Rain Fell
Genesis 6-8; Matthew 7:21-29

May 29, 2005

Even before the Reverend Earle Armistead retired, he decided to build his retirement home about 40 kilometers north of Rainy River, Ontario, on the shore of Lake of the Woods near Morson. Every time you entered the house from the south side, you couldn’t help but notice. The entrance level contained his workshop and bunk beds for grandchildren, for the living and entertainment quarters were located on the second floor. As you trudged up the stairs, all around you it seemed was a huge rock. Earle had built his house upon a rock. The winds did blow storms off Lake of the Woods, the rains fell in torrential downpours, the snow and ice encroached unkindly upon the house. But Earle knew the Gospel and really knew the end of the Sermon on the Mount, so he knew upon what kind of foundation one builds his home.

This parable that Earle took literally to heart is not the run of the mill parable. Most parables speak to a specific situation and confront you and me to act or think in a particular way. Whether one chooses rock or sand upon which to lay the foundations of one’s house refers to an encyclopedia of ideas and imperatives. “Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts upon them is like….” These words, at the minimum, are all the beatitudes, all the new commandments and directions of the Sermon on the Mount in the 5th, 6th, and 7th chapters of Matthew. It is not like you are free to choose out one topic that deeply strikes you. It’s the whole thing. It is an entirely different way of perceiving the world, a new culture.

Jesus kept saying throughout the Sermon on the Mount, “You have heard it said that way, but I am telling you about it this way.” The Gospel is not doing things in the old traditional way, but in a new and radical way that is nevertheless based upon the rock solid love that is God. Do not believe everyone will love you for living by the Gospel. If you base your way of life upon the traditions of people, no matter how ancient and seemingly successful, you are inevitably doomed because these human values shift like the sands of the seashore and desert. When the rains fall, your house will come tumbling down.

It is sad to recognize that no longer everyone knows the story of Noah and the Flood and the Ark. I have encountered university students who respond “Noah who?”, so I am learning to assume nothing. Humanity has reached a debauched state that God can no longer tolerate. It’s only the 6th chapter of Genesis, only the 6th chapter of the Bible, so God is still in the early stages of the grand experiment of creation and this is the first real bug in the works.

There is a tremendous amount of dry humour in this ancient tale, which I think it is worthy of an episode or three of Corner Gas. Brent Butt would naturally play the role of Noah. It would happen naturally during one of those disastrous wet springs such as we experienced in 1999 when southeastern Saskatchewan and southwestern Manitoba became the 6th Great Lake.

It is no stretch of the imagination to see the small town of Dog River and its way beyond normal way of life being eminently worthy of a universal catastrophe. The story would have to begin during the long dry spell when people realize why the Bible often referred to water as the source of real life. Brent would find himself not thinking of a cool drink and green lawns, but of too much water, floods. I am not sure how the writers and producers would introduce God’s walking around talking to Brent without making him look absolutely crazy. I guess it doesn’t matter because Noah’s neighbours knew he was certifiable. And they had all the facts to support them. Leave it up to the writers whether Brent starts constructing a big boat or waterproofing the Corner Gas station. Everybody around Brent would be concerned – for his mental health.

By the time all of his neighbours have given up on Brent and the boat or whatever was just about complete, it would start to rain and that would make everyone deliriously happy. Then it would keep raining and the basements would all be flooded. Then the farmers would complain – a rare event of Biblical proportions.

Brent through all of this is a changed human being. After all the abuse and the Godly conversations and the disastrously damp developments, Brent is seeing a different world. He realizes he is not the only person in the world, and that other things need to be cherished and preserved. What items in the store will he pack away safely? Should he bring along any pets or farm animals? Who should he bring into the inner sanctum of his Corner Ark? Will he invite Lacey? I assume he will include his mother Emma. But will he bother with telling his father Oscar? Leave it to the script writers.

Then the rain, now in its umpteenth day, would carry away Brent and his company to a lonely safety. This is Saskatchewan, however, and especially in Dog River they are all used to looking out upon the horizon and seeing absolutely nothing for eternity.

The rain does stop, but there still is nothing but water, the primeval chaos of Genesis 1. I don’t know how the writers are going to work the next part out – there really are no mountains in Saskatchewan for the Ark to land upon. Perhaps a grain elevator would be fitting. Life would resume again, yet not as we know it.

In the latter half of the 1800’s and early 1900’s Biblical historians stumbled upon several more ancient versions of the Flood among the Babylonians and Sumerians. One has the charming character Utnapishtim basically running around doing Noah-like stuff long before Noah. The historians were horrified: the Hebrews obviously borrowed the earlier story; the Bible wasn’t original, and therefore could not really be true and trustworthy. Plagiarism is a serious crime.

These historians and Biblical scholars could not see the forest because of the trees – I’ll have to explain that proverb to native Saskatchewanites – that the Hebrews adapted the story and made it importantly different. This was not a flood because of impersonal forces or the whimsy of petulant gods as in the other versions. This flood is not random, but the result of the failed relationship between God and human beings, God’s creation. Ecology-minded folk are retelling the same stories today with a set of contemporary parables.

All of this brings home the fact that Noah, Ark and Flood, are definitely the Gospel because you and I are compelled to turn the world upside down and understand it differently. There is no one object lesson from Noah and the Flood we are supposed to imitate. He is a person who saw the world radically differently and lived with God at the centre of his being. The builder who erects a house upon the rock of the words of the Sermon on the Mount cannot point to one lesson, one action, one belief that marks one belonging to the Gospel. We are a people absolutely different from the humdrum of Dog River. We are a people, chosen one could truthfully say, to be driven by the dynamics of a love that is not concerned with social custom and traditional mores, but with undivided love towards all of creation. That’s what God was whispering into Brent’s ear.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan