Lent began 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. So why does God choose to make a faithful relationship with his people over a very extended period of time as the means of salvation?

Until the last few hundred years people thought that the world was only 5,000 years old. And that the Genesis story marked the beginning of time. But evolution offers us a different way of seing God’s act of creating. It extends over the time and space of billions of years. This week’s Genesis reading shows this kind of long term relationship or covenant. The Noah story repeatedly emphasizes God’s promise of none destruction to all living things. Here people for the first time perceive that God loves his creation and wants to redeem and protect it.

Our lessons for today are a story that explains why and how God relates to us over tons of time. It stresses that God is still creatively active as we evolve as people, as individuals made in God’s image and that God is faithful to that relationship over time and within space.

Many people read the bible to learn about “God”, I have come to think that it was really written to tell us about ourselves and to help us to see what it means to be human. Jesus came into the world to show us his father and to teach us what it means to be truly human.

Reading the Bible in this way has become very important to me because this way of reading combines a scientific, evolutionary approach to understanding human nature with the Bible’s anthropological revelation a revelation that climaxes in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the one that Christians claim is both truly divine (revealed theology) and truly human (revealed anthropology). Reading the bible in this way can renew our understanding of why it is necessary to have both these revelations of God combined in the same person. The two work in tandem. A revelation of our anthropology is necessary for us to comprehend how wrong we often are in our theology.

The Noah story provides an excellent example of Girard’s way of reading. Is the God at the beginning of the story, who tries to solve the problem of human violence (Gen. 6:11) with a violent genocide, truly the same God at the end, who apparently repents of it and promises never to do it again? Or does the human and divine revelation of Jesus Christ show us that the destructive god at the beginning is a god of our own making? The true God is the God revealed in Jesus. Jesus Father is steadfastly nonviolent and is distinguished from the false gods of our human evolution, false gods typified in the universal flood myths from across the globe.

This method of interpretation is used all over the New Testament as the Old Testament is reread through our experience of Jesus The Christ. If we look at our second lesson for today we can see this clearly. 1 Peter’s interpretation of the flood goes like this: Christ suffered for our sins once and for all, says 1 Peter, “in order to bring you to God” (3:18). Christ’s suffering reveals to us that gods who command genocidal floods are false gods. Except for Jesus Father every other god of every culture command a good and sacred violence to stop the flood of human violence. But the God who places a rainbow covenant in the sky, as a promise never to try to solve the problem of violence by inflicting more violence, is the God we meet in Christ. If we don’t learn to see the god who slaughters everyone in the flood as a false god of human culture, then we risk losing the revelation of God in Christ—the God revealed in the rainbow promise.

A covenant is an ongoing relationship for the sake of getting to know who God truly is, of being brought to God. Christ came to fulfill that covenant. The God revealed by baptism in the life, death and resurrection of Christ offers a startling alternative to the gods of human origins. The human answer to violence is to inflict more violence to stop it. God’s answer to this is to suffer violence on the cross—showing violence to be impotent compared to God’s life-giving power of love on Easter, and enacting the healing power of forgiveness in the giving of the Spirit. In the cross and resurrection, God saves us from the flood of human violence that threatens to destroy us.

There’s a reason that flood stories are so universal in human culture. It is because since the beginning of time we fear wiping ourselves out through our own contagious violence.

When I was growing up we were afraid of a nuclear attack today we fear being cut down by automatic weapons fire as we go about our daily lives. It is always one thing or another. The Bible’s flood story reminds us that humans love to be violent with each other and that we need to learn to do better. We need to learn to read the flood story through the eyes of the God revealed in the rainbow promise, the God revealed in Jesus.

So what and where is salvation? Why is the world still so filled with violence? God’s way is not to use what we think is good violence to stop what we think is bad violence. God’s creative transformation does not happen with the speed or methods we would choose. God is different in the fundamental way that he is not running out of time as we are. God has all of time to allow his covenant to help humanity to evolve and reach its goal.

Our salvation is a sure thing it is a covenant centered in the Christ event a baptismal covenant extended over time and space, an ongoing relationship for the sake of being brought to God. In this era of technology powerful enough to destroy us in a flood of violence, it’s growing more urgent that we understand this. The Lenten journey of baptismal covenant helps us rehearse the long journey of God’s faithful commitment to remake us from violent creatures living in the death-dealing image of our own violence to beloved sons and daughters reborn in the life-giving image of God’s creative love and life.

1. Why is it necessary to be able to make a distinction between the gods we make up and the God who is Jesus’ Father?

2. Why did Jesus come into the world as a human being?

3. Why is violence always counter-productive?