If God wanted to do a new thing, would he include me in his plans?
Genesis 6:5-18
January 3, 2010
Snow days
About two weeks ago, on the day following December’s 7” snowfall, I officiated at a wedding where both partners had been married previously – one partner more than once. During the “charge to the bride and groom,” I had this to say to them,
Snow is a good metaphor for remarriage. Today represents a snow day in both your lives - maybe the most important snow day other than when you gave your life to Jesus Christ.
We don’t get do-overs in life, but we do get start-overs. It’s called grace. You have a fresh blanket of white over you today. God has brought you into each other’s life to give you another chance for a marriage where words like faith, priorities, faithfulness, communication, priorities, and shared ministry are part of your relationship.
Today is about a blanket of snow that covers the past and gives an opportunity for a new beginning.
The beginning of January every year is another one of those snow days. This year, January marks not only the beginning of a New Year, but the beginning of a new decade – the way most people mark decades, anyway.
What does starting over look like at the beginning of a New Year?
The first covenant
For about two hundred members and friends of Corinth, starting over in 2010 includes a commitment to read the Bible through during the coming calendar year. It’s not too late to join them – just e-mail or call me, or find me on Facebook. We are only on the third day.
What we pastors have decided to do about preaching this year, at least for the first few months, is to choose stories from the Bible that come from parts of the Bible we are reading. The parallel won’t be exact, of course. During January we will take a few weeks to read and study the life of Noah, since Bible readers will come across that epic story this week.
In the story of Noah and the flood, God decides to cover the world with a blanket of snow. It’s the most radical start-over recorded in the Bible. There’s a lot in today’s reading about how God will “wipe mankind…from the face of the earth” (v. 7), “put an end to all people” (v. 13), and “destroy all life from under the heavens” (v. 17), but the end goal is expressed in verse 18. God says to Noah, “I will establish my covenant with you.”
This is the first use of the word “covenant” in the Bible, but far from the last. A covenant is what we call a contract – a deal or pact based on an exchange of promises. Marriage is called a covenant in Malachi 2:14. From this point on in the Bible remarriage – new covenants – will happen several times as God’s agreement with people are broken repeatedly (by the people, not God) and God starts over.
The feelings of God
The story of Noah is well-known – the highlights, anyway. But every well-known story deserves a fresh look from time to time to see because we may have missed or forgotten some important aspects of the story.
This story begins by depicting God with emotions that you and I can relate to. He is sad. He is mad. And he is glad.
Commentators are virtually unanimous that God is described as having these emotions simply to make him more accessible to us. (The technical term is “anthropomorphism.”) In other words, we shouldn’t think of God having mood swings. God’s character and his actions do not change.
He is presented in Genesis 6 first as being sad. “The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain” (v. 6). That’s pretty graphic. Think back to the first two chapters of Genesis and how God saw everything that he had made, and it was good (1:31). Now he looks around and sees how lust (6:1, 4), power (6:4), and violence (6:11, 13) have become the norm.
Don’t get so lost in the debates over questions like when this flood happened or how it was logistically possible that you forget to feel God’s pain. “I created this beautiful world with all its promise, and gave humanity all they needed to fulfill their potential of loving and being loved because they are created in my image, and look at the mess they have made.” Visualize God’s eyes welling up with tears as he surveys the world.
God is not only sad; he’s mad. “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth” (v. 7). “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth” (v. 13). “I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it.”
Do you think of God as getting really angry? If not, the god in your mind is not the God of the Bible. I don’t just mean the Old Testament. God’s wrath is clearly evident in the New Testament as well, including in the life and teaching of Jesus.
God’s anger is not like yours and mine. It’s not selfish. He’s angry in the same way you might be angry about a child who does drugs or drops out of school. He is mad because of how we destroy ourselves and miss all that we can be.
His anger is also not impulsive. He is “slow to anger,” the Psalmist says (145:8). And he shows it here in Genesis 6 by giving humanity more than a century (6:3) to clean up their act. It’s going to take a while for Noah to build that boat anyway.
So God is sad and he is mad, but he is also glad. Why? Because there is a delightful exception to a world gone wrong, a man named Noah. He is described in verse 9 as “righteous” and “blameless” among the people of his time. He “walked with God.”
Again, don’t try to overlay all your other theology on this story. It confuses you and robs the story of its power. This is not the time to harmonize this passage with what the Bible says in Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Noah is no exception – and we will learn that as his story unfolds.
The point here is only this. In a world of moral sleaze that makes God sad and mad, there is one man who makes God glad. He is a contrast with his contemporaries (v. 9). There’s a great goal for 2010 – to stand out among your peers as one who keeps in step with God, who measures his or her life by a different standard than the world.
This is why verse 8 says that “Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.” This is why Noah was chosen to build the big boat.
Verses 15-16 describe the dimensions of the boat. If you’re interested, it is described as roughly as wide and high as our sanctuary, and about three times as long. It has three decks and one door. It’s a big, floating box – no rudder or sail is described. It’s not designed for a journey, just for a safe haven to protect one man, his family, and a whole lot of animals.
That’s as far as the story takes us today. Feel with God. He’s sad about what the world has become, mad enough to destroy it, and glad there is one man through whom he can start over.
Strategies for the New Year
I couldn’t help but make the connection between Genesis 6 and the first Sunday of the New Year. Both are about starting over.
Genesis 6 prompts me to ask, “When God looks at our world today, what makes him sad? Mad? Glad?”
Those are hard questions to answer. It might a little easier to be personal. What about me makes God sad or mad or glad? If God were to start over today, would he want to start with me? If he wanted to do a new thing, would he want to set me aside or include me in his plans?
A new year is a chance to start over. Pick an area of your life to wipe the slate clean.
I would suspect the Holy Spirit has already been tugging at your heart about the need for a fresh start in your life. Where do you need a snow day? Don’t spend a lot of time pining for do-overs from 2009 or before. Do choose today for a fresh blanket of white, a start-over.
Is there some bitterness and resentment you just need to let go? Is there an indulgence in your life that has become an idol because you look for it to provide what only God can do? Is there an addiction you are finally coming to terms with? Is there a fear that will not let go? Is there a person or situation you have been avoiding?
In other words, don’t use the story of Noah to reinforce the cultural value that asks, “Who or what is getting in the way of my happiness? I need to just cut that person out of my life.” That’s the Dear Abby solution – it’s not the biblical one. Maybe it’s the tendency to avoid uncomfortable people and situations – to blame them instead of looking within – that needs a start over.
But how do you start over in any of these areas? Here are a few practical strategies.
First, confession. Name the poison in your life. God said in Genesis 6, “The world is a mess, but it’s not the world’s fault – it’s people.” You have to be brutally honest about what is toxic in your life and name it.
Second, replacement. Whenever you are attempting to root out a bad habit or self-destructive addiction or evil pattern in your life, it’s usually not enough to grit your teeth and say, “I’m going to quit that.” A nineteenth-century Scottish preacher, Thomas Chalmers, preached a famous sermon titled, “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection.” Google it. He said, “You have all heard that nature abhors a vacuum…It is not enough, then, to argue the folly of an existing affection.” He goes on to say that you need to replace that sinful indulgence with a godly way to use your time and energy.
Third, accountability. You cannot do this alone. You will not do it alone. You need a person or a small group of people who know where you are trying to start over and have permission to ask you the hard questions. Choose those who, though they are people of understanding and grace, will not let you off the hook when you stumble, which is virtually inevitable. In some cases, you need to make yourself accountable to a counselor – which could be anyone from a Stephen Minister to a pastor to a good Christian therapist where those old habits are deeply ingrained in a dysfunctional past.
Finally, communion. This is another one of those biblical words that is multi-layered in its meaning. Accountability is certainly part of the “communion of the saints.” But today we gather around this communion table.
We will eat just a small piece of bread and drink just a small cup of grape juice. For some of you, that’s all they will be in a ritual devoid of its significance and power. I thought of how lightly we take this holy meal – how lightly I take it – this week when I read that the first time Martin Luther celebrated the Mass as a priest, he trembled so much that he nearly dropped the bread and cup. He was so aware of the presence of Christ that he tried to run from the altar.
It was part of Luther’s misunderstanding of God that made communion fearful. That is not the response I am suggesting. But what if for those of us needing a start over, the presence of Christ in the sacrament became so real and vivid that we could not help but choose today as that start over?
A start over doesn’t mean the journey to change has hit the finish line. It means we choose this moment as the moment to let go and begin again.
This table of the Lord can be a fresh symbol of God’s grace, a reminder of that blanket of snow with which God can and will cover all that went before. That’s why Jesus died – to pay the penalty for and remove the power of the sin that destroys us and blocks our way to the Father in heaven.
Open your heart to the new covenant with God that Jesus made possible. This Table is all about starting over. Amen.