One of my favorite biblical stories as a youngster was the
one about Noah and the ark. It
captured my imagination. The ark,
large, sturdy, and secure as it sailed on the flooded waters, was a refuge for
all the life that entered it.
There were animals of every kind, birds and beasts that boarded two by
two along with Noah and his family.
In a literal sense it provided me with an appreciation for all forms of
life: “every living creature, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal
of the earth.”
It never occurred to me that the ark was really crowded,
smelly, dangerous, and worse than living in a zoo as that huge wooden boat no
doubt rocked back and forth on the water.
When you think about it, it must have been an intolerable
experience. The rest of the world
was filled with a wicked and evil population, descendants of Adam and Eve who
had disobeyed God, and Cain who killed his brother, Abel; and everyone else who
followed their bad examples. The ark floated for 150 days on a great sea of unbroken
water as desolate as the empty chaos of what had prevailed before the world was
created.
In spite of its stench and trying conditions, the story of
the flood and its survivors on that old wooden ship is a wonderful story. God wins. The good overcomes evil. The rain stopped, the sun shone once again, and there was a
rainbow in the sky that became for Noah a sign of the covenant with God that
the flood was over. Never again
would such a flood devastate the earth.
Good life was to be restored.
The point of the story is that God made a covenant with all
the earth, with Noah and his family, and with all creation. The story is a metaphor attesting to
the reality that life's trials, storms, and wilderness experiences expose us to
the assaults of injustice and evil and call us to a renewed faithful covenant
with God.
Water is symbolic of life. Like the waters of the great flood, the waters of baptism in
our Gospel story of the beginning of Jesus' ministry serve as a sign of God's
redemptive purpose. Baptism is an
invitation to struggle against evil by being driven into the presence of evil
to be tested. "The Spirit
immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and
he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him."
As Jesus did, so must we enter the wilderness of our lives
and the wilderness of the world around us. The wilderness of our time is the result of the isolation,
corruption, violence, greed and fear that is all around us. People, our sisters and brothers who
wander through the wilderness, are those who suffer and despair because they
have no hope. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Syria, the Ukraine, the murders in Nigeria, Paris, Copenhagen, North Carolina,
and elsewhere all suffer from evil assaults.
Lent is a time for us to enter into the wilderness as Jesus
did. We go there to be transformed
by the work of God's Spirit, to repent, renew our faith, and to experience God’s
promise of hope for a better world.
The challenge of the wilderness is to break through cynicism and despair,
and to move beyond a sense of hopelessness so that we may come to know the
presence of God in our world and in our lives.
Today we are on our way in this Lenten journey through the
wilderness of our world. Let us
keep in mind a vision of new life, a world free of bigotry, hate and evil, toward
a world that is restored to holiness and peace. Let us trust in the Spirit of God to sustain, preserve, and
forgive, confident that we shall be led out of the wilderness into a glorious
new day. Amen.
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