Episode #92 - Understanding and Overcoming Anger - Genesis 6-8

Welcome to Episode #92 of the Sunday Scripture Podcast!    

Today we are excited start our series back for the program year in 2018 and 2019.  If you missed our brief explanation in Episode 91 I encourage you to download it and listen, we are taking new direction starting today.  Brad’s church and my church are both using the Narrative Lectionary and there is a link on the front page of our website, SundayScripturePodcast.com.  

Our Social media profiles on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook have always been a way for us to tell you we have posted new content.  We’ll still do that, but our profiles will also feature scripture readings for each day, that build towards the message for Sunday.
Today we start with a classic story you are more likely to hear in children’s church than in a worship service - Noah’s Ark.  It is an enormous story across three different chapters, starting with Genesis 6, and we have cut several verses for time, hoping to still catch the essence of the message.                                                                                                                                                                                                    
Genesis 6: Selected Verses
5 The Lord saw that humanity had become thoroughly evil on the earth and that every idea their minds thought up was always completely evil. 6 The Lord regretted making human beings on the earth, and the Lord was heartbroken. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe off of the land the human race that I’ve created: from human beings to livestock to the crawling things to the birds in the skies, because I regret I ever made them.”
8 But as for Noah, the Lord approved of him.  9 These are Noah’s descendants. In his generation, Noah was a moral and exemplary man; he[a] walked with God. 10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 11 In God’s sight, the earth had become corrupt and was filled with violence. 12 God saw that the earth was corrupt, because all creatures behaved corruptly on the earth.
13 God said to Noah, “The end has come for all creatures, since they have filled the earth with violence. I am now about to destroy them along with the earth, 14 so make a wooden ark.  Make the ark with nesting places and cover it inside and out with tar. 15 This is how you should make it: four hundred fifty feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and forty-five feet high. 16 Make a roof[c] for the ark and complete it one foot from the top.[d] Put a door in its side. In the hold below, make the second and third decks.
17 “I am now bringing the floodwaters over the earth to destroy everything under the sky that breathes. Everything on earth is about to take its last breath. 18 But I will set up my covenant with you. You will go into the ark together with your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives. 19 From all living things—from all creatures—you are to bring a pair, male and female, into the ark with you to keep them alive.20 From each kind of bird, from each kind of livestock, and from each kind of everything that crawls on the ground—a pair from each will go in with you to stay alive. 21 Take some from every kind of food and stow it as food for you and for the animals.”
22 Noah did everything exactly as God commanded him.
 
Genesis 8: Selected Verses
God remembered Noah, all those alive, and all the animals with him in the ark. God sent a wind over the earth so that the waters receded….6 After forty days, Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made. 7 He sent out a raven, and it flew back and forth until the waters over the entire earth had dried up. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the waters on all of the fertile land had subsided, 9 but the dove found no place to set its foot. It returned to him in the ark since waters still covered the entire earth. Noah stretched out his hand, took it, and brought it back into the ark. 10 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out from the ark again. 11 The dove came back to him in the evening, grasping a torn olive leaf in its beak. Then Noah knew that the waters were subsiding from the earth. 12 He waited seven more days and sent out the dove, but it didn’t come back to him again.

​Genesis 9:8-13 
8 God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 “I am now setting up my covenant with you, with your descendants, 10 and with every living being with you—with the birds, with the large animals, and with all the animals of the earth, leaving the ark with you.[a] 11 I will set up my covenant with you so that never again will all life be cut oy floodwaters. There will never again be a flood to destroy the earth.”
12 God said, “This is the symbol of the covenant that I am drawing up between me and you and every living thing with you, on behalf of every future generation. 13 I have placed my bow in the clouds; it will be the symbol of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember the covenant between me and you and every living being among all the creatures. Floodwaters will never again destroy all creatures.16 The bow will be in the clouds, and upon seeing it I will remember the enduring covenant between God and every living being of all the earth’s creatures.” 17 God said to Noah, “This is the symbol of the covenant that I have set up between me and all creatures on earth.”
 
 
 Quotes Used in the 2nd Half from Dr. Walter Brueggemann

“What we find there is not an angry tyrant, but a troubled parent who grieves over the alienation. He is glowingly aware that the imagination of the thoughts of the human heart are unrelievedly hostile. The conjuring, day dreams, and self-perceptions of the world are all titled

• God’s purpose. God is aware that something is deeply amiss in creation, so that God’s own dream has no prospect of fulfillment. With that perverted imagination, God’s world has begun to conjure its own future quite apart from the future willed by God.”
  
• “It is popularly thought that the crisis of the flood is to place the world in jeopardy. But a close reading indicates that it’s is the heart and person of God which are placed in crisis. The crisis is not the much water, which now has become only a dramatic setting. Rather, the crisis comes because of the resistant character of the world which evokes hurt and grief in the heart of God.”
  
• Genesis 6-9 also gives us a picture of a God who is able to change: both in the decision to blot out what has been created (Genesis 6:7) and in the promise to never destroy the earth through a flood (Genesis 9:11). While many view God as immutable, today’s story portrays God in a much different light. 20

 
Prayer for the Week - God of redemption, help us to know that where we see destruction, you inspire hope; where we see brokenness, you see promise; where we see rain, you craft beautiful rainbows. Help us to remember your promise and blessing to Noah and his family, and inspire in us the call to follow your call to justice and peace. We pray this in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.