Has God had it?

Lent 1-B March 1, 2009
Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15

God is going to have to have a word with Barack Obama, because God has had enough of the war in Iraq. The President’s “revised” timetable is, I am afraid, not fast enough for God.
For God has had enough: not only of the war in Iraq but of what’s going on in Pakistan and Afghanistan, too. God has had enough of Al Qaeda’s sneaky bomb tricks and the Taliban’s violence. God has had enough of Robert Mugabe’s running Zimbabwe into the ground. God has had enough of those drug and gun gangsters in Mexico, of the kidnappers in Columbia, of the Crips and Bloods and of their buddies, the Green Street Gang right here in Brockton. God has had enough.
God had had enough of everybody, except Noah. God was sick of the whole violent lot, so God flooded the earth and got rid of everybody, except Noah and his family – and of course, the animals. All those animals on that ark. That was a long 40 days.
God had had enough of those evil-doers, and saved the good, yes, but I think our reading today shows us that God’s mind had changed. Today’s reading shows that God repented of that terrible, awful wrath, of that flood of death and destruction. God had a taste of that violence and retribution that humans love so much, and God repented. God realized that violence and retribution were not the way to go. No more, God said. I won’t do this any more. I won’t be the one who causes the violence. Let’s stop it now. I will be the first one to offer a sign of peace.
God has not gone back on God’s promise but I think we humans have not kept up our part of the bargain. Some of that all too human virus of violence and destruction snuck on board and hid on the ark. It spread out into the world just as it was drying up from the flood, and we know all too well what has happened ever since.
Fast forward a few hundred years to Jesus, standing in the rushing waters of the River Jordan. Jesus, thrown by the spirit into the wilderness, like Noah on the flooded seas, for 40 days and 40 nights. Jesus, tempted by Satan and all those all-too-human sins of violence and retribution, of death and destruction, of envy, greed, oppression, cruelty.
But like the rainbow in the clouds, the angels came to Jesus, feeding him, taking care of him, supporting him in the struggle against sin and temptation. There in that desert Jesus faced death and destruction – the dark side of human experience – and came out on the other side. With the angels on his side and the rainbow over head, he realized that despite all its power to strike terror into the human, death was not the final answer. Death would not win. Death would not define what it meant to be human. Sin would not rule the day.
We here at the corner of Not-so-Pleasant and Warren know what it is like to look death in the face. Like Jesus, we also know what it is to be down and out, exhausted on the desert floor, and look up to see a rainbow in the sky. We know what it means to have angels look after us. We know what it is like to have a God who has had enough with the bad stuff, and who is here with us, now, in the middle of everything. We know what it is like to have a God who stands with us, who send angels into our very midst.
I was talking with a parishioner this week, who said, “I really like our little congregation.” She could have said, our little congregation of misfits and oddballs, of people who would not feel comfortable in other churches, of people who are honest about how Satan comes to tempt us with anger or violence or loneliness or drug abuse. She could have said, our little congregation of angels, who help each other out in times of need, who hold rainbows over each other’s heads, who are carriers of the promise that God gave us so many thousands of years ago, that God will be with us, that God is with us, that God is always with us.
Amen.