive to begin again.
The writers of Genesis are keenly aware of humanity’s status as creatures; given life from the dust as the gift of a Creator-God. From this perspective, destruction is the prerogative of the one who creates. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah liked to use the image of the potter and clay to remind Israel of its creaturely status. Does the potter not have the right to return a marred pot to the ball of clay and begin again? And according to Genesis, the potter’s creation was marred indeed. In fact, the text describes the fallenness of creation as a working of destruction upon itself. The earth had been corrupted by the evil and wickedness of all flesh, to the point where it was imploding; a self-destruction from the inside. In the flood, God’s judgment only finishes what the creatures of the earth had begun. And we who read the story are left to say ‘who can blame God for wanting to start over?’ At some point the potter must clean the wheel, and begin again.
And so it is that we are led to read the sparing of Noah as a story of grace. God had license to end the whole thing right then and there, but he chose instead not to give up on humankind. In fact, God takes great pains to ensure the survival of his creation: the calling of Noah, the elaborate instructions for building the ark, the commitment to a sampling of every creature that God had made to inhabit the earth. And then, in the midst of the chaos of water upon water, in the face of the open floodgates of his sadness, anger and betrayal, we are told that God remembered Noah and all those with him in the ark. God remembered them, and the waters began to subside. That moment of remembering, in the first verse of chapter 8, is the turning point of the story. If there is to be a ‘moral’ to the story of the flood, this is where we should start to look for it. Wave after wave of divine judgment in grief and frustration is halted suddenly by the sight of a small boat tossing in an endless sea. God will not abandon or forsake his creation even in the hour of fiercest judgment. The story continues – there will be renewed life, renewed hope, and a renewed world.
The Winding Road to the Cross
The second way in which the flood story affirms God’s continuing faithfulness in grace is by its place within the larger biblical story. The point here is that even if the flood was a tragic intervention which God refuses to repeat, it is by no means the last experiment in the redemption of creation. In fact, there is a sense in which the road taken in God’s covanent with Noah sets the history of salvation on a course towards the cross of Jesus Christ. And here, we confess, God dealt decisively with the powers of sin and evil and fallenness. This road to the cross isn’t necessarily a straight line. It winds around here and there, hitting bumps and struggling uphill at times. It’s not an easy or a simple road. But it is continuous, connecting the flood to the cross in an unbroken line of divine faithfulness.
With the covanent of the rainbow, God’s strategy appears to change. As a solution to the problem of human fallenness and creation’s corruption, the flood is about consolidation and purification. The idea is to pare humanity down to its most righteous core; to start from scratch with the one blameless family who walked with God. A good harvest begins with the planting of good seed, so lets clear the field and start over. But its remarkable how quickly after the flood God turns from this strategy. Never again, God says. Never again will I fix things by purifying the earth in judgment. Never again will I consolidate humanity into the one righteous family.
If you read on in Genesis, the ‘never again’ is followed by a very interesting new strategy on God’s part. The very next story after the flood begins with the tower of Babel, and its tale of scattering. When the people come together to build this impressive city and tall tower, their motivations are both to make a name for themselves, and to avoid being scattered over the earth. But God will have none of this attempt at consolidation, and its promises of power and prestige. Instead, God confuses their languages and sends them out all over the earth. Humanity has diversified. It is no longer one people, but the beginning of many nations, many cultures, many peoples. And in the midst of all this diversity, all these many peoples, God does something a little startling. God calls a man named Abram, and tells him that his descendents will become a great nation. God makes a covenant with Abram, choosing this one particular people out of all the many of the world. But the punchline of Abram’s call ought not to be overlooked: through you, God says, all the nations of the world will be blessed.
God has not lost his concern for the whole of creation. As in the days of the flood, God’s own being is wrapped up in the lives of all people, rejoicing in the spark of divine life they all share, while grieving for the extent of their fallenness. But now the strategy has changed. From that moment after the flood, a new direction has been taken. The redemption of creation will come through the calling of a particular people among the many of the world. A people whose lives will be a witness to their Creator, and to the power of God to redeem the worst of human evil and sinfulness.
And so perhaps it should come as no surprise that the story of the Israelites goes up and down, winding a sometimes tortured path through the Old Testament. There are many stories of faithfulness and righteousness, but just as many of corruption, idolatry, and of a broken-hearted Creator pleading for his people to turn back in repentence and in faith. But the winding road is never interrupted, however bumpy it often gets. However badly God’s people abuse God’s sacred trust, they are never abandoned, never forsaken. God’s covenant faithfulness remains sure, at work redeeming what was created so good.
From the perspective of the New Testament, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are part of this winding road. In fact, they are the decisive moment along the journey. In Christ the road comes around full circle, even as it takes off towards eternity. The people of Israel had always known that their chosenness served a larger purpose. They knew from the call of Abram that they were to be a vehicle of God’s blessing and God’s saving work to the nations, even if they sometimes forgot it for a while. For the writers of the New Testament, this purpose from the beginning had reached a moment of fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Through Christ the nations were to be brought into the people of God, now consisting of both Jew and Gentile together. The redemption of Creation is still through a particular community of people, but a people now open to all in celebration of the Lordship of Christ.
And so the road winds on through the time of the church, eagerly anticipating the final redemption, even as its many curves and detours witness to an uncertain timeline and itinerary. But it’s this road that runs all the way back to the flood, and connects us with it by a chain of grace. Admittedly, this isn’t a grace of straight lines and high speeds. Sometimes the road changes direction, even doubles back. If we look for too efficient a grace in the flood, we may struggle mightily to find it. But if the grace of this road is its continuity, its unbroken line of divinely faithful and patient effort, it may be that we can reclaim the flood as grace after all. It may be that when it’s God with whom we arrive at a crossroads, tragedy and hope are not really so far apart.