A Global Guarantee
Covenant • Sermon • Submitted
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Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 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. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”
If you look in a Bible dictionary you will not find a single article for the season of Lent. Why, you ask? It is because neither the word nor the season is in the Bible. This is not to say that it is a bad thing, though there was a time when the thinking was if something was not in the Bible, then it was not to be observed. Lent began in the early Church as a time of preparation for the catechumens. These people had been going through instruction into the Christian faith and life for quite a long time, most for at least 2 years. But now they were in a time of final preparation for baptism on Easter Sunday that would bring them in as full members of the Church. This preparation was time spent in prayer and sometimes fasting to make sure they were ready.
As time went on and the Church became more a part of life and culture, Lent became a time of penitence for everyone. It has been used to emulate the time Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness and went through the temptations. For many Christians today it is a time of sacrifice (not just giving up something that would be no problem to give up, like, say, exercise) to remind ourselves of Christ’s sacrifice and to work with God to overcome destructive habits. It is also a time when churches have special studies to learn more about the faith, to grow in spiritual life and to become more aware of the sacrifice of Christ. As we move toward the death of Christ on the cross and the resurrection, Lent is an appropriate time for us to reflect on our sinfulness and the cost of the cross.
But it is also a time to contemplate the covenants that God has made with humanity. A covenant is a formal agreement between two parties that establishes a relationship in which duties and responsibilities between the two are enacted. It is not a contract where there is not trust between the two parties, such as a loan or rent agreement, but an agreement in which there is a reciprocal trust that what has been said will be done.
There are two kinds of covenants. One is the conditional. In this covenant there is an agreement that “If I do this, you will do that.” It was very common for a king to issue this to his subjects or a god to proclaim this to those who worshipped. These kinds of covenants are found in the Bible as well. Think of the law codes in the books of Exodus and Leviticus such as where God says “I will be your God if you do….” or “I am the Lord who brought you out of Egypt. You will do…” These are conditional covenants between God and the people of Israel.
On the other side of the coin, there are non-conditional covenants. This type of covenant is where one side says that it will do something without requiring the other side to reciprocate. The language is one of “I will do this for you while you do not have to do anything for me.” This type of covenant is the one that we find in our scripture for today.
But first let us take a step back and look at what brought us to the scripture.
It is a story that we all know. We decorate our nurseries with it, we give our kids playsets of it and we tell them the story. It is, of course, the story of Noah’s Ark. In this story God looks down upon creation and regrets that it was ever made. The people are violent, corrupt and wicked. In fact, there is so much wrong going on that God decides to wipe out all living things. But there is one person who found grace with God, Noah.
God tells Noah that all living things are to be wiped out and that he, Noah, was to build a boat to contain him and his family as well as animals that God will send to be on the boat. In short, God is taking creation, wiping it clean like a dry erase board, and starting anew with Noah and the creatures on the boat. Noah listens to the voice that he hears, decides that it is not a bad bit of food that he has eaten, that it really is God who has spoken, and begins to build.
When he is done, Noah and his family board the boat with all the creatures that have come. When they are aboard, the windows of the heavens open up and the waters from below burst out. The rain and flooding that occurs goes on for 40 days covering the entire earth. Only the ones in the boat are saved from destruction.
After about 150 days, the waters had receded and the boat is on dry land. Noah, his family and the creatures on board all get out and Noah offers a sacrifice to God for them being allowed to survive the great destruction.
Now I want to take a moment to imagine what it was like when they got out of the boat. Have you even been to a place where there was a flood? The aftermath is not pretty. There is mud, and whatever else was in the water, everywhere. In a truly catastrophic flood, there will be the bodies of those who lost their lives. It is a sad and heartbreaking sight. Now imagine that on a global scale. Imagine the sight that awaited Noah and those on the boat when the door opened. I am sure that it was overwhelming and beyond comprehension. It makes me wonder sometimes why we tell this story to young children. It makes me wonder even more why we have cute toys and decorations that show only a very small picture of this very dark story.
But there is good that comes out of the darkness. When Noah offers his sacrifice, God tells him and his sons that it is known that there will still be evil in the world. Humans are humans. That was why there was the flood. But it seems that God regrets even more the destruction that was caused.
So, God tells them to be fruitful and multiply. But there is more. The regret that God feels is palpable. For this reason, God states: “I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you…”[1] This covenant that is to be established is that there will never again be a flood that wipes out the entire world. This is an unconditional covenant that is being made here. Notice that the word “my” precedes covenant twice in these two verses and will appear again in verse 15. Thus, God is making the covenant with humanity and with all the living creatures of the earth.
There are always signs of covenants. These signs can be anything that demonstrate that the covenant will be upheld. They can be the turning over of money or goods, a tattoo or circumcision, anything that can be used as a marker of a covenant. And there is a marker here of the covenant.
We call it a rainbow. But it is so much more than that. In the Hebrew the term is just “bow” which is used to indicate a war bow. The picture here is that God is hanging an undrawn bow in the sky. It is pointing upwards to show that it is not to be used against the living creatures on earth in a global flood ever again. It is a marker that serves as a reminder that should God ever want to destroy life again with a flood, God promised that it would never happen. From verses 13-16 God makes this promise and makes sure that those with whom God is making the covenant know that the bow will always be there, confirming the covenant that was made. Notice too that God does not require anything of those who are listening. There is nothing that they are to do. But they know that God has made a promise that will not be broken.
This covenant is still in effect today. It is a good thing too. I imagine when God looks down on the world and sees the hatred, the violence, the corruption, the destruction of the earth, God is greatly saddened. We take the good things that are given to us and twist them into something of our own making.
It makes one wonder what God thinks whenever there is a rainbow in the sky. We have taken and tamed it so much that it is a pretty little thing that we must take a picture of or we really don’t notice it at all. But to God it is much more. It is the reminder of a covenant made so very long ago with people who were just like you and me. It is a reminder that no matter how bad we become and how much regret God feels that we will never be destroyed in the same way again. But what should our response be to all of this?
As we enter into this time of Lent, we look back at the covenants that have been made with humanity. God made many covenants with humans, but the greatest covenant was made through Jesus, the covenant of grace and salvation. If we contemplate and remember this covenant then we will realize the magnitude of the first covenant that God made with humanity symbolized by the rainbow. We might begin to consider that if God entered a covenant relationship with us that we would not be destroyed, why can we not make a relationship with one another? If we would try then we would realize that all the problems that we have here on earth are of our own making. And that should give us pause. How can we live our lives so that all of creation lives under the global guarantee that God gave to Noah and those gathered round the boat that day when the waters receded? Maybe, just maybe, we can remember the covenant and the love that it took to make with humanity and return that love to God and to each other. Amen.
[1] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print.
[1] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print.
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