The Week of February 20th, 2022

>>>>>> The Creek Is Rising. Genesis 7:1-16<<<<<<

Sermon Noodles and Devotional Guide

Of all the details of the story of Noah—his age for example, the specific dimensions of the Ark; the forty days of rain, wiping out humanity, the rainbow as a sign of a covenant and so forth, notice something unusual about this passage. 

Seven pairs of “clean” animals are taken into the Ark; and a pair of unclean animals.

Male and female are taken into the ark. Seven pairs of birds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth16 And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him; and the Lord shut him in.

Of all the interesting things that happen in the story of Noah and the flood, God shuts them all up in an ark.  The passage is, among other things, about forgiveness. 

 The Ark is a gathering of contraries—male and female, unclean and clean-- and dealing with the stink that arises inside is the school of salvation. Noah’s Ark is a school of love. It is an honest community of committed relationships.

Where do we learn love and forgiveness?

Is that just something we learn from a book?

We have to be taught the giving and the receiving of forgiveness. 

And where friends, do we learn about it if not the church?

 Taking his clue from Jesus, a wise man once said, “the mystery of forgiveness is the incomparable tool of salvation. There is nothing else quite like it for inner transformation” which is why Jesus absolutely insisted upon it.  Two thirds of the teaching of Jesus is about forgiveness. 

 Question that is alive for us today is: At this age and stage of life for you, how are you at the giving and receiving of forgiveness?

Consider this:

Every time God forgives us, God is saying that God’s own rules do not matter as much as the relationship that God wants to create with us. Just the Biblical notion of absolute forgiveness, once experienced, should be enough to make us trust and seek and love God. (Falling Upward 57)

 Rabbi Zalman

Holding a grudge, being full of resentment, holding others in contempt with a refusal to forgive hurts us as much as it hurts the betrayer. The refusal to forgive someone is like stabbing yourself in the stomach to hurt the person standing behind you. Victim and Victimizer are joined in perpetuity by the absence of forgiveness.