By Rebecca Stoltzfus, president
Scripture: Genesis 9:8-17 (NRSV)
Most of us know Noah’s ark as children’s story, with adorable cartoon-like images of African mammals looking at us with large eyes. Do we really think that is purpose of this story in our sacred scriptures—a sort of Biblical SPCA ad? What is the meaning for us? What if we are actually on the ark?
In this final book, Chaos or Community? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. concludes with a chapter entitled, “The World House.” He writes:
“This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited a large house, a ‘great world house’ in which we have to live together—black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu—a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.”
The closeness of our neighbors, the raw and ever-present exposure of ourselves on social media, our burgeoning population on a planet that is our green and blue boat in the vast ocean of the cosmos—we are on the ark.
King’s contemporary, James Baldwin, wrote: “It is for this reason that love is so desperately sought and so cunningly avoided. Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”
The superpower that we need if we are to survive in this ‘great world house,’ this blue-green ark, is love. Let us step out of the cartoon world and take off our masks. This ark can be frightening. And yet, love is available to us in abundance; indeed, we are made for love. In this season of Lent, I pray that we dare to cultivate love, share love and act in love. For you and me and the creatures too.
Scripture: Genesis 9:8-17 (NRSV)
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, 10and 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. 11I 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.”
12God 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: 13I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15I 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. 16When 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.” 17God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”