Daily Devotion for Lent 2018 - Day 6, Tuesday

Scripture Reading: Genesis 7 (NRSV)

This horse was saved from the floods in Houston

in 2016.  It plucks at the heartstrings to think

about the horses (or people) that didn't make it.

The animals featured in the Noah story have kept this tale in children's Bibles for generations.  Most of the time, these editions omit the part where the rest of humanity is washed away in the flood.

This story definitely has a pension for works righteousness as Noah is the only righteous person that God has been able to find.  So Noah and his family get seats on the boat while everyone else drowns.  From a Christian standpoint, this seems to be the opposite of grace.

As we think about how Jesus was influenced by this story, it is interesting that the grace he represents is for the righteous and the unrighteous alike.  

John 3:16-17 may contend for most well-known verses in the Bible (certainly if you took verse 16 alone): 

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.  Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."

Jesus certainly spoke about judgment.  But our overall image of Jesus is the grace we receive.  Jesus is the one washed away by the pain and suffering of crucifixion rather than the rest of the known world.  Substitutionary atonement suggests that his sacrifice pays for our sins.

Some biblical scholars have difficulty with this kind of atonement because it makes God seem a little blood-thirsty.  After all, why would an almighty God need any kind of payment, let alone blood from an innocent?  Couldn't God just forgive us?

As I consider how we think about God, it is clear that the theologians writing about Noah were attempting to talk about such a difficult natural disaster.  If their world was flooded such as the Black Sea's sudden movement into its current location during the Halocene epoch, it would certainly be notable and survivors would try to explain it.  There are flood myths from many Middle Eastern cultures.  

How the Bible talks about Noah means that God is in charge of the universe - even if it means ascribing horrible disasters to God.  People in that day may not have thought about those who died because they would obviously had as their ancestor the one found righteous in God's eye.

As we begin to think more deeply about these kind of disasters, Jesus tells people that sometimes bad things just happen as when he says in Luke 13:4-5a:

"Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?  No, I tell you."

So if this is the case, we must always put ourselves in the part of Noah's family when hearing this story because in this sense, we are saved by God.  And it may be that God did not require blood as much as the people used to making sacrifices to appease God.  Jesus is willing to do whatever is necessary to communicate this grace to us.  As I think about this, it makes it that much more difficult for me to bear.  And so what is my response to God?

Move our hearts with the calm, smooth flow of your grace.

Let the river of your love run through our souls.

May my soul be carried by the current of your love towards the wide, infinite ocean of heaven.

Stretch out my heart with your strength,

as you stretch out the sky above the earth.

Smooth out any wrinkles of hatred or resentment.

Enlarge my soul that it may know more fully your truth.

Amen.

Prayer by Gilbert of Hoyland, Lincolnshire, England, 12th Century

Photo by Pinke via Flickr.com.  Used under the Creative Commons license.