Friends, welcome to church on Welcome Back Sunday. This is our first day of children’s Sunday School, so we may occasionally hear voices coming up from the church nursery where the kids are meeting.
Here is a plug for Adult Sunday School – we meet every week at 9 am in the Education Building’s Social Hall. Our class is a weekly discussion of a particular event in the news and how we respond to that event as questions. I email everyone the topic and articles about that topic on Thursday, so we have a few days in advance to prepare for our time together.
Today, we are returning to our lectionary. A lectionary is a series of readings prepared for churches. Our lectionary is called the Narrative Lectionary – we have used it for the past few years. The Narrative Lectionary is used in a 4 year cycle – every fall, we focus on Bible stories from the Old Testament. In Advent, during December, we will start focusing on stories from the New Testament Gospels. After Easter, we focus on stories from the New Testament Letters and the book of the Acts of the
Apostles. The Narrative Lectionary was developed to increase Biblical literacy among church go-ers….we may know a smattering of stories from the Bible, but the hope it that after we use the Narrative Lectionary for a few cycles, we will all have a broader and deeper understanding of the word of God.
This morning, we are turning to a familiar Biblical text – we read a portion of this text a few weeks ago when we heard Elaine Becker’s favorite scripture. We are going to hear verses from three sections of the Noah story – God’s dismay at how people were acting, God calling Noah to build the ark, and the exit from the ark and God’s covenant with God’s people.
We are going to hear a lot of Scripture this week…don’t worry, we won’t hear this much every week.
Try to hear the Noah story as a story – pretend we are a story hour at the library and settle down and let the story wash over you.
Let us first turn to Genesis, chapter 6, verses five through 22….
The Scripture Genesis 6:5-22, 8:6-12, 9:8-17
Genesis 6:5-22
5 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.
6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.
7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”
8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
9 This is the account of Noah and his family.
Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God.
10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.
11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence.
12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.
13 So God said to Noah, “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.
14 So make yourself an ark of cypress[a] wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.
15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high.[b]
16 Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit[c] high all around.[d] Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks.
17 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. Everything on earth will perish.
18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you.
19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.
20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.
21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”
22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.
So, to summarize – God saw that humanity was not behaving the way God intended us to behave. But, Noah and his family were the exception to that – they were faithful and listened to God.
God told Noah to build the ark – at Bible Study on Tuesday, Ned our resident Math teacher explained how big the ark was – it was huge. It was about 1 and a half times longer than an American Football field. It would have been a massive structure for Noah and his family to build. But, if we think of all of the animals, food, and people stored inside, it also would have been very crowded – and smelly!
Now, imagine the long, long duration of their time on the ark. It rained for 40 days and nights. The land was flooded. The ark floated on the surface of the water for a long, long time. The people and animals were probably scared – they probably wondered what would happen next – would the water dissipate and dry up – would they walk on the land again?
Now let us turn to Genesis, chapter 8, verses 6 through 12:
Genesis 8:6-12
6 After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark
7 and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth.
8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground.
9 But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark.
10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark.
11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth.
12 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.
So, Noah used birds to discover if the land was dry….the raven flew here and there, but didn’t find a place to land. The dove returned first with an olive leaf – the trees were dying off and growing new leaves….but what about the ground? A week later, the dove flew away – this meant things were back to normal.
So, Noah, the animals, and Noah’s family finally left the ark. Noah immediately prayed and offered sacrifices to God. Noah was thankful they had been spared.
And, God had a new plan for the earth. We listen to that plan now as we turn to Genesis chapter 9, verses 8 through 17:
Genesis 9:8-17
8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him:
9 “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you
10 and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth.
11 I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come:
13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds,
15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.
16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”
17 So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”
Here ends this reading of the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Let us pray….
The Message Flood and Promise
The people on Noah’s ark were the last people on earth – imagine how lonely they felt. There were just 8 of them….Noah and his wife, their three sons, and the son’s wives. That’s it.
I hope they really, really got along with each other. I hope Noah and his wife were the ideal in-laws to those daughters-in-law. I hope everyone did their fair share of the chores. I hope no one complained about the smell of the animals or the boredom they felt or how tired they were of eating the same old thing every day. I can’t imagine being closed up in a barge for almost a year, with it rocking on the water. I get motion sickness – i hope none of the people or animals on the ark suffered from motion sickness or any other illness for the duration of their trip.
I am sure it wasn’t easy.
But, the thing the people on the ark had was hope. They hoped for the future. They trusted God – and trusted God wouldn’t forget them. They believed in their mission – they were responsible for preserving the animals of the earth – they were responsible to preserve the human race. And, they succeeded – they worked together, they listened to God, and they overcame great obstacles, and odds, and persevered.
Sometimes, we feel like we are the people in the ark with Noah. We look around our church and sometimes see only a handful of people. It is usually more than 8, but not a lot more than 8. And, when we sit in this room, many of us look around and remember the people who used to sit here among us…. we see the spot where Mary Ann sat and miss her. Our eyes are drawn to where Milton sat, and where Marge sat, and where Don sat. We remember when our parents were here and our grandparents were here … .when the room was full of familiar faces that are no longer sitting among us.
It is not easy.
Our church is not alone. American church attendance was at its peak in the 1950s….it has been going down ever since. And, many social scientists think Covid accelerated the decline in attendance even more.
So, we are not the only people looking around their sanctuaries on Sunday morning and remembering the people who used to be here. There are lots of churches who are small in number of attendees. Many of us feel like those 8 people on the ark… wondering what the future will hold.
But, our faith reminds us that a few remnant people, working together, can accomplish great things.
Noah and his family, those 8 people on the ark, repopulated the earth. We are their descendants. And, those animals who were with them also repopulated the earth – the birds in the sky, the animals we encounter when we are outdoors, our dogs and cats and guinea pigs are all descendants of those animals cooped up together on the ark.
Abraham and Sarah, 2 individuals, left their homeland and traveled around the Middle East in response to the call of God. They only had one son together….one child. They were told they would become the parents of countless generations of children, and Sarah laughed because the idea was so absurd. Yet, from Isaac and Rebecca came Jacob, from Jacob came 12 children, from those children came many grandchildren, from those descendants came all of the Jewish people, from their descendant Jesus we were all adopted into their family and became the children of God. Out of two individuals came as many descendants as the stars in the skies.
Jesus traveled with a group of 12 disciples. Twelve students is a cosy class in college. Soccer teams usually have 11 players. Corporate brainstorming workshops are considered to work best with 12 participants. Jesus’s 12 disciples, 11 without Judas, became the first leaders of the Christian church…out of that group of 12 people the faith, our faith, spread across the world.
We may look around our sanctuary and worry, but small groups of people can do great things together. God is calling us to share the Gospel with the people of our neighborhood, the people we know, and the people we are going to know soon. Working together, we can support each other, and work to care for the people of our community. There are people who are looking for churches like ours – people who don’t want to just figure out faith on their own but want to worship with others….people who are turned off by big crowds and loud praise music…people who want to go deeper and connect with God in a beautiful, tradition setting following a liturgy that has withstood the test of time.
When it comes to faith, when it comes to church, bigger isn’t always better. And, certainly, when it came to the experience of the 8 folks on the ark with Noah, a tiny, remnant group of people, working together, could change the world for the better.
Let us work together to change our world for the better, today and all days. Amen.