Washed Away

A Very Brief Reflection on Noah’s Flood

A Reading from the Book of Genesis:

The Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humans on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out from the earth the humans I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air—for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord …

The flood continued forty days on the earth, and the waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters swelled and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters … And the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred fifty days. But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided; the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters gradually receded from the earth. At the end of one hundred fifty days the waters had abated, and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat …

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.”

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

A Reading from the First Epistle of Peter:

Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight lives, were saved through water.

And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

A Brief Reflection:

It doesn’t really matter if the Great Flood happened. Everyone in the ancient world, from the Mesopotamians to the Greeks, knew that it happened, assumed that it happened. What matters is what it means.

Israelites took the ancient story of a worldwide Flood caused by the caprice of the gods and transformed it into a redemptive act: the sorrowful cleansing of Creation by the One God, in order to redeem the world, to give it a second birth. He didn’t blow everything up and start over. He tried to save a terminal patient—and succeeded in doing so. The rainbow is the sign of His unbreakable covenantal love.

But what of the people who died in the Flood? What of them? Note how Genesis describes this fatally fallen generation of humanity: “Their every thought was only evil all the time.” Imagine that! Every moment, every thought, completely, utterly, thoroughly evil. Totally irredeemable.

They were washed away, flushed into Sheol, the Pit, the land of the dead. But their story doesn’t end there, does it? We always leave that part out. St Peter completes it for us, tells us the Christ-centered end. Where was Jesus in the time between His Crucifixion and Resurrection? asks Peter.

He was in Hades, hell, the land of the dead. And what was He doing there? Proclaiming the Good News of forgiveness, the Kingdom of God, to the spirits in prison who in former times did not obey, in the days of Noah. Did you get that? The lost generation, utterly irredeemable—their every thought was only evil all the time—Jesus saved them! Jesus died for them. Jesus raises them up to new life, to resurrection, entirely by grace.

Let that be for us the lesson of Noah’s Flood. You can be 100% utterly corrupted, wicked, evil, irredeemable, to the destruction of all the world; yet God will not forget you. He will not leave you orphaned. At the appointed hour He will come for you, and the gates of hell will not stand against His assault. By God, my brothers and sisters, if the souls from Noah’s Flood are saved, then surely all things are immersed in His grace!

The true Flood is Baptism, which drowns and raises us all. Remember that, the next time that you see a rainbow. Remember that it shines even in hell.

In Jesus. Amen.