delivered 1 March 2009
by Rev. Dr Wes Campbell
Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 25:1-10
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15
There is so much water in those Bible readings, it is hard to make a start. Ash Wednesday was closer to what we face here in bushfire driven Victoria. The floods of Noah and of baptism seem to fit the north of Australia at the moment, in Queensland, or perhaps in Lake Eyre.
But our problem with these texts is even greater than reading them in a dry land.
Mention of Noah or baptism suggests we are talking about something religious, separate from the ‘real world’ of the every day. And it follows if we take it too seriously we have to give up being people of the 21st century.
After all, the story of Noah is a fable, a legend, a saga, a dreamtime story. And baptism – with any amount of water – went out of fashion a long time ago in Protestant practice. Too much ritual and symbol is a problem for such Protestants.
I suggest that these readings do not take us out of the world we know. Rather, they take is into the world we know only too well. They deal with revenge. They take us to the world that supposes that human relationships are based on pay-back. If one is hurt, then the other must pay for it. Revenge is a normal, everyday instinct.
In some cultures it is clearer than ours: the daughter shames the family by a wrong marriage, or a wrong action, and she is killed.
In Renaissance Italy, in their playhouses, revenge tragedies were very popular plays – those who were wronged must avenge themselves. Family honour must be protected. Notice, then, that Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet is a story of revenge. His uncle has killed Hamlet’s father, the king, and while the king’s body is still warm, marries the King’s wife, Hamlet’s mother. Hamlet is called to avenge his father. The only puzzle is that it takes Hamlet so long to act. And, when he finally does wreak revenge, we are left with a pile of bodies.
Remains of the estimated 750,000 to 2 million Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, c. 1975-79
Where revenge rules we are left with piles of bodies: in Pol Pot’s regime, in Iraq. In the same vein I am reminded of Guy de Maupassant’s short story A Vendetta, in which a Sardinian widow whose son was killed, seeks revenge; she trains her dog to kill the man who knifed her son. And if these sound extreme, in country Victoria, a teenager was killed by his friend’s poor driving – and his father exacted revenge on the teenage driver’s family, knifing mother, father and brother: this in country Victoria in recent months. Also when it was clear that some bushfires were lit deliberately, there were immediate cries of anger and revenge against the ‘arsonist’.
This is the world Noah takes us to. Yes, Noah and his ark is a legend, even a myth. It tells of a world gone wrong, overcome by violence. And the Creator, who a few pages earlier had declared the world ‘good’ becomes enraged at the failed world, and drowns it.
The rare appearance of lightning with a rainbow, in Arkansas (Daily Mail 2006)
Surely this is the picture of a vengeful being, you might say. No doubt the story tellers of Israel drew on stories that were shared with other ancient Middle Eastern peoples. What you have to do is to look at the way the story concludes: a rainbow is set in the sky. That fits with other ancient stories: but for other Semitic peoples the rainbow is the bow of war, with lightning as arrows, and thunder the sound of gods at war.
In those other myths, the gods wage eternal war in the heavens, and this commits humans to wage unending war on the ground. Humanity is made to be at war! But in the Hebrew story of Noah and the rainbow, we are given another scenario: the bow in the sky is a sign of peace, a peace treaty, a marker of the end of hostilities, and the beginning of a new path for humanity. Too bad that it takes only a few more verses before humanity goes wrong again!
But one thing is made clear: the Creator does not take revenge in the way we would! In fact the Creator longs for humans to live in peace.
How can we take that seriously, knowing the world as we do? The point is that we are being taken seriously, here; more seriously than we take ourselves.
You know well enough that the Scriptures are filled with human war making. Revenge is a regular feature. What can be said about this? Well, now we are taken to the Jordan River where Jesus goes under the flood of water. This is no religious act that takes him out of the world. Baptism movements in those days formed communities of resistance. They were political communities where people entered through ritual washing, and in those communities they learned to resist the foreign power, and they waited for a new leader who would come as liberator. For Jesus to be baptised does not take him out of the world: as an act it is closer to the ANZAC day ritual, where people hear the bugles, listen to poetry, and commit to eternal vigilance.
Here in the water of Jordan, Jesus does not withdraw. Instead he goes into the water – water and flood is, for ancient people, the power of destruction, the power that destroys life. Jesus goes into that place where humanity is driven toward self-destruction. He enters the water. He knows the world of revenge. Now, he is siding with a Power that does not seek revenge for wrongs done. Instead, entering the water, he is ready to take the power of revenge onto himself. And, say the Gospel writers, he clears the way for a humanity that lives not by revenge but by forgiveness. This is the way Noah’s Creator wants it.
Nelson & Winnie Mandela after his release from prison on 11 February 1990 (photo: Alexander Joe, AFP)
It is said of Nelson Mandela in South Africa that, as he was released from prison on Robin Island and walked to freedom, he knew he must –- by the time he had walked out of the prison gates –- have forgiven all those who had imprisoned him. If he did not he would be their slave, bound to an endless payback. He would remain a prisoner to revenge.
The amazing process of Truth and Reconciliation that followed in South Africa, was of the same order: where the victim and the perpetrator of violence were brought face to face – where by facing one another, admitting wrong, revenge was put aside for forgiveness.
The novelist Margaret Attwood recently in an ABC (Radio National series) lecture on Revenge asked how different the world would be if in 2001, on the day after September 11th and the attack on the Twin Towers, the US President had gone onto national television and had said something like:
We have experienced the force of evil. On this day everything has changed, nothing is the same as it was. We have been attacked by evil; malevolent forces have attacked and changed us. We have seen the face of darkness and destruction. And so, on this day, I resolve to stand firm, not to be overtaken by what has happened here, to bring all our force to this moment, and to offer those who have attacked us, forgiveness!
FORGIVENESS!
The very shock contained in that world ‘forgiveness’ shows how deep into revenge we are. The very implausibility shows that we are, even in refined ways, more used to payback!
Well, on this first Sunday of Lent, it is my task – both pleasant and onerous, and perhaps a little ridiculous – to remind you who are baptised people that you have gone under the water, and are now placed in a different relation to the world.
The water of baptism has put you into the company of Jesus who refused the way of revenge. At one with Noah’s Creator, he did enter our world, went under the water, even into nothingness. He entered the world where revenge is normal, and bound himself in solidarity with us, with us who seek revenge, and see no other way.
He took the force of our revenge onto himself. Not, of course, to leave us unchanged: but so that as people of the flood and rainbow, as people of water and the cross, we are set free from revenge, by forgiveness. As the ‘holy One of God’, he sets us free to learn to forgive, not to avenge wrong.
That’s what makes this season of Lent such an adventure. In these forty days – to mimic both the Noah flood and Jesus’ forty days in the desert – there you have it – flood and desert, we are to learn again what it means to be people washed by water and marked by the sign of the cross – drawn into resisting the powers that destroy our humanity, on the path to a new and remade humanity.
May we take this adventure seriously, as seriously as Jesus did when he entered the flood, was driven into the wasteland and into conflict with powers of death – and then called disciples to follow.
Now to him whose baptism is both water and the cross, who sets us free from the vicious cycle of revenge by the power of forgiveness, be all glory, honour, thanks and praise, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. AMEN
