There is something unsettling about the Season of Lent. It is not just that this season breaks with the mold and begins not on a Sunday but a Wednesday. It is that this season calls us to pay attention to things that are often invisible and unnoticed—that is, our intentions. The Season of Lent offers a clear and somber invitation, it calls us to examine our lives, to prepare our hearts, to adjust our actions, and to walk in faith even through darkness, trusting that new light will soon appear. This is a season, that in the words of the Prophet Joel, calls us to tear our hearts and not our clothing. It calls us to return to the LORD our God, for he is merciful and compassionate, very patient, full of faithful love, and ready to forgive.[1] This is a season that for us this year, did not begin with a reminder of our mortality—2020 offered us a master class in that subject. This Lent began with a reminder of our brokenness and our need for healing.

Our text this morning touches on this very subject. We heard the end of a narrative that began with the indictment of creation! Genesis 6:5 tells us, “The LORD saw that humanity had become thoroughly evil on the earth and that every idea their minds thought up was always completely evil.” Creation had moved leaps and bounds from the reality of the garden—from God’s proclamation that all things He had made were supremely good.[2] Beginning in Genesis 6 we see the consequences of a creation that had refused to be God’s good creation.[3] We see brokenness and pain in full display. But if we hang on with the text we also see good news. We hear and receive in this text the plain and simple affirmation that God desires to be in relationship with His creation. God calls humanity to enter into an everlasting covenant with Godself. A covenant that promises the end of destruction and new life.

Many of us get too wrapped up in the historicity and details of the flood narrative to pay attention to its proclamation. The Bible begins by giving an account of God bringing order to the waters of chaos. Genesis 1 tells us that God’s wind swept over the waters and God created something good and beautiful from darkness and chaos. The darkness of the world did not prevent God from moving and transforming. Genesis 1 and 2 are much more than an origin story. These two chapters offer us good news. They tell us of the blessings of God’s movement among a willing creation. They show us what life in this world could be. They remind us that God’s ultimate desire for us is right relationship—with God, with self, and with all created beings. But as we move forward in the story, we begin to see the results of disobedience. We begin to see the realities of a creation that refuses to be God’s good creation. Walter Brueggemann, in his commentary on the flood story, points out that the “fracture between creator and creation is the premise and agenda of the flood narrative.”[4] Though God grieved over the actions of Adam and Eve, Cain, Lamech, and perhaps others, God becomes heartbroken at the sight of a humanity that had placed great distance between itself and its Creator. God regretted making human beings. God resolved to start things over, and the world finds itself once again at waters of chaos. Destructions sweeps over all created things.

But here, at this moment, when the suffering of creation is high; when things seem to be at its worse; when Noah and his family would have begun to wonder about all that was lost, God does something new. God offers creation a promise. A promise that has been taken lightly through the years but means serious business. The Rev. Dr. Derek Weber reminds us that the sign of the rainbow is much more than a “feature of light and color; it is a weapon of war.”[5] Dr. Weber tells us through this action God is setting aside the weapons once used to bring destruction from above. God now turns to be a God who protects the good creation. Perhaps here, we see a foreshadowing of the prophecy of I