There’s three chapters of material devoted to the story of Noah and the flood and it’s a big call to preach on three chapters of something that really could do with a bit more than one sermon dedicated to it. Apart from the fact that there seems to be a lot of double ups in the narrative, there is so much symbolic richness to the passage that we could spend hours, negotiating our way between what it meant to the hearers of the day and the generations that followed and then what we can glean from it.

So today I want to look at the story again, paint some pictures of what was going on in some broad brushstrokes and help us draw into perhaps one of the major themes in the story which is not necessarily obvious from a cursory reading. To do this, lets put ourselves on the deck of the ark—one of two flies on the wall perhaps.

The water is lapping gently against the side of the boat on this day, one of the rare still days since the torrential rain that had continued relentlessly for forty days and nights. The sun is glistening on the vast expanse of water around the ark giving some bearings on which way it was facing, but really not making any more sense of where it was heading or had come from since there were no landmarks around to give place names. This boat, constructed of wood and covered with black pitch, ambles it’s way directionlessly through the ocean bored out of it’s brain, but it’s walls are still clutching preciously to it’s cargo inside.

The ocean stretches far beyond the horizon, a straight line would bring us to the same spot without encountering land, an endless testimony to the horror that lies beneath it, a deep sanitisation of the enormous waste of life that it covers. Notice one of the people on the boat.

Noah was actually not really enjoying this endless period of waiting. Even though he was a man of faith, it’s never easy to wait for an indefinite period of time. He didn’t know how long he was going to be on this boat for going to and fro.

It was a crazy lifestyle he was living at the moment. One of the last few humans surviving with the last few animals on this featureless planet. Noah liked to stand at the bow of the ship whenever he could, to get away from the constant tasks of feeding the animals and cleaning out their living quarters and breaking up the fights and carefully nursing the sick. He liked the front because it at least gave him some sense of direction even though he knew they were just drifting wherever the wind and tides were pushing them. The front always seemed like it was pointing toward a future, a brighter hope, a resting place.

The sun is beginning to make it’s way toward the horizon, edging it’s way toward the faceless expanse of other side of the earth.

He heard a bang on the wooden hull nearby and then a woman’s scream. He ran around the top of the deck to see what the fright was and came across his son clinging to his wife, holding her and caressing her trying to calm her.

“down there dad,” he said pointing over the railing, stern wide eyes unblinking and disturbed. Noah peered down at the small boat that had just rammed into them. It was originally used on a river for transporting grains from upstream, but now had been converted into a lifeboat.

There were seventeen people inside it, starved to death and bloated and baked by the heat of the sun. Noah had seen plenty of bodies and animal carcasses floating around, though as time wore on they diminished—probably eaten by the fish and the sharks . . . but this was still really hard to get used to. This was the first time since the rains had stopped that he had come face to face with the failed plight of his fellow humans trying to survive this ordeal—and the first time he’d seen the futility of their efforts close up and so still like a camera shot.

These people in the boat below had entered this life raft with the hope of just waiting out the floods and the storm. But, their water supply had run out within a week and half of the rain stopping and they’d just died, one by one from dehydration. They lay there, in various positions, uncomfortable looking and waited to die, no energy to push overboard those who had already passed away , they just watched each other die. And were consigned to drifting as a visible testament of the atrocity that we quaintly know as the flood.

The boat edged it’s way along the hull of the ark, unable to keep up with the momentum of this massive structure and eventually came off the stern and drifted in the wake to oblivion.

Everybody watched in silence.

I can’t help but feel that our Sunday school stories and pictures about the ark are somewhat misleading. Let us get this thing straight. This is the single most catastrophic event in the history of humankind. It eclipses the holocaust in it’s devastation. It is destruction of all people and livestock and creepy crawly things and birds except for one ark that has two of each and seven pairs of the ritually significant animals. It is also a deed done by the hand of God whom we worship here today.

I wonder how appropriate it is to have pictures of this story with happy animals and a smiling Noah popularised for our Sunday school. We should be remembering this in the same way we might remember a car crash in which we had narrowly escaped death. A sense of dread at the terminal possibilities there. A sombre reminder of the finality of a disaster.

The account of Noah comes hot on the heels of Cain murdering Abel and stories of civilisation spreading and some amazing stories about giants roaming the earth. There’s a wealth of information on theories about how to explain these texts, who were the sons of God, the Nephilim, and we could speculate for ages about the significance and meaning of all this but there’s one thing that strikes me about the pre-flood and the post-flood states of being.

Pre-flood, people are described as walking with God. Post-flood, they are described as walking before God. Adam, Enoch and Noah when described as being righteous and God fearing are described as walking with, reminiscent of walking in the cool of the evening that Adam would do with God. In Genesis 17:1, God makes a covenant with Abraham where he instructs him to “walk before him and be blameless.” There’s been a significant change in the cosmic relationship between heaven and earth in this reconstructed post-flood world.

Let’s have a quick look at the stories in the beginning of chapter 6.

When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then the LORD said, “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.”

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.

Those stories about the sons of God and the heroes of old and the warriors of renown, they are probably alluding to a time when the chasm between heaven and earth was much less and that the flood represents a separation of the two times.

That’s possibly why there might be differences between natures of the wickedness before and after the flood. It could be that beforehand, the wickedness is beginning to corrupt or taint heaven or more importantly that the wickedness is done in the realised presence of holiness. And that is what is such an affront to God. Now that’s just my speculation, take it or leave it but it makes a bit of sense about why the wickedness seems that much worse than what we experience now.

But the main issue that I want to focus on this evening is that it’s the first time that we catch a glimpse into the intensity of feeling in the heart of God. The description of how God is feeling in his heart is held in stark contrast to the condition of the hearts of humankind. So let’s have a look at the condition of the human heart. Genesis 6:5

“The LORD saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.”

Heart in the Hebrew symbolises not just the seat of the emotion but of understanding and will. So every inclination, not just every thought, but every direction that our thoughts were heading, every flavour they contained, in was oriented toward continuous evil. It’s a comprehensive statement and it makes our society look really good.

It’s easy for us to look around and grieve at the directions that we are taking, but there is still an inherent desire in many people to at least try to do good. This sounds like before the flood was utter disorder, anarchy even exacerbated by rebellion to the presence of God. It was a clash of wills and self-gratifying egos in spite of an awareness of holiness. It’s the ultimate distortion of the imago Dei, image of God in people.

These people were not atheists, they believed very much in God, they chose actively and habitually to satisfy themselves against God in acute awareness of his presence.

Noah looked into the distance as the little boat disappeared. And he remembered the day that it all began.

He was quite the talk of the town since there had been quite a procession of strange animals walking in pairs toward this monstrous boat that had been built in the middle of nowhere.

But on a very normal and sunny day, he and his family gathered the last of their things and boarded this massive boat. After they entered they waited for a whole week before anything happened.

For seven days they sat there as a spectacle for people to look at. Seven agonising days without so much as a drop of rain and with people just outside being completely perverse toward them, expressing every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts that were consumed by evil. Seven days.

But then the rain began. It started gently. Noah felt it on his head. And he looked up to see the massive blanket of cloud edging its way over the sun. He held out his hand and felt another drop . . . and another . . . and the next drop was the beginning of the perfect storm. He watched all the people scurrying for shelter and that’s when it hit him, and it him hard.

They were embarking on an exercise of futility. It seemed absurd that they would scurry for shelter from rains that were going to bring on their death. It was the last time they’d see sunshine. It was the last time they would walk through dry fields. And his heart sank. He felt more alone than ever. For the next 370 days this ark was going to be his home and it was going to be his prison.

After finding shelter the people waited for a couple of days thinking it was just a heavy storm. By the time their food had run low during that little wait they would have realised that they needed to rescue as much of what they could from their gardens before it washed away. Flash floods were already devastating several settlements close to rivers. And the rising tides were wiping out the coastal villages. By the time people had realised that this was becoming a disaster, it was too late to stock up. They had to take whatever they had and run to higher ground. They were ill prepared.

Meanwhile the rain kept on pelting down. Day 15 started to see people beginning to congregate in higher and higher areas as the water enveloped more and more of the habitable spaces. Riots began breaking out as tensions increased. Soon there was a steady stream of people coming to the ark, seeking shelter from him.

He was unable to for two reasons, one that the door had been shut by the very hand of God. He and his family and all the animals were sealed inside the ark by God. It was God who drew the boundary and kept it. It is God who closed the door on the outside world, not Noah.

And two that he had been set apart by God and he knew if he reached his hand down to help anyone it would be an affront to God’s holiness, a continuation of things that God was putting an end to.

But God was keeping him company there in the ark. God was a rock, but the scenes around him were horror.

And the agony he felt, took the polish away from knowing he had found God’s favour. He was isolated from the world around him, all the people he had spent 600 years of his life with . . . it wasn’t like they were just suddenly disintegrated in a ball of fire, he was going to spend time listening through the rain, a spectator of the frantic struggle for survival over the next two weeks. And the flood waters rose and changed the landscape around him.

When the boat started to float it moved past people huddled in fear and desperation upon what used to be some peaks but were now little islands. Someone was pushing a corpse into the water to get rid of it, hypothermia. Noah had to live through the ordeal of being spectator to people appealing to him for help, caught in the middle between the pain of people dying and the wrath of a holy God whom he walked with.

He never spoke to them, but he never looked away either. They would swim to him but could not crawl up the sides. He left many of them in his wake. Stranded in the grips of their destiny. Trapped by the consequence of their heart.

But I think God was grieving too. I think it’s easier to identify with Noah’s grief. Perhaps this story pulls at the very heartstrings of our being. Perhaps we are appalled at the disgusting nature of what we are imagining. Perhaps, we feel it shouldn’t be talked about in church. But let’s be clear about one thing, this is the direct result of an action by the same God that we worshipped in our prayers and songs earlier. And I say this, not to be crass, not to be provocative, but so that we can journey somewhere together to understanding something critical about God’s heart for his creation.

Come with me, move your imaginary camera back and start rising above the waters, look down and begin to see the extent of this devastation. Thousands upon thousands of people and animals were dead and dying. And I do not picture a Holy God who is wringing his hands in delight at this scene. Not for a moment do I think that judgement is going to be a simple and emotionless thing for God.

Genesis 6:6

And the LORD was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

God grieved. In the same way that the heart of humankind is exposed, the heart of God is revealed to us. It grieved God to his heart, to the central fabric of his being to see the world like it was. And it still grieved him to see it washed away.

To blot out humankind from this world for he was sorry for making them, (in the NRSV, Good News the Message and KJV, this is the word. TNIV uses regret. NIV translates the word as grieved which looks like a theological departure from the Hebrew meaning), and the consequence is devastation for all of creation. Everything that has breath coming out its nostrils. Everything that crawls. All vegetation. Everything.

And then to watch this spectacle unfold before him? We are witnessing a complete reversal of day two of creation where God says Genesis 1:6

“Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”

The heavens had reopened and the deep had fractured to produce this cataclysm. They’d combined again. That stark separation was no more. All that was left was the light separating the darkness. And God’s presence, his spirit, hovered over the deep again echoing prehistory, but this time he was keeping company rescuing his beloved creation.

A vessel of grace, the ark, a capsule for the future of the planet. A symbol of God’s redemptive qualities. That in his heart that found the wickedness of our pre-flood ancestors an absolute affront to his goodness and holiness, there lies the tension point of his absolute love for his creation.

It’s not over yet, is the cry from his heart. This is not the end. It’s as though he believes we can be better. He believes we can do the right thing and love him. There’s also a sense where he cannot destroy it all because in doing so he would destroy you and me and we were intended as part of his creation long before he uttered the words let there be light.

In the midst of this horror, is the hand of God driven from his heart, reaching to a humanity that is not all lost, reaching into the muck to pick out this precious pearl which is at the heart of who we are. You are better than you think!

It’s the same passion for us that would drive him to be crucified on a cross, made cosmically lower than us for a time, where we would beat him and spit on him, where he would say he had come not to be served but to serve us! It’s the same passion that could not wipe us out completely because there is something in us that is worth saving. There is something about us that he loves. There is something about us that can be redeemed.

How powerful is that statement! But I’m wondering if this is indicative of where western expressions of faith may be too individualistic. It’s a direct challenge to a faith that says it’s just about you and God. This project of the ark was not about saving Noah just because he was a neat guy. It was about saving humanity.

And I can’t escape the reality of that. That when we embark on our journey of walking before our God, that we are doing so because God wants to save humankind through us. That’s why the mission is given to us. That’s why we are to participate in this world’s affairs—it’s big picture stuff.

Because, we are in effect the body of Christ keeping company with this world. Where we see in the gospels Jesus embracing the sinners, we embrace the sinners. Where we see in the gospels Jesus healing the sick, we heal the sick. Where we see in the gospels Jesus standing against injustice, we stand against injustice. As the body of Christ we are his expressed hands and feet and the heartbeat of God for the Spirit dwells within us as a body of believers.

So though we are saved as individuals, we are not saved for that end. We are saved to be the workers of Christ in this world. We are saved for the sake of humankind, for the people you work with or encounter throughout the week. The person you buy your groceries from. We ought to see in Noah not just his righteousness which is inspiring, but we should also look at the big picture because where we see that ark, we see the church not as the building but the community.

The difference is that this time we can and must reach down and invite people to join us — we’ve not been sealed in by God. We cannot float by, we must engage and become their safety. We must find as many people as we can who are clinging to those rocks and ask them if they need a ride. We are saved precisely to do this. It is not an affront to God’s holiness to hang out with this world, it’s our mission—to be that instrument of grace in this world, heralds of the good news that it can be redeemed because God loves us much more than he hates our sin.