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After the Flood
What we see in today’s Scripture is God’s aching heart. God felt so bad after the flood. Aching heart comes from love. Where there is no love, there is no suffering. We suffer because we love. We become desperate because we love. What we see in today’s passage is God’s pain and his anguish. Who am I that God is so brokenhearted about my fate? Am I that important to him?
God saw how evil human beings were. Their wickedness was destroying them. God saw that and felt so desperate. He didn’t know what to do. But after the flood, God changed his mind. He said he would never destroy the earth with water. He repeated this word “never” a few times.
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.’ (Genesis 9:11)
…and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. (Genesis 9:15)
Describing God
We see God regretting. I like how the Genesis writer described God. God is like us. God is sad. God repents. God regrets. God is not like a distant super being up there who has no feeling. God is like parents who blame themselves for the suffering of their children even if it was their own faults. I think this describes God more accurately than analytic description of God such as immutability, omni-present, omniscience of God. Trying to come up with an analytical definition of God’s attribute through this kind of passage is misreading the intention of the author.
Genesis writer tried to describe God’s aching heart for us, in the way we human beings could understand. God changed his mind and declared that he would never destroy the humanity like that. It was more a declaration than a covenant. It was not an agreement of both parties like a contract. God simply let Noah know what he would do. What Noah might do had no bearing on God’s decision. Regardless of human behaviors, God said he would not destroy them. He knew that we feeble human beings are too weak to keep their promises. We are too flimsy. Our heart may desire but our flesh is weak. We want to do good with our heart but we do evil with our flesh. St. Paul discovered about himself after meeting Christ. Let us listen to what he said.
So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin. (Romans 7:25)
When we go back one chapter before today’s passage, we see this.
‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth…” (Genesis 8:21)
Evil From Youth
“Evil from youth.” This means evilness is embedded in our very being. It is a part of us. So deeply ingrained, God knew that punishment wouldn’t do any good.
Look at what they did after the flood. Did they change? They committed a worse evil. They built the Babel tower and said let us build the tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves. That’s what human beings are like. If God punished human beings every time they committed evil, no one would have survived. That’s why God changed his mind. What human beings could not do on their own, God wanted to do. That is the Good News. We are saved not because we changed and became righteous. We are saved because God changed because of his love for us and that love is God’s righteousness. By God’s righteousness, we are saved.
The World we Live in
When I see the world we live in, I see hostility that comes from greed. This world is operated not by righteousness but by greed. People who have power try to have more power, and in the process, they exploit those who don’t have much. Isn’t that greed? Because of greed, people fight with each other, compete with each other, and hate each other. They validate themselves and invalidate others. God becomes merely inconvenient presence.
Greed is deeply embedded within us. Greed invokes violence. And it harbors hostility within us. This hostility divides us and separates us from God. Punishment has no power to destroy this greed. It makes our greed worse. It only enflames our greed. Greed and hostility go together.
The ultimate hostility of human beings was manifested at the cross. This hostility killed the Son of God. This hostility put a wedge between God and human beings. Jesus came to put an end to this hostility.
This was God’s will. God’s will is hidden in today’s passage and beginning from Noah, God chose to relate to human beings differently with a different attitude. Hostility cannot destroy hostility.
The Bow
In today’s scripture, it says,
“I have set my bow in the clouds.” (Genesis 9:13)
Yes, it is a rainbow. But it is also a bow of battle. We can imagine a deity with bow and arrow but in today’s story, there is no arrow. And God hung up the bow in the clouds. In other words, there is no more battle, no more fight. Only peace. God knows all our sins, all our shame, all our wickedness, but he will not go to battle against us. He will do all he can to restore us but not through punishment but through love. Bow is not any more the symbol of battle but of God’s covenant of love. God initiated the peace process, not us and it was Jesus who accomplished it.
…so that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. (Ephesians 2:15, 16)
This is a very new image of God. Gods of this world are the ones who control the world by their power and subjects all under their feet. People tremble before gods and obey their gods out of fear.
A Change in Mind
But God we see in Noah’s story is God who desires us so much that he would even go against his nature and his attribute. He changed his mind for us.
Since God changed his mind, we should also change our minds. We have to put down our own bow. I know it’s scary. Hostility is our weapon to defend ourselves. But we have to let it go. As God hung up his bow in the clouds, we should also hang up our bow and initiate the peace, first within us, and with others, and ultimately with God. That is what God wants. As long as we have hostility, we cannot survive. As long as we have hostility, a community cannot survive. As long as we have hostility, the world cannot survive.
We reflected on what Henri Nouwen said about hospitality at the New Year retreat last year. He emphasized that we should change our hostility to hospitality. He gives us this image.
“When we say, ‘You can be my guest if you believe what I believe, think the way I think and behave as I do,’ we offer love under a condition or for a price.” (Henri Nouwen)
We cannot call this true love. Jesus taught us to love our enemies. That means even towards our enemies, don’t take a hostile attitude.
When God hung up his bow in the clouds, when he changed his mind, he determined to suffer our weaknesses, even our evilness. Instead of judging and condemning people who do wrongs, we should be willing to suffer their shortcomings. That’s hard but that’s what Christians ought to do.
Let us not cultivate hostility within us. It will kill us and also others. Let us put down our bow and cultivate love.
Starting from Ash Wednesday, we have entered into Lent. Lent is the season where we meditate on the suffering of Jesus Christ. Let us meditate on Jesus’ Cross. Jesus put down bow and picked up the cross. Hostility is crucified on the cross.
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