Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Noah's Rainbow
Reverend Darcey Laine
December 12, 2004
Palo Alto, CA

"Where will live when our house falls down? "
My 3 year old son asked
I explained that our house was strong, like the brick house in the story of the 3 little pigs, assuming that story was the source of his question.
"When our strong house blows down, can we get a new house?" He asked
My husband and I looked at each other, wondering what our son was really wanting to know.
This was during that horrible period of hurricanes down in Florida, and we hypothesized that he had seen images of strong brick houses collapsing in a torrent of water on the nightly news.

Guided by my belief that children are best served by honesty, that they know more of life's fragility and pain than we as adults would hope, I told him the truth.

"Sometimes houses do fall down.
But your house is safe now,
you don't have to worry about it falling down
And if our house ever did fall down,
Your dad and I would protect you
We would find a new house for us to live in
Or fix it if we could"

This seemed to satisfy him, though we will never know what he really intended to ask.

Why do some people teach their children the story of Noah's Ark? Why are we looking at the story of Noah this morning? Because floods happen. Houses fall down. Unimaginable destruction and devastation are part of our world, and have been for thousands of years. This story was first told over 3 thousand years ago, and comes from an even older Babylonian story in the epic of Gilgamesh that is almost identical.

There is archeological evidence of a significant flood around 4000 BCE, but the story of Noah is not to be taken as a historical record of that or any other flood. It is a story grown in the hearts and imaginations of people who knew first hand that destruction was and is possible, and needed to ask "why?" and "how can we go in the face of such destruction?"

The most difficult part of the story for many Unitarian Universalists, the part that made Bill take that children's book back to the store is judgment. God "saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil." When we hear language like this, some of us start hearing echoes of our current conversation about "moral values." Most Americans say they made their decisions in the last election based on Moral Values, but the left and the right disagree about what these values are. When we read that humankind was wicked, shall we assume the bible refers to sexual mores, or man's inhumanity to man?

God tells Noah that "the earth is filled with violence because of [humanity]" and this does sound familiar. In fact, I have heard plenty of Unitarians talk about their frustration with our human potential for violence. I myself have given in to despair, wondering if the violence of our species outweighs our compassion and creativity. Each of us can bring to mind the violence we see in the world, but on our better days, we differentiate the act and the actor. We know that humans are complex. We eschew the duality that some are good and others are evil. We tend to paint humanity in grayscale, rather than black and white. Humans commit great and small acts of both violence and compassion, moment to moment, day to day, as we are gentle with our children or rude to fellow drivers on 101.

On our better days we remember that once we say that someone is "evil" we have removed their humanity, and allow ourselves the possibility that they should be obliterated. This is why it is frightening to hear our nation's leaders talk about "an axis of evil" as if the nations they reference aren't filled with a similar mix of schoolchildren, artists, soldiers, humanitarians, and violence as our own. When I read the story of Noah as a child, I rejected it because I did not believe that people were capable of profound evil. Now, as I watch the news, or read the testimony from our human rights watch groups, I know that great violence, which might be called evil, is a part of this world I inhabit. But I reject the response by the God of Noah to this evil. I believe with the Universalists, that humankind is not born into evil, not born in original sin. I believe that humans are much more complex than that. I believe that even the most violent warlord has some fragments that are redeemable, some part that may be capable of justice and compassion. I believe that even those we hold up as saints will sometimes stray from their principles or from the perfect peace they exemplify. So when I read a story which says there was violence and evil in the world, I believe it. But I refuse to believe that the only possible response is destruction.

The men and women who first told this story, and passed it down from generation to generation, offer a depiction of God that tells us more about humanity than about God. We project on the unknowable our very human experiences of frustration, anger and the urge to vilify and obliterate. Since we all share those human qualities, perhaps the God of this story could tell us something about our own lives. In Gestalt dream work, one imagines oneself as everyone and everything in the dream, to see what insight may emerge from the juxtaposition. Since the story of Noah is so archetypal and rich with symbolism, I propose that it may be useful to approach it like a dream, rather than a document of science or of history. This allows us to enter the world of the story as a mirror for ourselves. If I consider this story from the perspective of God, I can ask from this vantage point: what do I see of my own self of my disappointment with the world, my desire to judge, and my urge to obliterate?

Next let's consider the flood itself. Water is the birthplace of all life, both actually and symbolically: the primordial soup, the amniotic fluid. Water brings us back to the creation story in both scientific and biblical cosmology. Water is the blood in our veins, the sap of life. It is ebb and flow, the flux in our lives. In Jungian symbology, water is equated with the subconscious. To some the story of Noah is therefore the subconscious "fountains of the great deep bursting] forth" overwhelming and radically changing the conscious self, or even our collective human consciousness.

In Noah's story, water is the source of chaos and destruction. It is the flood that is inside our psyches, the deluge in our waking lives. At the beginning of our rainy season, it's not hard to call up images of torrential rain that knocks down branches, that makes driving dangerous, that turns marshy creek beds into roaring muddy streams. Noah's story calls to mind the images we saw on Television of water rushing down suburban streets, carrying with it the walls of houses, the debris of human lives: trees broken, a family cat perched on the barely visible roof of a submerged house.

In my interior life, I have experienced the overwhelming flux so profound I worried I would be drowned. But in my exterior life I have not experienced a flood like this, or a fire like the one that consumed the Oakland hills. All the same I remember how the events of 9-11 affected us from 3000 miles away. The images of such massive destruction, worry for our loved ones and human empathy flooded our hearts. The realization that the edifices of humanity could be so violently undermined affected us, affected our way of being in the world.

For me, it undermined much of my own theology. The structures of meaning that had seemed to frame a just and compassionate universe tumbled with the towers. I know that bad things often happen to good people. Listen to the voices during Caring and Sharing. Our Uncles, schoolmates, children are not stricken with Cancer as a punishment for their sins. Destruction is part of our world, as death is part of life. The San Andreas fault succumbs to growing pressure without regard to sexual mores or gun violence. All of us live with the reality of floods every day.

Here in this story, we are those who were "blotted out from the earth". Those who were crushed by the immense forces of nature. Humans know what it is to be carried off in a current stronger than ourselves, to see precious things reduced to a chaotic sea of mud and waste. We identify with the neighbors clamoring for sanctuary in the Ark as the waters rise.

And we are also Noah. We are the ones who survive. This is a theological puzzle all its own. How do we live knowing that others suffer and die? One solution is to say that we are righteous, while others are evil. But this isn't even enough for Noah. Bill and I did not read the part of the story where, after Noah gets off the ark and makes his covenant with God, he gets drunk, exposes himself and passes out. Noah is changed and disturbed by all he has seen, and trying to live as a survivor of this destruction. In Noah we have a mirror for ourselves as survivors- knowing that we live and even thrive while others suffer and are destroyed.

Which brings us to the Arc. The Ark carries the seed of life in a Hindu version of this same myth, and in Noah's story preserves the remnant of life on earth. The ark carries the hope of an embryo, that though individual lives will end, life itself will continue. When Noah sends out the dove, and the dove returns first with nothing and then with the new growth of an olive tree, the dove is a wonderful symbol for hope, the part of our selves that we send out in the world looking for a sign that life and peace are possible. We are the Ark, we are the dove. We are Noah's family, the birds and beasts, who leave the ark and begin life anew. This story is an integration of destruction and preservation, death and life juxtaposed. Our lives are this same juxtaposition of destruction and preservation.

Afterwards the God of Noah is sorry for what God has done. We project on God the remorse we each experience when we lash out in anger and frustration. Just as we so often do, God promises to mend God's ways. We see a God who is capable of growing, learning and changing. God makes a covenant not only with the humans but with all the animals that God will never destroy the world again, that the cycle of life will not be broken. A covenant is a relational promise that both parties, though they might mess up, will stay in relationship with one another. The rainbow is a sign to God to keep God's promise: like a great post-it note in the sky- remember not to destroy all life. The way we use the rainbow as a symbol in this church is different, but not so different. We covenant to stay in relationship with the people of our community and the larger world, recognizing our differences and innate commonality. We will not lash out or destroy one another, but instead renew our relationships when they are damaged, especially when they are damaged by our own blundering. We are the rainbow.

When Bill Moyers produced his wonderful series on Genesis, the panelists were of two minds about this story. Some said that the essential part of the story is the flood, others that the arc and the rainbow are at the core of the story. This is the essential human dilemma, is it not? Is the universe at its core benevolent or indifferent? Given the violence of humankind and of the natural world, (and even of God if you are a theist) is there hope? This story suggests that there is, that it is important that life go on in the face of everything. The God of Noah covenants with him and his descendants that God will choose life. Later, in the book of Exodus, God says "I set before you good and evil, life and death. Choose life" asking humanity to make the same choice.

It is sometimes hard, watching the violent images of flood and war, to choose life. It is sometimes hard, given the struggles living day to day in this world, to choose life. But whether we tell the Babylonian, Hindu or Hebrew story, all show us that the flood and the Ark go together. Perhaps generations of children in our Judeo- Christian Tradition have taken the physical symbols of the ark and the animals into their imaginative play, because these essential Archetypal images give expression to something all humans, even the very young ones, understand when they glimpse of the whole of life. In the same way dream images mean different things to different people, each of us will bring a unique understanding to the story of Noah and his Ark, but each of us knows something about the flood and something about the rainbow.

For myself I continue to struggle with the question of "why" it must be this way. Is it not possible to have a world without floods -- without violence, whether natural or human-made? It's enough to turn a believer in to an atheist. The answer is confined to the realm of mystery.

So why do some people teach their children the story of Noah's Ark? Why are we looking at the story of Noah this morning? Because floods happen. Houses fall down. But still there are Arks which preserve, doves bringing news of new life, and a rainbow which can be a reminder that life will continue. The next time you catch sight of a rainbow, allow yourself to hope that life will find a way to be sustained through the most overwhelming floods.

Closing Words:

Perhaps if I tell my son the story of Noah's Ark, it will go this way:

Long ago there was a flood, worse than anything we have ever seen, and probably will ever see. One family knew that things were going to get bad, but had hope for the future, and built an ark to keep them afloat during the flood.

They made the ark big enough not only for their family, but for as many animal families as they could save. When the rain came the family was safe, and waited for many weeks in the crowded ark for a sign that the rain was over, and a safe place to live on dry land. They built a new home, and went back to the business of living life, sad for all they had seen, and at the same time glad to be alive.

Each time we see a rainbow in the sky we can think of that family, and remember that as bad as things might be, life will go on

What is your reaction to this sermon?
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