Flood liturgy

A power-point liturgy with reflections prepared by Ray Anglesea to remember and support communities flooded during this year’s winter storms.

Howden le Wear Methodist Chapel.

16^th February 2014

During a week of strong gales, heavy rain and floods when one Environment Agency figure described water levels as “verging on the biblical,” it might seem appropriate this morning to defer from our lectionary reading to look at a story in the bible dominated by severe weather conditions – Noah and his Ark.

Those of you who are The Times readers may have seen Peter Brookes cartoon (8^th February2014) of a man from the Environment Agency dressed in waterproof clothing and carrying a hammer and nails standing in front of the ark in the pouring rain. He tells the giraffes and elephants waiting to go on board, "OK ... we're ready to launch!" despite the fact that the ark is just a wooden frame with no hull or deck.

“Granny, were you in the ark with Noah?” asked the little boy, assuming his grandmother to be of a very great age. “No, I was not!” she replied indignantly. “So how come you didn’t drown then?” retorted her grandson.

Call to worship. The Lord on high is mightier, than the noise of many waters, than the mighty waves of the sea (Psalm 93 v4). Be still and know that I am God’ (Psalm 46.10).

Prayer: O Lord God, most merciful, most secret, most present, most constant, yet challenging all things, never new and never old, we come this morning to sing our praises, to hear your word and o tlisten to your voice. We come to pray for our nation and for all people recently affected by recent severe weather conditions.

Hymn: MP 200 Great is thy faithfulness

Prayers of Thanksgiving

God of all blessings, source of all life, giver of all grace: We thank you for the gift of life: for the breath that sustains life, for the food of this earth that nurtures life, for the love of family and friends without which there would be no life.

We thank you for the mystery of creation: for the beauty that the eye can see, for the joy that the ear may hear, for the unknown that we cannot behold filling the universe with wonder, for the expanse of space that draws us beyond the definitions of our selves.

We thank you for setting us in communities: for families who nurture our becoming, for friends who love us by choice, for companions at work, who share our burdens and daily tasks, for strangers who welcome us into their midst, for people from other lands who call us to grow in understanding, for children who lighten our moments with delight, for the unborn, who offer us hope for the future.

We thank you for the emergency services, military, environment agency personnel, community supporters, neighbours and friends who are helping to relieve the misery for those communities affected by recent flooding. We thank you for their generosity of time and care, their good humour and concern and for all that they are trying to do.

We thank you for this day: for life and one more day to love, for opportunity and one more day to work for justice and peace, for neighbors and one more person to love and by whom be loved, for your grace and one more experience of your presence in this service of Holy Communion, for your promise: to be with us, to be our God, and to give salvation.

For these, and all blessings, we give you thanks, eternal, loving God, through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.

Psalm 46:

God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
² Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
³ though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.^[c]

⁴ There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
⁵ God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
⁶ Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.

⁷ The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

⁸ Come and see what the Lord has done,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.
⁹ He makes wars cease
to the ends of the earth.
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields^[d] with fire.
¹⁰ He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”

¹¹ The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

Reading: Genesis 6-9 (3 readers from the congregation)

It really is a ridiculous sight! A giant boat, standing hundreds of miles from the sea. People came from far and wide to look at it, and stood there laughing till the tears rolled down their cheeks. They knocked on the hull of the Ark. “Have you heard the long-range weather forecast?” they shouted. “Bright and sunny for the next six months!” And they ran off laughing as loudly as they could.

Now that may have been the first, but it certainly wasn’t the last misleading weather forecast. For it didn’t stay bright and sunny for long. Rather it rained and rained and rained – as it had to if God was to carry out his threat to destroy every living creature.

The story of the universal flood from which the human race is saved when a hero builds a boat isn’t peculiar to the bible. Flood stories in the broadest sense have been documented in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Syria, Europe, India, New Guinea, Central America, North America, Australia and South America.

The story of Noah, iconic in the Book of Genesis, and as a consequence a central motif in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, invites the greatest attention. In all three scriptures the Flood comes as punishment for wrongdoing by man, part of a “give-up-on-this-lot-and-start-over” resolution governing divine relations with the human world. In the bible version the reason for the flood is that the human race has become unimaginably wicked. In fact, the flood story is a story of un-creation. When the waters are released they cover the whole earth, they’re allowed to burst out from the places to which they had been assigned and limited, as we read in the first chapters of Genesis - and the order that’s at the heart of creation becomes disordered.

It’s that message then that human disorder can undermine the prefect order of God that permeates the story of Noah and is ark. But it’’s also a tale of human faith and obedience. For even where only a few faithful people are found God can use their faithfulness to bring healing to others.

So Noah went on building his ark. Why? Because in a world that according to the book of Genesis, was corrupt and filled with violence, there was only one man who was blameless and utterly obedient – and that was Noah. And God was able to use him to save the human race from complete destruction. Noah’s family was allowed to come into the ark too and, presumably because they’d behave themselves, every kind of bird, mammal and reptile as well. Noah had a hard time of it – apparently there were no less than 900 compartments to this ark, each 6 cubits square and filled with creatures of every occasion. No wonder Noah was kept so busy going round them all - he never got a wink of sleep.

Poem: The Floods: Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936).

Hymn:  MP 48 Be still and know that I am God

I ought to  admit that there are parts of the story of Noah’s Ark that I find rather disturbing. Yes I know it’s unlikely to be historically true despite the fact that enthusiasts still descend from the summit of Mt Ararat in Turkey waving slivers of wood claiming they have discovered remains of the ark. And yes the deluge could not have covered the whole world nor could the ark have contained two of every kind of creature. What I find worrying is that what’s missing from the story of Noah is any compassion for other humans, albeit sinful ones. For elsewhere in the book of Genesis for example when God is planning to destroy the sin-city of Sodom, Abraham pleads with the Almighty to hold fire. Noah’s only concern was to build an ark and then sail away in it. And he did...... and the writer of the book of Genesis piles on the agony, the point is made relentlessly: the water prevailed .........the waters prevailed mightily upon the earth, the waters prevailed mightily above the mountains........And the punch line of the story – God blotted out all living things – the flood was all God’s doing,

Music: For the beauty of the earth: John Rutter and the Cambridge Singers

Offertory Hymn: MP 251 How sweet the name of Jesus sounds

Offertory Prayers

Prayers of Confession

Gracious God, we confess that we have been caught up in the ways of the world. Instead of looking to commandments and rules as a way to guide our life, we use them to punish and restrict others. Forgive us for our judgments and misconceptions. Forgive us for not working on ourselves, on our own lives. Call us back to Your way of life, a way of love, commitment, respect, and forgiveness. Call us back to a way of life that honours You and creation, and guides us to better love our neighbours as ourselves. In the name of Jesus the Christ, who ended sacrifice and death  and fulfilled the promise of new life, we pray. Amen.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, as you choose again this day to love God and to love one another  know that God has forgiven you that which is past and offers to you a new and full life. Praise be to the name of God, now forever. Amen.

Sermon

So you’re a believer, what does this story do for you? Are you quite happy to believe that the God you worship was once able to engineer such a global catastrophe in order to punish sinful humanity? Do you see the story of the flood as the historical trailer for an eternal judgement in which God will display his holiness by punishing all perpetrators of wickedness? Or do you find the idea that God could do such a thing repugnant and unacceptable – that such a scale of punishment is out of all proportion to human misdeeds?    

Surely what the Hebrew storyteller is doing here is making a sombre point. Using his available sources he’s saying that the flood demonstrates what awful things could befall humankind were God to unleash his wrath according to the desserts of his sinful creation. It’s really a “just suppose story” – an appeal to the imagination drawing on folk memory, in order to focus on the greatness of God’s mercy – grace that contains God’s anger and sustains the creation in continued existence. Just as in the midst of the sea the Ark saved those who were inside it, so the church saves all who have strayed, but doesn’t keep them like that. It transforms them.

But to those who are victims of the unwelcome and frightening waters that are despoiling homes and farms and livelihoods in Somerset and across the south of England at present, these words may not yet bring encouragement, still less hope. It will require a huge act of faith to hear them in any way other than as a cruel mockery. But we who are dry and warm in our own homes should try to pray imaginatively for the children, women and men who are on our hearts right now. We can stand alongside them and on their behalf, hold on to our belief that there is no chaos, however awful, where God is not already present, sharing in the pain of victims, knowing in his crucified self the waste and the loss and the pain. They need us to hold on to our belief that in God’s time and in God’s way, not least through the care of those who are bringing help and support, they will find hope once more, and be given back their lives.

Finally in Noah’s story the flood subsides and the refugees prepare to leave the boat that had been their home for more than a year. They can build their life anew is a world was has been cleaned – indeed what’s happened here has been called the baptism of the world. For things have changed: the pattern of re-creation points to new beginning. There’s a new resolve in the heart of God. This kind of destruction will not happen again.

We need to be aware that the old testament of the Bible only speaks of the anger and wrath of God in the wider context of God’s love. Scholars have used the Greek word “pathos.” It’s not the same as our word pathos. No, they mean God’s constant concern and involvement with humanity. And that pathos is expressed supremely of course in the person of Jesus Christ who confronts and overcomes evil by letting himself be plunged into the flood of judgement that falls on sin. On the cross then, the judgement of God was decisively revealed. Yet on that same cross, the mercy and forgiveness of God are known abundantly.

Prayers of Intercession

Lord, your creative love gave us the breath of life, and your redeeming power was shown in life poured out; thank you for your rainbow world with its richness colour and culture, religion and race. Like Noah – and his wife and sons and daughters – and all the animals too – make each moment of our lives a miracle; make us laugh at the utterly impossible, give us hope when all things seem hopeless. Make us gamble all on your Almightiness and to dare everything in your great service, and as you looked down on the ark and your creation, look down on us now and give us your blessing.

Almighty God, creator and preserver of our world, we ask you to hear our humble prayers for all those afflicted by the devastating floodwaters throughout the country. We pray for those still threatened by flood in city & rural areas. Protect both life and property. In your mercy, bring relief to all affected areas.

We pray for the sick and injured, for the homeless, for the bereaved. Have compassion, merciful Lord, in the midst of their misery and suffering, comforting and relieving them according to their needs.

Heal those broken in body and spirit. Give courage and hope in the midst of despair. Through the generosity of government and individuals across our nation, provide a future for those whose present circumstances are marked by loss and desperation. Protect all those who are most vulnerable in the areas of devastation. And by your gracious hand, rebuild communities where men, women and children are nurtured with care and love. And turn the hearts of all to you, the God of all comfort.

Everlasting God, we pray for all emergency services and military personnel. We thank you for their unstinting dedication and efforts the. Give them courage in adversity, safety in service and protection from harm. We ask that you would also watch over their loved ones. In the service of others, may assistance be rendered to those in greatest need with speed and efficiency, justice and compassion.

In the midst of this tragedy, we thank you for the compassion and generosity of government, businesses and individuals. We ask for an ongoing spirit of community care and generosity as local and national bodies help to reconstruct communities and bring hope to victims and to future generations.

Give wisdom to the Prime Minister, this coalition government and to all who exercise significant community leadership at this time. Enable them to chart a course through the complex challenges during the phases of recovery in the weeks and months to come. Amen.

Communion Hymn: MP 649 The King of love my shepherd is

The Communion

Hymn: MP 111 Dear Lord and Father of mankind

Benediction

Ray Anglesea is a self-supporting minister working in Durham Cathedral bookshop,
Crook Local Ecumenical Partnership and in the West Durham Methodist Circuit