Most everybody knows about Noah and his ark.  There is the plaque that says “It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.”  For those old enough to remember when Bill Cosby was a stand–up comedian and comedy routines were sold on vinyl record albums, there is Cosby’s famous routine, wherein he impersonates Noah, and imaginatively engages in a conversation with God about the dimensions of a cubit – among other things.  For those of you who don’t know what a vinyl album is, your computer can do it, too.  Just search for Noah’s Ark on “You Tube” and you can listen to Cosby’s routine while a series of related images play.

I have a vague recollection of a pop song about unicorns that contended that they do not exist because they got left off the ark.  Countless jokes and cartoons have come from this story precisely because the situation itself is so ludicrous, the plot details to rich, and the narrative so wonderfully structured.

I live with one cat.  I think I know enough about sharing space with animals to know that sharing a boat with two of every kind of animal for 40 days is likely to raise, at the very least, some sanitation issues.  Though modern biblical scholars would not assert that this story is true – they would encourage the truth that can be revealed by playfully engaging the plot and the details – mining them for what they teach us about the relationship between God, the created order, and human stewardship of the creation.

A couple of things the scholars tell us about the story as it appears in the Bible provide helpful background.  The entire story, as it unfolds in Genesis, is a compilation of two flood stories from two ancient sources – one the Jahwist source and the other the Priestly source.  Our reading for today comes exclusively from the priestly source, which takes a cosmic point of view, Noah as a pious person, righteous because of his faithfulness to God.  In both accounts, all life except that in the ark is wiped out, and the stage is set for a new beginning between God and creation.

In theological terms, this is a salvation story – those whom God has created are held responsible in the story for the peril and danger to the created order posed by the flood.   God is held responsible for the flood – it is God’s judgment on the violence that has unfolded in a creation that was meant for good.  But God, the divine creator, partners with Noah, an attentive human, to counterbalance this judgment with salvation that preserves the fullness and diversity of the whole animal kingdom.

To understand the full theological implications of the story, it is important to notice what really changes because of the events within the story.

The earth is not delivered forever from the violence that disturbs God – neither man made violence nor that which seems to be built into the order of creation.  We need only remind ourselves of Katrina, Tsunami, Myanmar cyclone, Chinese earthquake, Midwest tornadoes – to know that creation is both breathtakingly beautiful and dangerously violent.

So creation doesn’t change.  It is restored – not transformed.

Humanity doesn’t change.  It is preserved – the earth repopulated by people as prone to violence as ever, and with the capacity to use technology to multiply the violence to catastrophic proportions.

Who or what changes?  The only one moved to change in this story is God.  If we were to read on, we would come, of course, to the first covenant.  God sets the rainbow in the clouds not as reminder to Noah, but as a reminder to God’s own self:  God will remember the divine covenant between God’s self and every living creature – God will never again destroy the earth with violence.

So here, early in the creation mythology that teaches us about our relationship with the Creator, we find the creator swearing off violence as a means of redemption.  We find a God who changes God’s mind, who realigns the divine actions and commitments.  We find a God who is compassionately responsive to the human condition and the plight of God’s creation.  We find not a deistic God who has created it and spun it off to go on its own, but a God who is unavoidably and intentionally in relationship with all the God has created.

And we find God’s friend, Noah. The boat builder.  Someone willing to respond to the divine initiative toward relationship.  Someone willing to look beyond his own self interest and engage his human work – effort in preserving all about which God cares.  Someone who understands the very intimate relationship between God and every living thing that is upon the earth and the living thing that is the earth itself.  We are all in peril together – and if there is any salvation at all, it must be that we all are saved together.  Otherwise, we are not saved at all.

It may just be that when we watch a Katrina, and a China earthquake, and an Indonesian Tsunami and a tropical cyclone, and a tornado in Iowa, we ought not to look at the cultural and political boundaries that appear to separate us from this peril – we ought to look at that picture of planet earth from space and recognize that the only ark we have is the one we’re already living on.

I can hear Bill Cosby’s voice now:  “Noah!  It’s God!”  Friends, it’s God – calling out through this text for anybody who will be a Noah.  God needs friends who will look beyond their own self interest and engage their human–work effort in preserving all about which God cares.

And if every animal, or seven pairs of every kind of animal are spoken of in this story – that’s the storytellers’ way of telling us that yes, God does care about the Panamanian golden frog and the Mississippi dusky gopher frog – recent features in the endangered species bulletin produced by the Fish and Wildlife department of the United States Government – the folks who give us the federal endangered species list.  You can find out all about their ark building efforts at www.fws.gov/endangered/.  They do animals and plants.  The World Wildlife Federation is mostly about animals.  Their poster children are the polar bear and the dolphin and other larger, mostly mammals.  You can find who’s on their ark at www.worldwildlilfe.org.

There are no natural habitats for Panamanian frogs or polar bears in Central Ohio – but we’re on the same planet, and our growing awareness of climate change has begun to teach us that we really are on the same ark, and that we all share as co–workers with God and others to save creation.  God is looking for friends who will share in this work everywhere – including here and now.

One of Bill Cosby’s bits in his routine is about his conversation with a neighbor who thinks he’s nuts to be building a boat.  “How long can you tread water?” Noah asks his neighbor.  Later, when Noah is tired of the whole enterprise, Cosby has God inquire of him, “How long can you tread water, Noah?”

We better be prepared to tread water for a very long time – or we better be living as stewards on the ark we’ve been given.

Caring for creation begins with living in it.  Urban dwellers are challenged by this.  Urban children in particular.  Children are kept indoors by the real risks of urban life, by the fear of their parents, by the lure of video games and computers and television.  If you are a parent, take your children outdoors.  Take them for walks.  Take them to parks.  Take them to the country to see where milk and meat and corn and tomatoes live before they come to live at Giant Eagle.  Take time to learn from the educational offerings when you visit the zoo.  Help them come to love everything else that lives on the ark with them.

There are a lot of ways to “go green.”  And a lot of reasons to do so.  Of course, because we act most readily out of our own self interest, the marketplace is playing around with us to see what price for a gallon of fossil fuel will finally motivate us away from the comfort, convenience and outright luxury of private transportation.  In our household, our youngest son signed on as a Noah when he was in elementary school.  He began to hold our household accountable for reducing, reusing and recycling.  He noticed when we bought products with excessive packaging materials.  He suggested the simplest products possible for cleaning and shamed me into giving up aerosol hair spray in the 80s!

The truth is – those decisions made by families in central Ohio do help save the whole planet.  Peril and salvation alike are shared by all.

We all need to know somebody who is a like Noah – God’s friend, the boat builder; an early example of God’s desire and design to use intimate relationship with human beings to accomplish God’s divine purposes.

The ultimate expression of this, of course, is the relationship revealed in the one who took the grain from the field and the fruit of the vine – the fruits of the earth – and said:   “these are my life – and I give them to you as I give you my life.”

This is our safe place – this haven of community and worship where, where we eat and drink at the table of the Lord, and know that in a world of violence and danger, we have already been saved.

And having already been brought to safety, we find ourselves invited to take on new risks:

Noah!
[Your name here,] “It’s God.”

“I need your help! The whole earth is in danger!”

We need God – and God needs us – and we’re all in this together.  And Noah, God’s friend, the boat builder, knew that.  Thanks, Noah – for the great story – and the invitation to become God’s friend, builders and stewards of the ark we’ve been given.