Sunday, 21 February 2021

SERMON 155 - SUNDAY 21 FEBRUARY 2021

Sermon on First Sunday of Lent  -  Clarendon Team Online Service  –  Sunday 21st February 2021

Genesis 9:8-17

It’s good to be with you again and reflecting on today’s passage of scripture. I have chosen this particular passage from Genesis as it seems to me to be a most appropriate piece for us, not only as we are beginning Lent but also because the rainbow is such a very strong symbol during this long period of the pandemic.

Let’s just remind ourselves of the context in which we find this scripture. The Great Flood is over, Noah, his family and all the animals with him in the Ark have been saved after forty days and forty nights at sea.  God’s wrath upon the sinful people of the Earth had been so great that he had decided to “wipe the slate clean”.  Destroy all he had created except for the one righteous man and his family and those other creatures collected together by them. You all know the story so well that I need not repeat it here.

Whenever I hear the story of Noah and the Flood I can’t help myself but think about the film “Evan Almighty”, starring Steve Carell, in which our hero, Congressman Evan Baxter, hears the voice of God calling him to build a big boat in his back garden – mirroring the story from Genesis. All his neighbours and fellow politicians think he is nuts but he saves the day when a new and poorly developed dam bursts flooding his town.  He becomes the hero but only after much derision and loss of face and office.  Imagine the jibes and ridicule which the original Noah must have suffered - not only from his friends and neighbours but also his family – yet he doggedly pursued what he felt God had called him to do. That is something for us all to reflect upon; is God calling us to do something different and unusual – something which others might think odd but which is, in fact, part of God’s plan for us and for others?

Turning back to our particular piece of scripture today, I think this is one of the most descriptive and beautiful passages in the whole bible.  I know that whenever I look upon a rainbow in the sky, even though I do understand its scientific explanation and properties – the splitting of white light through the prism of raindrops into its constituent spectroscopic colours – it still amazes me and fills me with a sense of awe and wonder and, because it is often seen after rain or a storm, it invokes a sense of peace and well-being.

That is indeed the message which God is giving in that beautiful vision – of peace and well-being and of course, beauty; and especially after the storms and upheaval of the Great Flood which had gone on before.  It was the sign which God gave to seal the Covenant, the promise that never again would he deal with the sins of the people with such a cataclysmic event as that which they had just been through.  Indeed, as we know, that Covenant was followed through later by the New Covenant or Testament so that instead of punishing the people in such a way he would send his only son, Jesus Christ, to take the punishment for us. Not only that, instead of calling individuals such as Noah for specific individual tasks, building the Ark for example, anyone could now be called and blessed with the Holy Spirit. They only had to ask through prayer and devotion.

I said at the beginning that this piece of scripture was particularly appropriate for this time and this place.  We are not suffering from a global flood, although the heavy rainfall we have had over the last week may make us think that another one is on the way, but we are suffering from a global pandemic. Some might think that it is God’s way of punishing us but I don’t believe that for a second. If anything, the pandemic is a strong warning to us by putting us in our own “Arks” of isolation, giving us an opportunity to reflect upon what we have been doing to our planet and to each another.  One only has to watch some of the TV documentaries with people like David Attenborough and Simon Reeve to know that we are in danger of doing untold irreversible damage to our fragile planet without needing God’s wrath.

As well as the rainbow, another image which is indelibly printed on my mind’s eye is that wonderful  photo taken by the astronaut, Bill Anders, during the Apollo 8 mission around the Moon. It is called “Earthrise” and shows a gibbous-phased beautiful blue and white planet rising over the horizon of a desolate lunar landscape. Anders recited the first words of Genesis as other words failed him at the time but later described his realisation that the Earth is just another spacecraft, like their own three-manned command module, but containing 3.5 billion people – the entire human race.  That photo became the logo and icon of so many environmental agencies.

Today, the rainbow has become a symbol for the work of the NHS staff who are risking their own health for the benefit of ensuring  good health for those millions they are serving. It is also a symbol of diversity and equality.  It has also been adopted by the Greenpeace activists as they seek to halt climate change and save endangered species.  It is, and remains a reminder that we have been left by God’s only Son’s sacrifice and the coming of the Holy Spirit to look after our world and each other.  To remind ourselves that the free will which we have been given is to be exercised wisely and in accordance with God’s promise that he will not intervene in such a devastating way again.  He has left us to look after our own spacecraft, ourselves and all those creatures he saved.

May God bless you and keep you faithful, so that you may soon safely step out of your own Ark, perhaps to a new and different world, but hopefully a better one for us all. 

Amen

                                                                                                         MFB/155/18022021

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