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“WHAT COLOR IS YOUR ARK?”
Genesis 6-8, selections ?Matthew 7:24-27
Let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
I.
The Washita River looms large in my childhood mind – even though it is a relatively small river, as rivers go. I don’t know where else it flows, but the Washita I remember skirts the outside of the city limits of the town where I was born – Chickasha, Oklahoma.
And most of the time, that is where the river stays – just outside the city limits. However, it floods at all-too-frequent intervals. And some of the more-frightening memories of my childhood involve seeing the waters of that river virtually lapping at the door of my grandparents’ home, some five miles away from the river, and watching rowboats float where the street used to be, rescuing neighbors from their inundated houses. Most of the time, my grandparents’ house was spared – since it sat high above the ground. But, at least once, it too was flooded, and my grandparents themselves had to be evacuated by rowboat.
Floods, I mean to say, are well within my personal experience. I’ve seen firsthand the devastation they can bring, and have known personally the losses and human dislocation they create.
But, in a sense, in our media-saturated era, all of us are familiar with floods; all of us have seen what they can do. Because the South Asian tsunami of 2004 was vividly broadcast on television, right into our living rooms, and the vivid images of the New Orleans flood of 2005 (not to mention the national shame that goes with it) keep on being re-broadcasted and re-printed on a frequent basis.
II.
All of us, I mean to say, whether personally and directly or via the media – are familiar with floods. So we resonate with the readings today – the first reading about Noah’s flood, which was said not only to cover the entire earth, but even to cover the tops of mountains; and the second reading about the house built on sand, which was washed away by a flood, versus the house built on rock, which withstood all.
And the temptation – especially with Noah’s flood – is to get caught up in the natural and physical aspect of things. So we ponder whether the entire earth could indeed be flooded, or whether Noah could actually have got all those animals into such a relatively-small ark, and so on.
But neither story is really about that – not even the story of Noah. At bottom, both stories call us to reflect on our lives, and on what happens to us spiritually when the floods of life invade and destroy.
There is the old saying, “Into every life a little rain must fall.” But today’s stories really want us to consider life when the rain won’t stop – life when the rain accumulates, turns into a flood, and threatens to destroy everything that we value.
Today’s stories, I mean, want to speak to the time you were unemployed and couldn’t get a new job no matter how hard you tried; or the time when your current job just got worse and worse with every passing day, and you couldn’t find a way to get out; or the time when your spouse went through that horrible illness and suffering, and there just wasn’t any letup in it all for either of you; or the time your marriage began to fail, and no conversation, no counseling, no prayers and anguish could save you from sliding into a divorce that tore your world apart; or those years of agony you went through with your teen-aged son or daughter who was addicted to whatever; or those months when you, yourself, were so sick with chemotherapy that you didn’t know whether you wanted to live or die; or whatever other life-experience represents a flood that covered your earth, a storm that threatened your well-being or even your existence.
That’s really what our stories are all about, at bottom – life when the rain won’t stop, and the floods do come.
III.
Not too many years ago a very popular book came out that was entitled, What Color is Your Parachute? Someone here probably owns it. And, if you don’t, it’s now going into its 35th or so edition, and is available in every bookstore. The book intends to answer the question, “What do you do, if you find yourself out of a job?” Or, better, it intends to answer the question, “What do you do, if you find yourself without a mission in life?” And the idea of the “parachute” is that you can and should devise a plan that will not only get you a job, but that will get you to the job of your dreams – to the place in life where you were always meant to be. And the golden parachute is the one that gets you there perfectly.
Put all that into Biblical terminology, and you might get the question, “What color is your ark?” That is to say, what are your plans, what have you done, what foundation have you laid, so that when the floods come and the winds blow, you will still be safe?
The story of Noah and the parable of Jesus both make it clear how the Bible answers that question. The Bible wants to say that your ark needs to be faith-colored. In the story of Noah, it was his faith that let him hear God and build the ark; and in the parable, the rock on which the secure house is founded is the rock of faith.
In brief, what both our stories this morning want to suggest is that storms, or even floods, are the stuff of human existence. Oh, maybe God has foresworn the worst of them that might wipe out the whole physical world again; but God has not promised to take them all away. And, if we didn’t know that from Scripture, we would surely know it from living life.
But what God has promised – and what we can count on God to do – is to carry us through the storms and the floods when they come. And we can do that by faith – by looking to God and the resources God gives, when the going gets tough.
Or, better, we can do that before the going gets tough. Thinking of the story of Noah, we can start building our ark before the rains start; or thinking of the parable, we can find the rock-solid foundation before the storm comes.
Because the faith that really matters is not a good luck charm that we carry in our pocket and forget till an emergency arises, and then we reach inside to touch it. But the faith that matters is the faith that you and I build and nourish, beginning today. It’s the faith that we build by regular church attendance, by daily reading of our Bible, by frequent meeting with Christian friends in a small Christian support group, by questioning now what we have trouble understanding instead of waiting till the questions are too late, by learning today the disciplines of prayer. “Now,” says St. Paul, “is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation.”[1] We begin building our ark before it begins to rain; we find a rock-solid foundation to stand on before the storms loom.
IV.
Some of us know and love the old hymn, “It Is Well With My Soul.” The author was Horatio Spafford, a Chicago attorney whose life was centered in Chicago’s Northside Tabernacle church, where the great Dwight L. Moody was pastor in the late 1800s. Spafford knew about life’s storms and floods about life’s challenges and even disasters. First, he lost everything in the great Chicago fire of 1871. Then, in 1873, his wife and four daughters were sailing to London when their ship was struck by another ship, and both sank; only his wife survived. Yet, this was when Spafford wrote his hymn,
When peace like a river attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll,
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well with my soul.
What a faith to have! And it bore Spafford through. But it was not a faith that he caught on the fly. Rather, it was a faith he nurtured over the years. Then, when the floods came, his ark was ready; when the storms rose, he already had found the rock on which he had stood and built.
V.
What color is your ark? God grant that it, too, is the color of faith a fiath you have nurtured long. And, whatever storms may arise or floods may come, it will be well with your soul.
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In the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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