Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Pentecost 3: June 1, 2008
Genesis 6: 9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19
The Rev. Melissa Skelton
These are the descendants of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God. And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth. Make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above; and put the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks. For my part, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every kind shall come in to you, to keep them alive. Also take with you every kind of food that is eaten, and store it up; and it shall serve as food for you and for them.” Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.
And the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred fifty days.
In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry. Then God said to Noah, “Go out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons' wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh— birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth— so that they may abound on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” So Noah went out with his sons and his wife and his sons' wives. And every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out of the ark by families.
“In your hands we rest
In the cup of whose hands sailed an ark
Rudderless and without mast.
In your hands we rest
Who was to make of the
Aimless wandering of the Ark
A new beginning for the world.
In your hands we rest
Ready and content this day.”
This is one of the prayers a small group of people here at St. Paul’s prays each Tuesday morning at 7:00 AM. The prayer, written by Alan Jones, the Dean at Grace Cathedral, contains images, of course, that are taken from our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures for today—the story of Noah, a man asked to build an ark, the story of Noah, his family and pairs of animals entering that ark, and the story of 150 days of rain producing enough water to cover all the earth.
It’s a strange story, really. For on the one hand, it’s a favorite subject for children’s books and toys—you’ve seen them—the chunky wooden ark with Mr. and Mrs. Noah looking a bit like Mr. and Mrs. Claus surrounded by pairs of cute, brightly colored animals. And on the other hand, this story is a dark, very adult story—the story of God, fed up with human violence deciding to un-create the world—that is, to release the waters of chaos back upon the earth and destroy all of the human and animal life there.
But darkness isn’t the only thing in this story, for against the backdrop of violence and destruction, we find a story about preservation, about God choosing one family as a remnant through whom God is willing to give it all another try. And so at the end if it all, this is a story about second chances.
Today I want to talk about second chances. I want to talk about second chances because a world without second chances is a threatening flood with no ark full of life floating on its surface. A world without second chances is a vise in which we are squeezed because we don’t have the possibility of a “do over:” A world without second chances is a world without surprise or grace or hope.
And for some reason, it’s easy to believe we don’t really get second chances in life. Is it because we live in a culture that gives us a lot of messages about winning and losing? Is it because we had parents who were always cautioning us about doing things that would “ruin our lives”? Or is it just because?
Whatever the reason, Scripture seems to suggest that second chances are important and so we have story after story of those who after their own gross missteps, in some cases involving violence, are given second chances. Think of David or the Apostle Paul. And we have stories of those whose lives took a turn that should have meant that things were all over for them who were given second chances—look for instance at story of Ruth.
But more than any of these stories about the human beings, the sweep of our Scriptural story is all about a God of second chances, a God who no matter how bad it gets, cannot and will not un-create the world, but will search for and call out to a remnant, to what may be only a tiny part within us or to a minority point of view within the world. This remnant within us or within the world that is willing to ignore all the messages that the world “has gone to hell in a hand basket” and out of faith or hope of stupidity, is willing once again to enter an ark, set out upon uncertain waters and wait for dry land to appear.
And so in a sense the ark becomes a symbol for our housing that part of us and that part of our world that hears and acts on God’s call to trust in second chances after violent actions or disappointments. It is like the person in our gospel for today that Jesus says has built his or her house on a rock instead of sand, but, of course, in this case, it is a house that’s able to ride the waters of chaos instead of standing firm when the wind and the rains come.
Sometimes we’re able to do this for ourselves, to house this within ourselves and sometimes we are not. And for me, this is when I get to discover just how gracious God can be.
I just got back from a training session in the Diocese of Northern Indiana. One of the people I met there was a priest who had been at a parish for about 8 years. A musician from California by background, he was the rector of a parish in a very conservative part of Indiana. He had started a third liturgy some years ago at this parish and to his surprise gay and lesbian people who for the most part were underground in that community began to attend. It was then that all the sexuality stuff hit in the Episcopal Church and it was then that at least as he told it, that the sky opened up and it rained for 150 days. It rained upon the parish where the national conversation about sexuality activated fear and suspicion among members on both sides. Some left; others stayed; some new people came. But more than seeming to producing waters of chaos in the parish, the rector found that it was over and around and through him that the waters of chaos were surging. For he was seeing and hearing things from people on both sides that he had grown to love that were disillusioning and demoralizing to him, and he was having to face his own limitations in keeping things as they had been or in even helping the parish to navigate these difficult waters. (Has this ever happened to you?)
As I heard this story from him the only thing I could ask was—how did you get through it? And what he said was this; “The only thing that got me through it was my family—they were my ark.”
And so at times even when we cannot build our own ark, cannot house our remnant affirmative response to God’s call to venture out in trust and hope toward a second chance after violence and disappointment, we can find that sometimes God seems to have already built and prepared an ark for us, whether the ark carrying us is our family, our friends, our church, our community or our animal companions. And then we find that all we need to do is to enter that ark, give ourselves over to it and let ourselves be carried by it toward dry land and the recreation of our world.
And so I want to end where I began—with Alan Jones’s prayer but this time listen for what your ark is—your own ability to house a remnant hope for your own life or for the life of this world of ours—or the ark that God has somehow already assembled and prepared for you, the people and communities and creatures who help to carry you across the waters of chaos that come in our lives..
“In your hands we rest
In the cup of whose hands sailed an ark
Rudderless and without mast.
In your hands we rest
Who was to make of the
Aimless wandering of the Ark
A new beginning for the world.
In your hands we rest
Ready and content this day.”
