Fr Robert Hendrickson

“Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”

Dear Friends in Christ,

One of the reasons people will often talk about something like Noah’s Ark or the Garden of Eden being something true from deep, deep in humanity’s past is because of the similarities between the faith stories, mythologies, and parables of different faith traditions scattered far across the globe. The notion is that even if our Ark story isn’t 100% factual, it must have some deep-seated truth that began to be told around campfires far back in our history, before tribes split apart. It is also often said that the truth must be there, somewhere, because people who were separated by distance and DNA tell such strikingly similar stories.

The Choctaw, Ottawa, and Cree as well as Inuits and many more North American tribes have some sort of flood narrative. The Egyptians, Sumerians, and Mesopotamians all have one. You can read of them in Korean, Malaysian, Indian, and Filipino ancient tales. Places as far flung as ancient Ireland is from Thailand all have flood stories as part of their ancient lore.

This could be because the notion of a flood is such a primal thing that across cultures we would of course imagine God or gods resorting to such to punish the wayward. It does presume, across cultures, that God or gods care about what we do. Something about the way we go about our lives makes an impression on God and, in so many of these narratives, God responds — with a flood.

The Christian addendum to this is that God looks at this cycle — and chooses another way. God choose to gather our sins unto himself and show us what sinlessness looks like. He walks among us forgiving and healing and casting out demons. The flood which washes all things becomes the blood and water that poured out from his side. The flood which makes all things new is the baptism in which we all are, by a cataclysmic act, dead to sin and reborn to new life.

The old cycle, the old tale, which ends with an angry God wiping clean the face of the earth as punishment for human failings is upended. The story changes to humanity, angry, trying to wipe God from the earth as they lift him back heavenward on a cross — and lock him in the bowels of the earth as a stone is rolled in front of a hole — a place for gods to be forgotten.

Yet even that is not the end of the story. More than leaving us alone or just not punishing us, God welcomes us to an eternal home — a dwelling place prepared for us not just as servants but as siblings of Christ. It is an equally cataclysmic claim. It is an audacious proclamation that has every bit the possibility of wiping clean the whole earth as any flood. If we could see one another as God sees us, as beloved children, as heirs of eternal promise, how might the earth be different?

The aspiration for us to live in peace, in loving harmony, is also one that is deep in our bones and fired in the long hope of human wholeness. It is part of those stories once told across fires in the dead of night. In so many tellings though, the hope of a loving humanity is the myth and the seeming wrath of God the brutish reality. Yet, as we make our way toward hearing the Transfiguration gospel next week, then Lent, and then Easter, we are reminded that it may yet be that the wrath of God is the thing that we remember is undone — and the hope of love is the real, true, and everlasting promise given by God in Christ.

That love is the flood. The story isn’t quite done yet though — and we still look with eager longing for the dawning again as so many, many have long before us.

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert