There is a lot of energy spent on whether or not the story of Noah’s Ark really happened. There is a lot of energy spent researching Babylonian and Sumerian stories of floods–parsing out literary bits and pieces to make the point that ancient Israelite literature presented a different worldview. But I’m going to make a blanket, perchance heretical, statement: I don’t care about any of that.
I don’t care, because I don’t think that literary significance or historical significance are the point of reading Noah’s Ark in 2018.
Because in 2018, Noah’s story doesn’t seem like a tale from our “primordial spiritual heritage,” but more like a prophecy–a story about our future.
As Florence floods the Carolinas, after Harvey sank Houston, and after Katrina exposed not only our ignorance and denial, but of our communal capacity to leave each other behind—after all these things, this story takes on a new kind of significance.
The flood seems like a real existential threat to all flesh in the here and now: our seas are rising, our climate is changing; the storms are stronger, the fires greater, the extremes more extreme.
Noah’s story seems to reach right out from the ancient mind of God, tug us on the ear, and say, “Are you paying attention?”
Our planet is speaking to us, and through the planet we may hear the word of God.
But if you’re anything like me, that Word may leave you feeling like a deer in the headlights. Climate Change is something that feels absolutely insurmountable. The dire predictions, the videos of glaciers calving at alarming rates, the very real weather changes that we ourselves have experienced—these things are frightening and paralyzing. Sometimes I catch myself wondering—well if it really is this bad, maybe I should just enjoy the world while I’ve got it.
So if you’re in any way a bit prone to despair, I think there is both good news and a tool kit here in the story of Noah.
First of all, this is a testimony of God’s love for the creation—it might not sound that way at first, but stick with me for a second.
God’s love grows and changes over the course of this story. God is grieving, because things aren’t right. God isn’t mad, God is mourning—and at first, he’s just going to wipe it all clean–but Noah stands out, somehow.
God enters into a relationship with Noah, and through that relationship, God’s plans change.
Noah’s story is the first in a long line of deepening covenants of love, discovery, relationship, and wonder. God’s behavior then was to err on the side of relationship, love, and holding on—and I can be sure that God’s behavior now is just the same.
God wants relationship with us, God wants us to be partners in the work of caring for creation. God doesn’t want a total do-over, but a transformation that will bring about a changed creation—and God is going to enter into relationship with us in order to make that happen. In the end, God promises to stick with us even though we’re never going to get it right.
The image of God in Noah’s story teaches us that we are not abandoned to all this—God wants the world to survive. God wants the creation to thrive, and God will tell us what to do.
But when God tells us what to do, we have got to do what Noah does, and actually listen.
When God tells him that the actions of the people of the earth will produce a cataclysmic result, Noah does not deny it, ignore it, or panic. Noah listens to God, and then he gets to work.
Our work may not look like cypress wood and measuring things by cubit, but it probably looks like an expensive, absurd, and deeply important investment in a new way of life.
And those investments are being made.
As a society, we are leaning–lurching–making a slow but powerful shift towards renewable resources. In Minnesota, even apartment renters can source their energy from wind and solar. Hybrid and electric cars are becoming ubiquitous and easy to purchase–y’all all know some Prius junkie in your circle. Reducing meat consumption is becoming easier as new, and surprisingly tasty, plant-based proteins enter the market. The entire city of Minneapolis now picks up compost–and in Ramsey county, we just have to drop it off.
Cities throughout the country are becoming hubs for innovation in transportation, sanitation, energy, and growing food.
Christian communities, too, are participating in these initiatives–LEED certifying their buildings, updating old buildings, and growing food on their property for the community.
But the Christian community has another, very important contribution to make to this conversation on climate change:
It is our duty to witness to a new cosmology.
It is time for us to get real about the good news we were called to proclaim: that the universe has God’s love at its center–not our own consumption, not our own existence, not our own experience–that we were not put on this earth to consume until we die, nor are we here to just “get what’s ours.”
Jesus’s cosmology says that we were put here to love and be loved, to be in relationship, and to care for creation. The story of Jesus proclaims that wherever there is death, God is showing up to do something new. The long history of God’s relationship to us tells the story of a God who clings to the strangest threads of hope, weaves something we can’t even guess at–and hopes that we will join in that work of restoration.
The world needs us to show up for that cosmology. The world needs us to proclaim that good news. The world needs us to have the same kind of faith and trust in that story that Noah once had.
To live as Noah lived is to trust that, though the odds seem insurmountable, the predictions dire, and we are only one person, that with God’s help, and in community, each one of us can accomplish so much more than what we can ask or imagine.
To live as Noah lived is to trust that what we can do is truly and actually useful. That we can undertake in an expensive, absurd, and deeply important investment in a new way of life, because ultimately God shows up to pull it all together.
Each one of us has a small and seemingly useless thing to contribute, but in God’s imagination, it becomes everything—it becomes exactly what is needed.
This article was adapted from a sermon delivered at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, St. Paul on September 23. We are exploring the stories of the Old Testament all year, beginning with Genesis 1 and ending in Daniel. You can listen to the sermon as it was delivered here.
I partially owe the idea of the ‘new cosmology’ to a recent episode of The Liturgists, where they were having a discussion about climate change. I believe it was Science Mike who slammed the desk and said “We need a new cosmology!” I think we’ve got the right kind of cosmology already in our toolkit, but it’s going to take a huge leap of faith, and a significant and intentional restructuring of our theology to go in that direction. I am willing to make that leap.
