"When the Floods Threaten to Overwhelm Us"

The water is not under our control. Something I came to realize once again as I struggled with the shut-off valve hidden back behind the washing machine, while getting drenched from the spray of the burst inflow hose. Something that hit home even deeper when the lever of the valve sheared off in my hand, and I frantically ran towards the basement in search of the master valve which cuts off water to the entire house.

            Something we learned here on Thursday morning, when the crew removing the old underground oil tank next to Jenkins Hall accidently severed the water pipe leading from the well into the building, forcing us to close the school and send the students home.

            Global warming is here, and it is coming on stronger all the time; the ice caps are melting, and since that ice melt has to go somewhere, sea levels are rising. Meteorologists tells us we can expect more and more violent storms, hurricanes, typhoons, and twisters, and that the risks of flood and coastal inundation are creeping ever upward.

Bottom line, you don’t need to have a doctorate or be a post-Katrina resident of New Orleans or post-tsunami coastal Japan to understand that the waters are not under our control. And it was precisely that same understanding which was held by the ancient Hebrews – that water can betray us, can threaten us, can wreak havoc upon us.

            Way back when in the pre-modern Middle East, Israel’s neighbors told stories about a great primeval flood. In their stories, divine beings would battle it out with each other, only noticing humanity when our noise became too annoying to them.  So they decided to use water to wipe the planet clean. In the ancient epic Gilgamesh, the gods sent a flood which wiped everything out, except one family and the animals that they saved.

            The Hebrews knew that story, but then they retold it, retold it in a way that comported with their understanding of how their God worked. And so it does not start with a battle in the heavens between rival gods, but with a divine response to human violence; rain pours down, yes, but also a blessing, in that humanity, through righteous Noah and his family, is rescued; and it ends with a promise by God not just to humanity, but to “all flesh”, a promise that never again will the waters of chaos prevail. God will not dis-member the good creation – God will remember it,. God would remember his creation, and as a sign of that covenant, just as a warrior returning to hearth and home would hang his bow over the fireplace, God would hang his mighty bow over the clouds.

            Friends, for me the point of the account in Genesis of Noah and the flood is not whether or not “it really happened”, and I don’t believe the point of the account for the ancient Hebrews was limited so narrowly, either. They knew that chaos exists, and that chaos was a constant threat to their civilization – the chaos of famine and flood, of disease and invasion. But they also trusted that God had remembered them in the past, and would remember them in the future.

            But we know that as well. We know how it feels like we are being swamped, that the floodgates of chaos have been opened and threaten to sweep it all away.

            When you struggle to keep the grades up and there is all that pressure to get into college and the coach seems to hate you and the guy you secretly pine for doesn’t even look at you and all of a sudden everyone is picking on you on Facebook and somehow you got grounded right before the big dance. High School can be like that.

            When the officers slap the cuffs on your wrist, and the magistrate says “No bail”, and the barred door to the cell slams closed behind you.

            When the sheriff walks up to your door and serves you with a lawsuit accusing you of stealing funds from the charitable organization you had faithfully served for years.

            When a routine chest x-ray comes back and your doctor says, “There seems to be a mass.”

            When after thirty years in the same company your manager comes in and says “We’re sorry, but we are going to have to let you go”, and you have no idea of where that next job might ever be.

            When your spouse says, “I’ve found my soul mate” -- and they are not talking about you.

            When you realize that you can no longer make it in your beloved home, and need to transition to “assisted living” or even a nursing facility.

            I suspect we all know what it can be like to feel as if we are being swamped, as if the waters of chaos will have their way with us.

            Which is why the eternal truth standing behind the account of Noah and the Flood is such good news for us. The good news that God’s grace will prevail, that just as God conquers the unconquerable waters, God can control the chaos that threatens to overwhelm us. That God remembers us; remembers us in the sense that God calls us to mind when we are in danger of being swamped, when we fear that we are alone and forgotten and that God just does not care; but more than that, that God re-members us – God will join us together as one once again, will put us back together, not just as ourselves, but also in solidarity with all creation and with our Creator.

            The Noah story anticipates the Jesus story; God’s promise to remember us is fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Far from abandoning us, God comes to us, takes on our own fragile and failing humanity, and remembers us, put us back together, heals and saves us. And once again it is water that is at the heart of the story, but this time, instead of a rampaging flood, it is waters which cleanse, which heal, which remember us into a new community: the waters of our baptism.

            God remembers; and so let us, in our turn, remember as well.