Noah and the Fragile Freight of Life

In the Middle East, on the West Bank, there is a zoo. It’s in a Palestinian town called Qalqilya and it is the last zoo in the Palestinian Territories. Everything else about the town speaks of despair. Since the last intifada the West Bank has been sealed off and the town of Qalqilya has been almost completely surrounded by the tall concrete security barrier that Israel has been constructing along the West Bank. There is one way in an out of this town and you have to pass through a checkpoint. So it is very difficult for any of the 40,000 people who live there to get out and no one else can come in. But there, in the middle of this town is a zoo with a giraffe, some lions, a hippo and few other animals.

Dr. Sami Khadar came back from Saudi Arabia, where he had trained as a zoo vet, to start this zoo. It was a time of peace – before the latest troubles and before the wall – and he wanted to do something hopeful for his hometown. Then things got worse. There were battles between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants. Brownie, the giraffe, broke his neck when he ran in fear from an attack. Zebras died from teargas that was fired. As poverty increased in the town, people couldn’t even afford the 50 cent admission. As animals died Khadar would have them stuffed and placed in a special display.

But he wouldn’t let the zoo die and neither would the town. Farmers brought food for the animals. On a regular basis Khadar has free admission days and the zoo is packed with children. They come to see the monkeys and to play and to dream of a world that is larger than the one they can see from behind concrete walls. And Khadar himself dreams of the day when this zoo could become an “international zoo,” one of the best in the world.[i]

So then there’s this other zookeeper. Noah. You know his story, don’t you? It’s one of our favorite Bible stories. We paint rainbows and animals on the walls of our Sunday School classrooms. Hollywood is still making movies about it as last year’s Evan Almighty shows. Bill Cosby did a great comedy routine about Noah talking with God and his neighbors:
“Listen, what’s this thing for anyway?”
“I can't tell you”
“Well, I mean can't you give me a little hint?”
“You want a hint?”
“Yes, please.”
“How long can you tread water?”[ii]

But what does this story really tell us? I mean, we like the animals. We like the rainbow. We like the humor of a 600 year old man being asked to build a huge boat for a floating menagerie. We like the dove coming across the waters with an olive branch to signal the end of the flood. But what does this story tell us about God and what does it tell us about us? And why should we care?

If you remember this story comes early on in the Bible. God has created the earth and all the creatures of the earth, including man and woman, and God had said, “This is good. This is very good.” But something happened. Humans started to forget who they were created to be and they started to do things they weren’t meant to do. They began to forget God and the result was murder and chaos and corruption.

By chapter 6 some things are pretty clear. Human beings are prone to evil and violence. In fact, not just humans but all creatures are prone to corruption. Verse 12 says that “God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth.”

Why should those days be any different from our own? We’ve had centuries of change since then. We’ve increased human knowledge many times over. We’ve seen fantastic new inventions that have made our lives easier. We’ve had advances in medicine that have saved and extended and enriched our lives. We’ve seen new forms of enlightened government, like liberal democracy, that have made us freer and opened up all kinds of opportunity. But you know and I know that change doesn’t always mean progress.

Murder? We’ve still got that and in fact we raised it to a level of ruthless efficiency in the gas chambers and ovens of Auschwitz. Immorality? Centuries of moral teaching have not removed our tendencies toward cheating, lying, and adultery, among other things. Respect for life? We debate embryonic research as if it is a manipulation of cells with no consequences for what it means to be human. Corruption? The Pentagon reported last week that it made $8.2 billion of payments with taxpayer money to contractors in Iraq and for $1.4 billion of those dollars we have no record of what happened with the money.[iii] From where I stand, and looking into my own heart, I know it’s still true that human beings are prone to wrong.

So what to do about it? Well, here’s where we learn something about God. If this story is giving us a good picture of who God is, then there are two conflicting tendencies within the heart of God. On the one hand, God is offended by all of this corruption. How could it have gone so wrong? God is holy and just. God created humanity with the inbuilt capacity to seek God out, to love God and to find joy and happiness and holiness in God. We were created to be related to God.

But God is not the author of evil. God cannot tolerate wrong and violence. In the community of heaven there is no place for the sin that we all find in our lives. There is no place for the bad decisions we make. There is no place for the hurt we cause and the pollution, of all kinds, that we produce. There is no place for the injustice we perpetrate or our silence that allows it. We have no excuse and no justification and no place or claim on heaven.

So God looked out over the earth and decided to destroy it. In verse 7 of chapter 6 God says one of the scariest things in the Bible. “So the LORD said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created-- people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’ “I am sorry that I have made them.” That’s heavy stuff. The God who made us cannot tolerate our tendency to evil and so regrets making us. If that was the only thing to be said about God or us – there would be no hope.

It’s like the disciples felt when Jesus told them that it would be harder for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. The disciples were terrified when they heard this. “Then who can be saved?” they asked. “For human being it is impossible,” Jesus said. “But for God…all things are possible.” [Matthew 19:24-26]

And there is more to be said about God and about us than verse 7 says. Because this is also the story of God and a man named Noah. Noah tells us about that other tendency in God. He had been born as a child of promise. At his birth his father, Lamech, had said, “He will be called Noah,” which means ‘rest’, because “Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed this one shall bring us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands" [Gen. 5:29]. Noah was supposed to restore the relationship between God and the land.

So in his 600th year God came to the old man Noah and told him what was planned. “I’m going to wipe out all flesh because the earth is filled with violence. I’m going to destroy every living thing.” Only God wasn’t going to destroy every living thing, because God was going to call Noah to build an ark. And into that ark Noah was to take his family and two of every creature. Not just the cuddly ones like red pandas and marmosets, but fierce ones like lions and stinky ones like skunks and critters that seem entirely useless by human understanding like mosquitoes. They were all supposed to be on the ark.

So God gives Noah the dimensions of this ark and it is immense. Three hundred cubits long and fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. Do you know how big that is? Neither do I, but it’s pretty big. A cubit was probably the length from a person’s elbow to the tip of the middle finger. This is what Noah was supposed to build.

After giving the building instructions, God goes back to the warnings of destruction. “I am going to bring a flood on the earth to destroy all flesh in which there is the breath of life. Everything on the earth will die.” But. But not everything will die. Noah will survive with his little zoo. And God will establish a covenant with Noah.

This is that other strange and wonderful tendency in the heart of God – to make covenants with individuals who find favor with God even though they are subject to all the same failings as the rest of creation. Noah was described as a righteous man, a blameless man, but he would show himself to have some weaknesses, too. God chooses him.

From the cold logic of God’s holiness and justice, what God does here doesn’t make sense. Why shouldn’t God just start over? Why keep working a flawed creation that keeps failing to live up to potential? It is because God’s holiness and justice coexists with and is ultimately ruled by God’s love. It is love that has its hand on the plow, setting the lines of the crops.

Leif Enger, has a new book out called So Brave, Young and Handsome and in it he quotes 1 Corinthians to talk about this. “Love is a strange fact,” he writes. “It hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things. It makes no sense at all.”[iv] But the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of the world, and so God loves and makes covenants with old men and calls them to build boats for beavers and bullfrogs when justice demands total destruction. I guess hope does float.

At the end of it all, Noah and the animals come out of that ark and something has changed. The command God gives is the same as before. “Bring out all those living things so that they may abound on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth” [Gen 8:17]. It’s the same thing God had said to the man and woman at the beginning of creation. Be fruitful and multiply. But something new happens here.

God sets a rainbow in the sky and it is a reminder. But look at who the reminder is for. God says, in Genesis chapter 9, verse 14, “When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." The rainbow will remind God of the covenant.

From here on out, God has established a new way to deal with violence and corruption. God will overcome evil with the covenant formed in love. And ultimately God will overcome sin by coming in the flesh as Jesus and suffering the violence and corruption of this world and revealing to us the depth of our neediness and the depth of God’s love for us. God will bear all things, believe all things, endure all things. It makes no sense at all. But in the end love will prevail.

So what do we do with this story? We can recognize ourselves here as the fallen people living in a fallen creation and know that this is not what God intends and that God’s justice demands an accounting for our sin. We can recognize the fragility of life and community and even our planet, which in our day is so threatened by so many things, including human activity. But we can also recognize that God is continually making promises and remembering covenants and offering God’s very self for the redemption of the world.

The question for us is what we will do to model the world God intends? How can we create zoos here? Places where hope and life can be nurtured and where children can know themselves as part of a miraculous world filled with God’s glory? Places where we accept our responsibility as fellow creatures with all life and as co-creators with God? Places where we can share the good news of what it means to be saved by wild and holy God who does not know how to leave us alone and who wants us to live? There are plenty of concrete walls on this earth. You probably live behind some yourself. Perhaps you have built some between you and those you are called to love. But where are the zoos? Thanks be to God.

Genesis 6:11-22; 8:14-19 (NRSV)
Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. And God said to Noah, "I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth. Make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above; and put the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks.

“For my part, I am going to bring a flood of waters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every kind shall come in to you, to keep them alive. Also take with you every kind of food that is eaten, and store it up; and it shall serve as food

for you and for them."

Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him…

In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry. Then God said to Noah, "Go out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons' wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh-- birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth-- so that they may abound on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth."

So Noah went out with his sons and his wife and his sons' wives. And every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out of the ark by families.

[i] “A West Bank Zoo Struggles to Survive”, http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=90006859
[ii] http://www.jr.co.il/humor/noah4.txt
[iii] http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080523/news_1n23audit.html
[iv] Leif Enger, So Brave, Young and Handsome, [Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008], p. 32.