Noah and the Ark, Genesis 6-9, talk at St Matthew’s on 23^rd July 2017

Here is a picture of a Rabbs' fringe-limbed treefrog, called Toughie.  The last wild Rabbs’ tree frog to be seen, or rather heard, in the forests of Panama where they lived, was in 2007. Toughie was the last known Rabbs’ fringe-limbed treefrog in captivity and sadly he died in September last year in Atlanta Botanical Garden, Georgia in the US.   What has Toughie got to do with today’s story of Noah and the Ark?

I think it is this: that the story of Noah and the Ark shows that God cares for animals as well as humans so we should care about them too.   And note that God’s care extends to all the animals not just the ones useful to humans, and to species not just individual animals.

Of course the story of Noah and the Ark isn’t just about God’s care for the animals of the Earth and how we, in consequence, should look after them too.   But many interpretations of the story seem a bit far-fetched to me.   For example the idea that the Ark is a foreshadowing of the Church: an idea that that you get in a lot of medieval stained glass where the Ark looks much more like a cathedral than a boat – such as here – in a window from Ely Cathedral.  You can see that this ark even seems to have stone columns with Corinthian capitals and a tiled roof.

Some interpretations seem to suggest that the animals are incidental to the story of Noah and the Ark but they are not.  Here is a picture of the story by Jan Breughel the Elder.   The Ark itself is in the background and the pairs of animals are very much the subject of the picture.  The horse in this picture is more important than Noah off to the right.   The horse is the one who is looking out of the frame at us, the viewers.  Perhaps he is looking for his partner who we can imagine behind us. 

  

I like this picture because the animals are, as well as making their way to the ark, doing what they would normally do.  The leopards are playing, the lions are fighting, the porcupines have stopped for a snack, the rabbits are looking rather nervous, presumably because of the proximity of the foxes.  And is that Mrs Noah, dressed in 17^th century Flemish costume, who is taking a rest, with her little dog?

Now Christians have not traditionally paid much attention to animal life.   Genesis Chapter 1 verse 26, ‘Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”’ has been taken by many Christians to indicate that we humans have God’s permission to treat animals as we wish and even to exploit them.

There is a well-known article written by Lynn White for the journal Science, published in 1967, entitled ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’ that blames Christianity for the environmental crisis that we now find ourselves in.  And there is a lot of truth in Lynn White’s thesis.   But Genesis 1: 26 needs to be balanced by Genesis 2: 15 ‘The Lord God took Adam and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it.’  Keep it, note, and not destroy it.

And when God decides to recreate the Earth in the story we are thinking about today he decides to keep one family of humans and one pair of every living animal that cannot swim.   The story of Noah is really another creation story – like the two that can be found in Genesis Chapter 1 to Chapter 2:4 and Chapter 2: 5 to the end.  In this third creation story– or rather, I suppose, recreation story - Noah and his family replaces Adam and his family and it is Noah and his family that are to look after the animals during the recreation process.  God tells Noah, Chapter 6: 20 – echoing Chapter 2: 15 - ‘Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every kind shall come in to you, to keep them alive.’ God even instructs Noah on how to feed the animals on the Ark.

God’s instruction to Adam about the Garden of Eden is to keep it.  God’s instruction to Noah about the animals is to keep them.  

And what does Noah do as soon as soon as the Flood is over, the waters have retreated, and he has let the animals out: Noah starts killing them and cooking them (sorry, children, cover your ears at this point).  Although God chose Noah because he was ‘a righteous man, blameless in his generation, and walked with God’, Noah turns out not to be quite as ‘righteous’ as all that.  But what happens when God discovers Noah killing and cooking the animals he is supposed to be keeping we must leave until another day.

The story of God’s dealings with Noah, like the story of God’s dealing with Adam are of course primarily about our relationship with God but they also deal with our relationship with creation.  It is clear from the Bible that God delights in all of his creation, not just us humans, and that the rest of creation, is not just for our benefit, but for his as well.   He sees it as good.  We should therefore be looking after it, keeping it for him if you like. 

Christians, quite frankly, don’t have a very good track record when it comes to keeping animals and looking after the creation.  There are of course some exceptions.  St Francis is perhaps the most notable.  Here he is preaching to the birds.  In this picture by Giotto there is an echo of the story of Noah and the Ark in that most of the birds are in pairs and of different species.

A legend about St Francis, says that living near the town of Gubbio, where St Francis was living at that time, there was a wolf, terrifying and ferocious, who devoured men as well as animals. Francis had compassion upon the townsfolk, and so he went up into the hills to find the wolf. When he found the wolf, he made the sign of the cross and commanded the wolf to come to him and not to hurt him or anyone else. Miraculously the wolf came to him and lay down at his feet.

"Brother Wolf, you have done much evil in this land destroying and killing the creatures of God without his permission”, said St Francis. "But brother wolf, I will make peace between you and the people." Then St Francis led the wolf into the town, and surrounded by startled citizens made a pact between them and the wolf. Because the wolf had done evil out of hunger, the townsfolk were to feed the wolf regularly. In return, the wolf would no longer prey upon them or their flocks.   Here is St Francis making that pact with the wolf in the town square.

The wolf lived two years at Gubbio; he went familiarly from door to door without harming anyone, and all the people received him courteously, feeding him with great pleasure, and no dog barked at him as he went about. At last he died of old age, and the people of Gubbio mourned his loss greatly; for when they saw him going about so gently amongst them all, he reminded them of the virtue and sanctity of St Francis.

Which brings me back to Toughie.   His story is of course more than just a story about a frog – just as the story of Noah and the Ark is so much more than just a story about a man who builds a boat to save himself from a flood– and the story of St Francis and the wolf is more than a story about the miraculous powers of a saint.   All of these stories tell us something about our relationship with animals: what it is and what it should be. 

The story of Toughie moves us perhaps because he had a name and we can therefore identify with him more easily than with an unnamed frog, but also, and more-importantly - because there was just one of him – so there was no possibility of a latter day Noah saving his species.   And of but of course Toughie’s story is symbolic of the way we are treating God’s creation: about 200 species of plants and animal go extinct in any one year due to us humans.  Why should we care?   For no better reason than God tell us to through the story of Noah and the Ark.