Noah

Let’s talk about Noah. I know you’ve heard of him, and his float trip. His is probably the most famous story in the Bible. But I bet you don’t know the whole thing. Most people haven’t heard it to the end.

The story is often one of the first Bible stories taught to children. There are a lot of Arks and animals painted on the walls of children’s Sunday school rooms. As comedian Tim Hawkins says, the story about God killing everyone in the world except one family seems like a harsh one to start the kids with. If you wanted that wall mural to be complete, next to the smiling Noah waving hello from Ark you should have some drowning people clinging to a rock.

But let’s start at the beginning, that you all know. God looked at creation and found it bad. Really bad. In terms of what kind of wickedness was going on, the scripture just says, “every inclination.” Now most of our most popular modern day sinning, pornography, drugs, online gambling, wouldn’t even be invented for thousands of year, but whatever they were doing back then, it was nasty.

Except for Noah. Noah was a good guy, so he and family were advised to make a big boat, an Ark, and stock up on seven pairs of animals, of both the clean and unclean variety.

Then it started raining, purging all of the earth of bad people, and everything else. It rained 40 days and nights. But it wasn’t over yet, the Ark continued to bob around in the water for several months. This is all outlined in chapter 8 of Genesis. It  goes back and forth between days, months and years, so it’s a little hard for me to follow the exact timeline. Ask somebody who has been to seminary. But Noah was out there a good while.

Finally the water receded and the Noah family disembarked the Ark. God made a covenant with Noah, promising that he would never again destroy the world – with water. I’m sure Noah probably thought, “Well, if you do decide to destroy the world again, I was kind of hoping it would be with water. Because I’ve already got the boat.” He was probably thinking, “Oh great. In another 20 years he’s going to destroy the world with fire from heaven, and I’ll have to dig a great big hole.”

But the flood was over, a rainbow went across the sky, and everyone was happy. But the story isn’t over. We’re just getting to one of the best parts.

Having survived the flood and put the whole experience behind him, Noah just wanted to do what any of us would have wanted: to tie on a good drunk. But he’d been in Ark for months. Any wine him and the boys may have snuck on was long gone, no matter how well it was hidden. And the whole world had been destroyed, so he couldn’t just run down to the C-store and grab a bottle of Night Train or Mad Dog. Noah’s first step in getting a buzz on was planting a vineyard. Noah was a patient man.

Finally, the grapes were ready, Noah made wine, and Noah got drunk. Not just the tipsy drunk were he talks to much, or the stumbling drunk where he tells you how much he loves you. He got take off all your close in public and pass out naked drunk. Noah partied hard.

When Noah’s son Ham saw him, his reaction was to go and tell people. Biblical scholars speculate that if this incident had occurred today, Ham would have taken pictures of Noah with his phone and posted them to Facebook. Noah’s other two sons, Shem and Japheth, didn’t gawk. They just covered Noah up and took care of him modestly. After Noah woke, he cursed Ham’s son Canaan, saying he should be a slave to his brothers, and thanked Shem and Japheth for looking out for him. For our purposes, the story is now over, but the first few verses of Chapter 10 are worth reading just for the names. Ham’s son, Cush, named his son Nimrod. Good stuff.

So what is the moral of story? I would say it’s when you find someone naked who is passed out drunk, don’t mess with him or her. Cover the person up as best as you can without staring, and look out for that person until he or see comes to and sobers up. This isn’t a story for the preschool kids, it’s one for the high school and college kids. Don’t take advantage of drunk people, especially naked ones.

Let’s pray:

Dear God, the Bible has a lot of chapters and verses. Some we’re familiar with, some we aren’t. Sometimes the meaning of the scripture seems obvious, sometimes we have no idea why some passages are in the Bible. And sometimes when we think we know, we get it wrong. When we read help guide us through these words that were written thousands of years ago, and find ways to apply their wisdom in ways that will help us lead better lives today. Amen.