Center for Biblical Theology and Eschatology

Passengers on the Ark

by Leonard J. Vander Zee

Title: Passengers on the Ark
Text: Genesis 6-9
Date Preached: September 30, 2001
Location: South Bend Christian Reformed Church
Preacher: Leonard J. Vander Zee

The story of Noah's ark is probably one of the best known stories from the Bible, strangely because of its appeal to children. "The animals went in two by two, the elephant and the kangaroo." It's odd, when you think about it that this story of great catastrophe and judgement would be deemed suitable for children. I wonder whether part of the reason we make it a children's story is because in that way we adults don't have to think of what it really means. So instead we make it a kind of fairy tale. Noah's ark becomes a toy with a roof that comes off so you can take the little animals out. Is this our way of evading the hard truth of this ancient story?

So what is this story about? First I want to suggest that the best way to read this story is not with a list of questions, like; did the ark's passengers include mosquitoes and cockroaches, and what did it smell like on the ark, and how did Noah's wife feel. This is not a story that calls for a magnifying glass of minute details. It's a story for big questions, God questions-questions about the judgement and mercy of God and his faithfulness in the face of human sin.

A terrible flood actually happened way back in the mists of pre-history; there's solid archeological and geological evidence for it. We are meditating today on a story that goes back thousands and thousands of years, a story that many civilizations and cultures have told in their own ways. But none of them tells the story with the drama and grace of the Bible.

There's a huge stumbling block for many people right at the beginning of this story. Smelling the stench of human wickedness, God decides to "blot out from the earth the people I have created." (verse 7) What an awful thing. How can God do this? It's hard to wrap our minds around the idea of such a universal catastrophe if we only see the world from our own point of view. But if we begin to take a God's eye view of the world, if we see human sin as a holy God sees it, we can perhaps begin to understand. God sees his creation ruined and destroyed by the creatures he made in his own image, men and women who have turned their backs on him, rebels against their creator. God's good creation has turned into a sinkhole of selfishness, violence, corruption, and revenge. Think about it. Is there any reason why God the Creator should put up with sinful humanity for one minute longer? Does the Creator have some obligation to bear with his rebellious creation?

But this is precisely where the text is so revealing. This story is the gospel in a nutshell. That's why it takes up four long chapters. It isn't just a story about God's wrath, his anger, and his righteous indignation. No, it talks about God's sorrow. As the NIV puts it, "The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain." (verse 6) The God we see in this text is not just indignant, but wounded, not merely angry, but hurt. This story invites us to look into the heart of God, and what we find there is not a vengeful tyrant, but a troubled parent who grieves over the alienation of his human creatures. God's judgement is not some detached decision, like a CEO who has to make some cuts in the work force, handing down the order in a memo. We see here a God who is caught between judgement and mercy. We realize that God's in love with the world he made. Whenever we read of God's wrath and judgement from God's side, it always looks more like grief, like Jesus weeping over Jerusalem.

Once we see God's pain, we begin to notice something else. In this horrific catastrophe of judgement, God is already planting the seeds of a New World. First, there's Noah. God always prepares a human partner for his work of covenant renewal, Noah, Moses, David, and finally, Jesus. If you read Chapter 5, it says that Noah was the son of Lamech, who sang a song of revenge, and it says that Lamech called him Noah because "out of the ground God has cursed, this one will bring us relief." God evidently called Noah even before he was born. Though the earth was full of sin and violence Noah still carried the knowledge of his creator in his heart. He was not perfect, as you can read in Chapter 9, but he was obedient and built the Ark at God's command. But, as important as Noah is to this story, the most curious thing of all is that in the whole long story Noah utters not a single word. You see, ultimately this story is not really about Noah. The only words we hear are God's words; the only thoughts are the thoughts of God's own heart.

There's another seed of a New World in the turbulence of God's judgement--the animals. I love this part of the story. God saves one family for a new beginning of human life, but he also saves a one pair of every species on the earth. Stately gazelles, ponderous elephants, chipmunks and eagles, armadillos and kangaroos, pythons and pandas, they too are precious in God's sight. God cares for the animals too, and makes sure that they are saved, "every one that has breath."

When I read about God bringing the animals to the Ark, I realize again how important it is to God that we care for the earth. I understand that something like the "Endangered Species Act" is not just the development-hampering legislation of some nature freaks, it embodies the very will of God, who loves all the creatures he made, and herds them all to the Ark. For one species to disappear through over-development or human neglect grieves the heart of the Creator.

God shut the door of the Ark. The rains came for forty days and forty nights, and the fountains of the deep came boiling up, and the flood rose high over the land. The water rose over forests and fields, it slid across kitchen floors and ran down stairs, over buildings and hills and even mountains. It was as though God had revoked the second day of creation when the waters and the land were separated. But Noah's Ark, that great labor of obedience and faith, broke free of its mooring and rose above the waters. There it was that cumbersome old tub, bobbing and rolling, creaking and pitching, above the boiling, crashing waters. Huddled below is the remnant of the whole living, breathing creation, and up above, captain Noah who didn't know his port from his starboard. As Frederick Buechner says, "It wasn't much, God knows, but it was enough, and it stayed afloat, and granted that it was noisy as hell and stank to heaven, creatures took comfort from each other's creaturelinesswhile all around there was only chaos and death."

Strange isn't it that the world isn't all that different today. After September 11 the story of the flood overwhelming civilization doesn't seem like just another fairy tale. As huge buildings crumble and terror threatens, we feel the storms building again, we feel the terrible weight of human sin. And what do we do? We look for an Ark to carry us through the storm. I have a friend who is not a believer; in fact he's hardly been in a church in years. But that night, riding down Ironwood with his radio on, he noticed the cars in the parking lot of Little Flower Catholic Church, and he joined them. "I just needed to be with people," he said. What he was really saying is that he needed an Ark, the Church, a place where people threatened by the flood of human violence huddle together in hope and faith. There's an old joke about the church, that if it were not for the storm without, we couldn't stand the stench within. God knows, its not that the church is so wonderful, but it's God's saving Ark in the turbulent waters of human history.

The turning point of the whole story is chapter 8:1, "God remembered Noah." It sounds strange to us, almost as though God, taken up with the business of heaven, had forgotten, and suddenly glanced at his celestial day-planner. No, the word "remember" here means God turns toward Noah. As soon as God remembered, the rains stopped, the winds blew, and the waters started to reside. God remembered. God remembered. And God remembers still. God can never be the end of things. He's the God of new beginnings. That's what faith hangs on to.

In those poignant last days on the Ark, Noah sets loose a dove from his own finger three times to roam the ruined earth. The first one comes back trembling and hungry. The second one comes back with a sprig of olive branch in its beak. Can't you just picture it? Teary-eyed old Noah, after months and months shut up in the Ark, his grizzled cheek next to the trembling breast of that dove resting on his callused palm. Just a sprig of hope held out against the end of the world, but that's all old Noah needs.

Finally the Ark comes to rest, and the land dries out, Noah removes the covering for the Ark and they all march out on dry land. The animals scatter, but Noah does a wonderful thing. He builds an altar and drops down to his knees in the moist dirt of the new earth to give thanks to God. Now listen carefully to the text, because it's the heart of the whole story. "And when the LORD smelled the pleasing odor, the LORD said 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.'" (8:21) This is God's first step in his mighty plan to redeem the earth.

There's an amazing paradox in the thoughts of God's heart. On the one hand, God says, "I will never again curse the ground because of humankind." But then God gives the reason: "for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth." What an amazing statement! God commits himself to the preservation of the world precisely because humanity is hopelessly sinful. After all that's happened, people have not changed. All the imaginations of the heart which were "continually evil" before the flood are still "continually evil" after the flood. The terror of the flood has changed nothing in humanity. Any hope for the future of the world is not based on optimism about human beings or the possibility of human progress. There is only one hope, and it's not from our side but from God's side.

The flood has brought no real change in human beings (do disasters ever do that for more than a few days or months?), but the flood has brought about an irreversible change in God's heart. Like a parent with a wayward child, God resolves in his heart that he will stick with the world that he has made, he will sustain this old world, enduring it's wickedness, no matter what. God decides in his heart that he will not allow human rebellion to stand in the way of his grand design for creation. This is a staggering statement from the very heart of God.

At the end of the story God makes a covenant with the earth, and seals it with a rainbow in the sky. This is not a conditional covenant--if you do this, I will do that. It is an unconditional covenant, a divine commitment to stay with this sinful world as long as it takes to fulfill God's hopes and dreams for creation. The text tells us that the rainbow in the sky is not for us, though every time we see it, we remember too. It's for God. "When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh." (9:14,15)

Amazingly, God commits himself to his sinful creation rather than destroy it. God binds himself to his ruined creation. God cannot, God will not abandon it. God's mercy overcomes his wrath. As the Psalmist says, "For his anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning." (Psalm 30:5)

Does that mean that God resigns himself to evil? No. God will find a new way to overcome it. Here begins a story that will lead through Abraham and Moses, Deborah and David, Elijah and Elisha, and finally to Jesus of Nazareth. And we have in this story the first hint of what God's new way will entail. God takes the pain and sinfulness of the world into his own heart and bears it for the sake of the future of the world.

Now, in Christ, we know what that means. God has superceded the sign of the rainbow with the ultimate sign of his faithfulness to his sinful creation, the cross. There, on Calvary, God's Son bears in his heart the full weight of human sin, and there he utters that final cry of victory, "It is finished!" The pleasing aroma of that sacrifice of love reaches God's throne and the world is saved. Because of the cross and resurrection of Jesus, because of that and nothing else, God fulfills the promise of the rainbow, and gives us hope for a New World.

We are all passengers on the Ark. Through the drowning waters of baptism God invites us to enter the new Ark, which is the church of Jesus Christ. Borne by God's faithfulness above the flood of human sin, with the cross as that sprig of hope promising a New World, we huddle together in the hold of grace. And we sing the great hymn of the crew on the Ark: "When through the deep waters I call you to go, the rivers of sorrow shall not overflow, for I will be with you, in trouble to bless, and sanctify to you your deepest distress. That soul that on Jesus is leaned for repose, I will not, I will not desert to his foes. That soul though all hell should endeavor to shake, I'll never, no never, no never forsake."

Amen!

Rev. Leonard J. Vander Zee is editor in chief for Faith Alive Christian Resources and was previously the ordained pastor of the South Bend Christian Reformed Church of South Bend, Indiana for 16 years. He is the author of the books, "Catch Your Breath: Bowing but Not Scraping," "Christ, Baptism and the Lord's Supper: Recovering the Sacraments for Evangelical Worship."