Transcript
ANDERSON: The sermon for this evening is inspired by four cups of Seder wine. And it's based on a passage found in the book of the prophet Isaiah, between the poetic portrayal of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53, and the invitation to the banquet of the last days in Isaiah 55.
I would like to read two parts, two [strophes?], from the poem in Isaiah 54. "Here the word of the Lord. For the Lord has called you, like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit. Like a wife of youth when she is cast off. Says your God: 'For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion
I will gather you. In overflowing wrath, for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,; says the Lord your redeemer. [For this is like the days of Noah to me. As I swore that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you and will not rebuke you.
For the mountains may depart, and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,' says the Lord, who has compassion on you." It would be a pity if the flood story were to become the exclusive domain of archaeologists who
search the debris of the past for the remains of some local flood in Mesopotamia that might have been the basis of the biblical story. Tonight, we have experienced the meaning of the flood story and other biblical stories in quite another way. That is, the way of storytelling and religious drama. The way of symbolic association, and poetic imagination.
And according to the prophet of the exile, whose words I have just read you, God himself seems to like this kind of storytelling and dramatic celebration, in which the flood ceases to be an archeological event of the past, and becomes a narrative that strikes fire in the present and illuminates the whole horizon of the future. Notice that God's word is
in the form of a similitude. "This is like the days of Noah, to me." The days of Noah were so terrible, as we read in the biblical flood story, that it seemed like the earth was on the verge of returning to chaos. The Tohuwabohu, the chaos and desolation that preceded creation. The world was in darkness, the darkness of God's judgement.
Or, in the language that expresses God's personal concern and involvement, it was a time of God's anger, God's wrath. God was not apathetic and indifferent about the human situation, but He was filled with the pathos of sorrow and discouragement and indignation. And why? The answer is given to us right at the beginning of the flood story, where we read: "Now, the earth was
corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence." In the present narrative context of the biblical flood story, various illustrations of this violence are given. Fratricide in Eve's family. The first city build by a murderer. The arrogance of power, expressed in [Leimuck's?] fierce thirst for retribution, and on and on through
history. Violence. That word has become front page news recently. As terrorist groups have engaged in kidnapping, murder, hijacking, all in the condition that acts of lawlessness are justified by a higher cause. Violence has spread like an epidemic, until it has become transnational in proportions. The Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany. Commandos from
Japan. The Red Brigade in Italy. [Mollucan?] terrorists in Holland. And violence breeds counter-violence. Palestinians commandeer a bus on the road to Tel Aviv, killing innocent civilians, including children. And Israel retaliates by moving into Lebanon, engaging in military action that leaves hundreds dead and thousands homeless.
It was just last Christmas that the world heard rumors of peace, as leaders of Egypt and Israel came together first in Jerusalem and then in [Ismailia?], but scarcely three moment later, even before Easter, President Sadat and President Carter deplored the return to the cycle of violence. Violence leading to counter-violence.
In the endless circle of hate and retribution. This is like the days of Noah. Indeed, there is the possibility that human action motivated by the determination to shape the future according to our own political objectives, or motivated by the opposite determination, to hold onto vested interests and maintain the status quo,
that human action so motivated could bring the near return of the world to chaos. That was the possibility that Jeremiah envisioned in his time, when the people recklessly believed that they could live as they pleased and get away with it, as though God's judgement could be escaped in human history. People are not the victims of fate or necessity. Their actions have
consequences which they bring upon themselves, for which they are responsible. "Your ways and your doings have brought this upon you," said Jeremiah, as he dared to contemplate the possibility of a world returned to pre-Creation chaos. Remember his powerful poem? "I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void. Tohuwabohu. And
to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. I looked and lo, there was no human being, and all the birds of the air had fled. I looked and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before the Lord, before His fierce
anger." The annotation to this poem, in the Oxford edition of the Revised Standard Version, puts this vision of chaos in the context of our world in a single sentence: "As if struck by a mighty nuclear bomb, the earth has been returned to its primeval state: waste and void, tohuwabohu." But the days of
Noah were also days of divine grace and renewal. Indeed, the purpose of the flood story, especially in the context of the Book of Genesis, is to convey a theological message. To portray in story form how God brings about a new creation in a world filled with violence and corruption. What a marvelous picture the narrator brings before our mind's eye.
We see the flood waters prevailing to the extent that there is water, water, everywhere, as though the world had returned to the primeval watery chaos, at the dawn of creation. But we also see a tiny speck tossing on the waters of chaos, the arc with its precious cargo of human and animal life. Is it possible that this
vessel, so frail in construction, so atomic in size, could survive in a world of chaos? The narrative swells to a climax as the waters reach their highest crest, and at that climactic point, at that turning point, we read in the story, "And God remembered Noah, and those that were with him in the arc." God remembered Noah! And
the remnant that was with him. And as evidence of a new creation, so the story goes on. "God sent a wind over the waters, over the earth, causing the chaotic waters to subside." And in the decrescendo of the narrative, we finally reach that point where a dove released by Noah brought back in her beak an olive twig as tender evidence of new life
on earth, of a new creation in which people would be supported by the regularities of day and night, summer and winter, hot and cold, and that this new creation, according to the unfolding flood drama, is based not on natural causes, and certainly not on any human possibility, but solely and wholly upon
God's gracious and unconditional commitment to His people, and also to those that are with Noah. The birds, the animals, and the beasts. The future, which is under the sign of the rainbow of promise, the very sign which we have experienced in our drama this evening, is governed by God's faithfulness, God's covenant loyalty. This is like
the days of Noah. That was the word that Israel heard in the time of her exile, after the fall of Jerusalem, in the year 587 B.C., after the deportation of many people to Babylonia, after the flight of many others to Egypt and elsewhere. In such a time, the eclipse of God was a terrible reality, for many people who wondered whether God
really cared. Whether God had forgotten, whether God was allowing the world to return to meaningless chaos. Yet, God remembered Noah and those that were with him. According to the prophetic proclamation found here in Isaiah 54, the people were still held in the embrace of God's remembrance.
With a loyalty that is more enduring than the everlasting mountains, for "though the mountain should move, and the hills were to shake, my loyalty to you would be immovable, and my covenant of grace unshaken." Hope for the future in a world of seeming chaos is grounded not only anything in the created world, and not on any human possibility,
but on the faithfulness of God, who has chosen to commit Himself to human beings, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, and even beyond the parting of death. We tell and retell this story on the other side of the crucifixion and resurrection. We tell it in the context of the announcement of the new creation that has been introduced by God's gracious action in Jesus Christ.
An early Christian symbol for the church, as you know, was a boat floating on the waters, a symbol that is still used in Christian art. Even church architecture has been influenced by this symbolism, for the word "knave," which refers to the central part of the church, where people come together to worship, comes from a Latin word meaning "ship." Like Noah's ark,
the Christian church is a ship, which symbolizes new life. Indeed, a new creation in a world that is ever on the verge of returning to chaos. To be a Christian is to take part in God's new creation, and all that that new beginnings means, in terms of a change of lifestyle. New concern for one another as human beings. New
responsibility for action in a world of distress, new passion for social justice. Paul wrote, in one of his epistles, "If any person is in Christ" -- let me paraphrase that. If any person is in the same boat with Jesus Christ, "then that person is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold the new has come."
Those of us who take part in this pascal celebration, which leads from Good Friday's darkness at noon to the dawn of Easter morning, can surely sense in faith's imagination the correspondence between this very time and the days of Noah. Viewed by itself, the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth
suggests a world on the verge of chaos. Good at the mercy of evil. Light extinguished by darkness. Life swallowed up by death. And all of us must experience that terrible power of chaos. Chaos that threatens our world with possible disaster. Chaos that threatens all of our cherished values with oblivion.
Chaos that threatens each one of us and all of us with death. Yet, we do not view the cross as a stark tragedy, but as an event that is crowned with and illumined by victory, so that as Paul puts it in one of his letters, "There is nothing in the whole creation, whether things present or things to come,
or height or depth -- nothing in the whole creation -- that is powerful enough to separate us from the love of God shown in Christ Jesus, our Lord." What we celebrate in the biblical story is the faithfulness of God, which supports us in our mortal weakness, which upholds us despite our failure and our sin, and which goes with us as we walk alone,
through the valley of death's shadow. The good news is that the powers of chaos, even though they rise to the crest level of a mighty flood, cannot separate us from the God who remembers, the God who cares, the God whose word stands forever. The Christian gospel transposes the announcement of the prophet of the
exile into a new and brilliant key. "This is like the days of Noah, to me. Though the mountains move and the hills shake, my love shall be immovable and never fail. And my covenant of peace shall not be shaken." Let us pray. Eternal God,
who caused light to shine out of darkness in the beginning, and who at the very climax of human history has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We praise you for the victory that you have given us through the whole biblical story, that we relive and celebrate. Your power is greater than all of the powers of
chaos. Your faithfulness is mightier than death. Grant that we may so deeply participate in the Christian story, that we may find new strength for our tasks, new understanding of our responsibilities, new confidence in Thy purpose in the world, and that having shared the fellowship of Christ's sufferings, we may also know Him this Easter season,
in the power of His resurrection. In Thy holy name, we pray. Amen.
AUDIENCE: Amen.