Over the Sundays of Lent I will be reflecting on the various covenants God has made and on the implications of living with a covenantal God. This is the first sermon in the series.
All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir
Reflections on Genesis 9.8-17
RCL Lent 1B
18 February 2018
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Genesis 9.8-17
9.8
Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 “As for me, I am
establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, 10
and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic
animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the
ark. 11 I establish my
covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of
a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” 12 God said, “This is the sign of
the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is
with you, for all future generations: 13
I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between
me and the earth. 14 When I
bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 I
will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature
of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all
flesh. 16 When the bow is in
the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and
every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” 17 God said to Noah, “This is the
sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is
on the earth.”
When my
children were younger, we used to listen to a lot of so-called ‘children’s’
music. Some songs are silly such as ‘This
is the song that never ends . . . ’ and are intended to drive parents and
care-givers batty. Other songs are sweet
tunes such as ‘Baby beluga in the deep blue sea . . . ‘. But then there are songs which have important
messages for children and for adults that are lurking just below the surface of
the lyrics. Here’s one such lyric:
All God’s critters got a place in the choir.
Some sing low and some sing higher,
Some sing out loud on a telephone wire,
There is a message here that a fair portion of human
society has yet to fathom, a message that is embedded in the familiar story of
the Flood.
We’re
all familiar with the story of Noah and the Ark. God is unhappy with the world which, since the
fiasco in the Garden of Eden, has gone downhill. So God decides to embark on a serious home
renovation project. With the exception
of Noah and his family and a mating pair of all the animals on the earth,
humanity and all the other animals will be washed away in a catastrophic flood. On one hand this is a text of terror: an angry God who wantonly wipes out a flawed
creation.
But on
the other hand, today’s reading brings the story of the Flood to a more hopeful
conclusion. God seems to repent of the
enormity of the consequences of the Flood and makes a unique covenant with
creation. It is a covenant without
conditions on the part of humanity; God simply promises never again to destroy
the earth because of human sin. The
animal life and the recovering plant life need not fear God’s destruction
because of humanity’s failings. True, as
we have seen only so painfully this past week in Florida, the innocent have
suffered, are suffering and will suffer the consequences of the evil actions of
others, but God will not be the agent.
Each of us has to take responsibility
- for opposing God’s will in our lives;
- for denying God’s goodness in each other, in ourselves and the world;
- for the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done and the evil done on our behalf. [2]
The good
news lurking beneath the surface of the story of Noah and the Ark is that ‘all
God’s critters got a place in the choir’.
All God’s critters, human and non-human, find a place in the Ark. No species, whether useful or not, pleasing
or not, is allowed to disappear from the face of the earth. Each and every one is necessary for the
wholeness of creation. Perhaps one of
the more destructive aspects of human behaviour is our tendency to deny ‘a
place in the choir’ to those whom we find difficult to accept, those whom we
find annoying, those whom we find different.
The environmental crisis that is afflicting all of us, whether in a
greater or lesser manner, is a crisis that is motivated, in part, by human
reluctance to give space to other living creatures, to be responsible stewards
so that the whole creation can thrive.
In the
Hebrew scriptures there are a number of covenants that God makes. Over the next weeks I shall be sharing some
reflections on each one of them as they are described in our readings from the
Hebrew scriptures. But I consider it
more than interesting that the first covenant God makes is a covenant with all
of creation, an unconditional covenant that declares God’s impartial and
abundant love for all the ‘critters’ whose voices combine to sing the praises
of their Creator, to cry out for justice, to plea for ‘a place in the choir’ of
life. I think of some of the people who
come to me for pastoral counsel whose deepest need is to hear that there is a
place for them in this world, a place that is rightfully theirs. I think of some of the people who come to this
parish whose deepest need is to know that there is a place for them here, a
place that is our privilege to offer.
All God’s critters got a place in the choir.
Some sing low and some sing higher,
Some sing out loud on a telephone wire,
And this is the way God wants it to be.
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