1st Sunday in Lent

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

How do you start over after a flood? Noah and his family had been rescued from the flood that destroyed absolutely everything else on earth. Now they were able to leave the ark and step outside. I can only imagine what they saw: mud everywhere, dead trees, maybe corpses of humans and animals. Are any buildings still standing? Are they in an area they recognize or in a totally foreign landscape?

What do they do now? Where do you begin when disaster has struck and everything you knew has been destroyed?

My parents often shared stories with me of what Germany was like after the Second World War. Everything was in ruins. My dad remembers walking along the streets of Kiel, the capitol city of the northernmost state. What had been a normal city street was now a foot path; on both side of that path, debris from broken apartment and business buildings mounted up: bricks, beams, broken glass, pieces of furniture, and so forth. 85% of homes in that city were damaged or destroyed.

How do you rebuild after that? Where do you start?

How will we recover from the year of COVID? The coronavirus has taken so much from us. Some have lost their job, or their home, or their business. Children have lost out on birthday parties and sleepovers and the comradery of friends. Students were denied their high school and college and grad school graduations. Couples had to vastly reduce the size of their weddings. Families had to delay or restrict the funeral services for people they love.

We have all become anxious. This virus is an invisible enemy that keeps shifting. Every time we think we know how to live safely, a new wave or a new variant breaks out, and it’s back to the drawing board. Will we ever be able to shake the fear? Will we ever be comfortable again shaking someone’s hand? Hugging after worship? Cuddling grandchildren? Sharing the peace? Breaking bread?

How will we recover from this – mentally, financially, emotionally, socially, spiritually? What will we do to rebuild life?

How do we start over after we failed miserably? When we have hurt people badly, when addiction ruined all our relationships, when indiscretion broke our marriage, when dishonesty ended our career: What do we do next? How do we go on? How do we start over?

Noah was able to start over because God made that possible.

In the creation of the world, God brought order into chaos. Among other things, God controlled the waters of heaven and earth to eek out a safe space for life to flourish.

In the great flood, God undid this. He let the waters rise from the deep and fall from the sky for forty days. Everything and everyone died, except for Noah, his wife, their three sons and their waives, and all kinds of animals Noah had brought into a big boat named an ark. God un-created.

Now the waters have receded and the ark has landed and the occupants have left the boat. What next?

Next God comes and speaks with Noah. Right before our reading starts, God pretty much recaps the creation story: Be fruitful, multiply, take care of the earth.

And then comes a new thing: God offers Noah a covenant.

There are two kinds of covenant in the Bible. One type of covenant is a mutual agreement between two parties, where both parties have responsibilities. The other type is a somewhat one-sided covenant, where God makes promises and the human covenant partner receives them, without having to do anything to earn them or to uphold the covenant.

This is the kind of covenant God offers here. Noah doesn’t ask for anything, doesn’t expect anything, doesn’t deserve anything. God freely decided to come to Noah and tie himself to Noah in a covenant.

In fact, God doesn’t make this covenant with just Noah, or with Noah’s family, or with Noah’s tribe, or even with humanity, but with all living things. Four times in our brief passage God asserts that this covenant includes the whole creation.

The covenant promise is that God will never, ever again destroy the whole earth. Instead, the rhythms of life will be protected: seed time and harvest, summer and winter will always continue. There will be the order of seasons. God will eek out safe spaces for creatures to thrive.

Yes, there will still be floods here and there, and yes, people will tragically die. But now we know that life will go on. God has promised. There will be life after disaster.

In fact, the promise God makes is unconditional. No matter what Noah and his descendants, including us, do, God will be faithful to the promise and make sure that life continues.

As a visual sign of this promise, God points to the rainbow. Every time there is a rainbow in the sky, God will remember the covenant. Every time there is a rainbow in the sky, we are reminded of God’s promise and God’s faithfulness and God’s desire to eek out a safe space for us where new life, new creation, can begin.

With this promise, Noah and his family set out to start over: They plant a vineyard, they have life stock, they repopulate the world. Knowing that their new start is in God’s hands and backed up by God’s promises, gave them the faith and energy they needed.

The promise of new life also helped Germans to rebuild after the war. People took a deep breath and rolled up their sleeves and set to work. Countless people, mainly women, would literally go through the pile of debris and pick out and clean every single brick that was still in decent condition, and with those bricks, new homes were built.

The promise of a new start also blesses us when our personal lives are a mess. God’s faithfulness helps us to put one foot before the other and move forward. And often, God’s faithfulness provides people who assist us on that journey.

I just read the story of a young man named Sam. He grew up in a small town and a loving, Lutheran family. From an early age, Sam was difficult. Whenever he entered the next grade, the Sunday school teacher for that grade decided to take a year off. Everyone at church remembered Sam drawing on the classroom wall with permanent marker. Everyone remembered him being part of a gang smashing windows around town, including the church’s windows. Eventually, Sam landed in jail.

When he was released eight years later, he his parents welcomed him back. They brough him to worship, sitting to his right and his left as if to protect him. Good move, for at first the congregation was not at all happy to see Sam in their midst.

But Sam kept coming with his parents. Eventually, he spoke to the congregation, asking them for forgiveness and sharing how he was trying to turn his life around. Slowly but surely, the members of the congregation relaxed around him, accepted him back, supported his new beginning. God and God’s people eeked out the space for Sam to start over after disaster.

Sam had been baptized in that church. St. Peter in his letter compares baptism to Noah’s experience in the flood. Their lives were saved through the water, just as our lives are saved when baptism ties us to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The waters of baptism are not just washing away sins. The waters of baptism remind us that baptism has to do with dying and rising, with death and resurrection. It’s not about washing, but about drowning and coming back to life, by the grace of God.

The covenant of baptism is much like the covenant God made with Noah: rather one-sided. God does all the promising and committing: God adopts us into his family, God surrounds us with supportive community; God blesses us with the gift of the Holy Spirit and with faith; God assures us of his undying love; God promises eternal life in his kingdom.

We don’t ask for this, don’t deserve it, don’t do anything. Most of us where babies when God so showered us with grace. No matter what we do later in life, this covenant stands. God’s faithfulness does not waver.

One commentator mentioned a scene from the movie Toy Story: When the boy Andy received the cowboy doll as a gift, he writes his name on the bottom of its boot. For the rest of the movie, through all the excitement and challenges, that cowboy walks around with the name of his owner written on his boot.

In baptism, God marks us with a cross and names us ‘child of God’. For the rest of our lives, through all the ups and downs, we walk around with that label: Child of God. And we walk around with that promise: God is faithful, God encourages new beginnings, God eeks out safe space for life to flourish.

Today we recall two covenants God has made with us: The covenant of Noah, promising that God will make sure that life will always go on; and the covenant of baptism which assures us of God’s love and grace and salvation.

These two covenants will be our foundation when we rebuild after COVID. Some day this will be over, and we will emerge just as Noah and his family emerged from the ark. We will be exhausted, maybe overwhelmed by the challenges ahead, maybe afraid of the future, maybe unsure of what life will look like.

Yet we will rely on God’s covenant promise: Life will continue. We will rejoice in the gifts of baptism: faith, hope, community, vision. We will remember that we are marked as God’s child forever. We will discover the safe space God is opening for us to thrive in. Together with God and God’s covenant people, we will embark on our future with God. Amen.