February 22, 2015, First Sunday in Lent: Genesis 9:8-17; 1 Peter 3:18-22
There’s a reason that flood stories are so universal: we fear wiping ourselves out through our own violence.
Lent’s origins are as a time of preparation for baptism. The readings for this first Sunday of the season ring out the theme of baptismal covenant, with the covenant made to Noah interpreted in 1 Peter as the covenant of baptism. Why does God choose covenant—faithful relationship extended over time and space—as the means of salvation?
A scientific view of the cosmos may be helpful here. For much of Christian history, we’ve regarded the creation as a brief prelude to the real story, the several thousand years of “salvation history.” But evolution offers a different lens for seeing God’s act of creating: it extends over time and space for billions of years. This week’s Genesis reading—the first instance of covenant in the Bible—seems to support the latter view. It repeatedly emphasizes God’s promise of nondestruction to all creatures; its perspective is broader than just humankind alone. And it places salvation history in the context of God’s wider creative activity—as does much of the New Testament (e.g., John 1:1–18 and Col. 1:15–20).
I believe that God chooses covenant as the means of salvation for humankind because God’s creativity is still evolving us as a species. We continue to be made and remade as human beings—as individuals and as a species of creatures, the one made in God’s image—precisely through God’s faithful relationship with us over time and space. Covenant is the means not just of God’s salvation but also of God’s creativity.
