Noah or… Because we live in the Western world which is mostly Judeo-Christian, when we think of the big flood we naturally find ourselves thinking about Noah’s Ark as told in Genesis chapters 6-9. But if you walked around with Abraham and his contemporaries, there’s a good chance they might think of a related story that is very different. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim gets a tip that a massive, life-ending flood is coming from the unwarranted wrath of the god Enlil. Utnapishtim survives by building a massive cube, filling it with animals, his family, and some handy workers. He saves humanity (to the chagrin of Enlil), but is also rewarded with divinity.
Partly in light of the Gilgamesh Epic’s story, there has been and still is today much discussion regarding the historical reliability of the account of Noah. Did he really build an ark with over 100,000 square feet of cargo space in incredibly primitive times? Did two of every kind of animal really come to him (except when there were seven of a few other kinds)? Was there really room enough for all those critters? How about for their food for almost ten months? And what about such unpleasantries as excrement – were there RV dumping stations floating around, or did they carefully throw it out through the 18” windows at the top of the boat?
Some have tried hard to make the case for taking this story completely literally, while others have noted that the earliest Jewish communities may not have placed so much value on that kind of truth as much as another kind. When we read a history book, we assume the author intended to give us a reliable historical account. That’s how we think. But that may not have been how our early ancestors in the faith thought.
What we can all agree on… Rather than focusing on the historicity of some of the most controversial stories for the last 2000 years (Genesis 1-11), we may be better served considering the Good News our brothers and sisters gleaned from the telling and retelling of this story. Most of the general population around them thought that they were pawns in games played by the gods who ruled the sky, rain, thunder, crops, everything… The Jewish people had discovered that God is One. That’s a very big deal. Their One God was the only deity in the story, and the cause of wrath was not unwarranted, but because all the people on earth were running amok. The gods aren’t, any more. There’s just one.
Another really cool thing that our ancestors dialed into in a much fuller way than others was that God showed mercy in two ways. First, God told Noah what was coming, and, so the legend goes, Noah spent 100 years letting everybody know the flood was coming, and proved his belief by building the ark (or his sons built it, or the Llamas). Some think the world is going to be judged on May 21, 2011. The billboards have only been up a few months. But God gave lots of time for people to get the message. That’s very nice. Secondly, when the flood was over, God’s desire was to restore everything to its potential beauty. He made a covenant with Noah (and humanity), and sealed it with a rainbow. That’s a gracious thing to do. We really cannot appreciate the contrast to the Sumerian story, because we haven’t lived in Sumeria generations before Abraham lived there.
Noah, of course, became a poster child for faithfulness. People named their sons after him. Even a daughter was named Noah. The great prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel refer to him. Jesus refers to Noah when he speaks of the time when Christ returns – unexpectedly even though it’s obvious. The writer of Hebrews put Noah in the Hall of Fame (which is located in Weed, CA) for faithful characters in Jewish history. Peter refers to him in his letters as well. Noah built an ark that took a ton of money and time. Because he did, however, he lived, along with his family members, and all the animals, which eventually meant the world lived on, too. Not just his own skin, but everyone and everything lived because of his faithfulness. The big reward wasn’t that he became a God, which would be a very selfish end, but that relationship with God had been restored for all.
So what? One major stumbling block is the clear statement that God was angry with how humanity was wrecking each other and abusing their physical world. So upset, in fact, that he was willing to wipe out everyone and everything except a very small percentage of very righteous people and presumably faithful animals. That’s how people of antiquity thought about the world. Way back then. It was reasonable for them to come to such conclusions, and so they deserve no disrespect.
But we live in a time of Doppler radar. We see storms coming hundreds of miles away caused by high and low pressure thousands of miles away, not by gods playing games. We know what conditions make hurricanes and tornadoes more likely, and can warn people of the impending doom. We don’t think about weather and calamity the same way our earliest predecessors did because we have more information than they did. All of this is to say that just because the early interpretation of the reason for the flood was stated as God’s wrath does not mean it was correct. The Bible was inspired by God, but not dictated. This means we get the flavor and worldview of the people who provided us the stories – which is a wonderful gift to us as we wrestle with the same questions they did. Because of this, we have the right and responsibility to engage a story apart from a mindset that lacked our information. People will do the same with our ideas generations from now, because they will understand that our perspective was uninformed compared to theirs. And that’s good. Don’t we want our children to rise above and beyond us?
The point of the story at least for me, therefore, is about God’s desire to redeem and our role in redemption.
God’s heart from the beginning of the Story is that God’s good and very good creation would become as beautiful and wonderful as it was intended to become. As with Noah, God gives us a “head’s up” all the time regarding big and small concerns. We hear God’s whisper as our conscience informs our behavior. We learn the ethos of faith from Bible study, prayer, meditation and community dialogue – all whispers. We feel the conviction of the Spirit when we’ve blown it – another whisper (sometimes a shout). And even when it hits the fan, God comes back to proclaim God’s continuing desire to redeem. We experience this, too, when we find ourselves in humble places, knowing and owning our inadequacy, and discovering the cross of Christ to be enough to cover the sins of the world past, present and future. I don’t follow a God who has lost control of his people and then seeks to wipe us out. That’s incongruent with everything I’ve learned to be true about the heartbeat of God.
Noah’s role was hardly inconsequential. What if Noah blew off God’s invitation as too incredible, too inconvenient, too costly, just too much? Redemption wouldn’t have taken place. Not for himself. Not for his wife and kids. Not for the animals. Not for the planet. God’s invitation is to be part of the redemptive process, not simply passive recipients of redemption as is sometimes communicated (just say “yes” and get yourself saved). Saying yes to God’s invitation is to be a player in the game that seeks to restore everyone and everything to its best. Working toward becoming more and more like Christ. Serving as Christ those we love and those we don’t and everyone in between so they might experience the very good that they are, progressively, as they discover Christ. Treating our home (our world) with great respect and wisdom so that it is able to be the grand creation it was created to be.
Of course, we have luxuries our early ancestors could not even imagine. We have their history and everyone else’s who lived since, teaching us so much about the heart of God. We have all the advancements that time has allowed. And most importantly, we have Jesus, the face of God, the Word made flesh, who proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that God’s love is infinite and complete. Wood formed into a boat redeemed everything. Wood formed into a cross redeemed everything forever. Wood formed into crosses for us to now bear await, that we might help rescue people from their respective floods, and in the process find ourselves saved as well.
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