You want me to do What???
Psalm 46, Genesis 6:9-22, 7:24, 8:14-19
Preached June 1, 2008
By the Reverend Kathy Peters

We know this story of Noah’s ark even if we never went to Sunday School as a child. The cute pictures of animals walking two by two are on nursery walls, the floody, floody is sung about in children’s songs, if you are a Bill Cosby fan you can’t hear the scripture lesson without Cosby’s question of “What’s a cubit ?” coming to mind and now this generation has the movie Evan Almighty to see the story through…….yet with all this popular attention, if you really study the story…it is not so cute or even entertaining.

God was so discouraged by the actions of the people whom he had created, a creation that only 5 chapters earlier had been touted as being very good. In only 10 generations from Adam, God can only find one righteous man and God is determined to start again, to destroy the earth with a flood so massive that only the humans and the creatures in the ark will survive. We have seen the pictures of Hurricane Katrina and tsunamis and cyclones, and they are not something that we would put up in our children’s rooms.       Yet even in the destruction, this is a story about the wideness of God’s mercy and the lengths that God will go to care for us even as we continue to disobey and to choose destructive behaviors over life giving ones. It is a story about God’s hope and trust in us that we, with God as our refuge and our strength, can change the world, even when we do not get it right every time

As I thought about the scriptures this week I was remembering a time when I was at my parental wits end. I can’t even remember exactly what she was doing but I had warned Sarah that if she did not stop that I was going to take everything and I mean everything out of her room.  (now when I asked Sarah if I could tell this story in my sermon today, she said “sure…but you already told it”…I believe her because Sarah doesn’t forget!.....but I’m going to count on you all not having such good memories and I am going to tell it again!) Of course Sarah, being Sarah didn’t stop whatever the behavior was….what a surprise…..but this time I was going to show her and I did clean everything out and as each item went by,  Sarah cried…”not Burt, not Ernie, not my books.”  When it was all done, I was in a full self satisfied rage. This time I really showed her and her behavior would change! Sarah however took one look at her room and said… “thanks Mom, my room really needed a good cleaning!”

I sometimes get the sense in this story of Noah that God was at God’s wits end. God so loves this creation that like any parent, God wants the best for his creation, his children. But destruction was not the end of the story, a self satisfied human rage was not the point for God…renewal, re-creation, a good cleaning, a chance for new life and a promise of continual care is the still speaking message.

One biblical scholar observes that the people of Israel, through their writers and the stories they passed down generation to generation, tried to express their deep sense of this God full of loving-kindness who must deal over and over again with the consequences of our freedom and our sin: "a God who expresses sorrow and regret; a God who judges, but doesn't want to, …. then not in arbitrary ways; a God who goes beyond justice and determines to save some creatures, including every animal and bird; a God who commits to the future of a less than perfect world; a God open to change and doing things in new ways; a God who promises never to do this again….God, from creation on, continues to be open to and affected by the world"  In fact, through the stories we see the sorrow of God amidst this frightening judgment on our sins: "Grief is always what the Godward side of judgment looks like." (Terence Fretheim, Genesis, The New Interpreter's Bible as quoted in S.A.M.U.E.L. www.ucc.org 6/1/08).  Out of this story of terrible destruction comes a picture of a God who will never give up on his creation no matter how far we stray, a God who is always open to the hope of new beginnings.

In the Bible, we hear Noah obediently agreeing to God’s requests. In Bill Cosby’s rendition, we have perhaps a more realistic depiction of how we respond when God asks something of us……….You want me to do What?....build an ark, collect two of every animal, float in this thing for days while you wipe out everything else…..  “Yeah right……who is this really!”
God asked Noah to participate in this new world that God was going to create and God asks the same of us. Yet God does not ask us to do it all… “Be still and know that I am God says the psalmist….God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble, therefore we will not fear…” (Psalm 46) God is a refuge who protects us, not by hiding us but by adequately equipping us to face that which cannot be avoided and the courage to act in situations that we might never imagine. God gave Noah the tools and the strength that he needed to complete what God wanted him to do. God will do the same for us. God will be with us. God will provide us with opportunities to change the world…and yes some will cause us to question…who is this really?  But God will keep opening the doors of new possibilities, new dreams, new opportunities to serve and to prayerfully answer the question each for ourselves …..you want me to do what? 
Be still and listen for what God is asking of you.  Amen