Watered Down
Genesis 6:9-22, 7:24, 8:14-19; Matthew 7:21-29

June 2, 2002

The big block-buster movie, “Waterworld,” a few years back received a lot of attention. Overly long, spent too much money, Kevin Costner did not act his very best, and many critics just said it was boring. The movie did get its point across regarding the environment.

Global warming had done its worse, the icecaps have melted, and land is a desperately sought after precious commodity. So precious that land might even have entered the realm of the mythological to the few bands of survivors and pirates who drifted on the endless ocean in search of solid ground.

The reason the Old Testament and Gospel readings are linked finds its appropriate parable in this waterlogged film.

In the beginning, at the creation of the world, there was not “nothing” - there was water. Water everywhere - a formless void - absolute chaos. That is what Waterworld had become - chaos.

Society had broken down almost completely. Warlords and demagogues ruled the high seas not for the good of their followers, but for their own capricious self-interests. On old rusted tankers they hunted for land, for a rock upon which to rebuild the foundation of a culture.

Creation of the world begins with the formation of dry land, separate from the waters of chaos. Recreation resumes with the appearance of land. Unless what we do, how we act and live, is built upon something solid - land, words, ideas, faith - everything becomes watered down and becomes chaotic.

This Genesis story gets the worst possible treatment by readers of the Bible - it gets trivialized and watered down.

For lots of us, it is that wonderful Sunday School story, replete with animals, a wise grandfather figure, and even a prairie connection - gopher wood to build the Ark! We love it, but frankly now don’t know what to do with it.

Nevertheless, there are Christians who become very exercised over any hint of a notion that Noah, the Flood and the Ark, did not happen exactly as it was written. In fact, Noah and the Ark becomes a matter of faith, and millions of dollars have been sent on sending archaeologists combing the slopes of Mount Ararat in Armenia in search of pieces of that gopher wood. The sad part is that for so many the story has no other meaning. It is a litmus test for the purity of one’s faith. What kind of faith is that?

As a result, we mainliners in the United Church have shied away from thinking about the tale except for those young enough to enjoy it for its own sake. Social activists find little of redemptive value, and are generally upset with the picture of a vindictive God who would drown all of creation.

Noah lived during an interesting age. He was the grandson of the oldest man Methuselah and had the physiological luxury of not starting a family until he had hit his 500th birthday. We worry today about the children of parents who are over 40 when they are born!

The way the author of Genesis describes the state of the world and its people is not radically different from today’s violent and obscene world. We listen to the news on the India-Pakistani border, sabre-rattling their nuclear weapons, and wonder how things could have been worse then. God was sorry to have created humanity back then.

Yet, Noah was a good, righteous human being. He walked with God. That means he was able to keep pace, get caught up in the rhythm, and be a good companion and communicate with God. Surely there are plenty of righteous people floating around today, Noahs-in-waiting. Sometimes when you are looking for a foundation, a human being is even more sturdy and stable than good cement.

The centre of the story is not Noah, the gopher wood or the waters of the Flood, but God and the compassion of God. God loved humanity, but knew things had gone too far and too wrong.

This is a creation story déja vu all over again. Don’t get lost in the mathematics of the Ark and the biology of its denizens. God wanted all every living thing, all creation, to survive and to live.

When it was all over, even God was shocked and dismayed, and God promised never to do it that way again. Not in the same way, but God did do it again at the Cross and on the Third Day. Through death the world is recreated. Unless we die to the old world we cannot be resurrected to life in the new world.

We’ve got a God...no...God has got us, a God who recreates in the midst of every prediluvian violence and carnage we can come up with. We are very creative about the violence we can devise and then justify.

We must have dry land, a rock upon which to build our houses. Christianity, however, gave up its physical dry land almost at the beginning. Jerusalem and the country of Israel are sentimental locales for our faith, but nothing we do depends on being there. We do not have a Mecca to which to pilgrim and the Jordan is not our Ganges to wash in. Many say that our lack of dry land is our loss.

Our dry land and rock of foundation is in hearing these words of Jesus and doing them. Doing them is the hard part, in case you wondered. But knowing the Scriptures and not treating them with condescension as if our brains are the source of all wisdom is our first step. We must know on what basis we think differently, and then we must actually think differently, not just mimic the ideas and practices of the in-groups in our society.

These words Jesus is referring to are literally the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. Our house is built upon the rock of “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth” and “first be reconciled to your brother or sister” and “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other cheek also” and “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” and “You cannot serve God and wealth” and “Do not be anxious” and “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.” A few other things as well.

It’s starting to rain again, but we have enough to do on a rainy day.

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