Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “Behold, I establish my covenant with  you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood, and never again shall their be a flood to destroy the earth” And God said “This is the sign of the covenant which I make between ma and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.  When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.  When the bow is in the clouds, I will look upon it and remember the ever lasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon t he earth.”  God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.”

Genesis 9:8-17 

Today I want to think about losing, because losing is, in a way, a Lenten theme.  I want us to think about what it means spiritually and morally when we don’t make the grade, when we don’t make the cut, when we miss that critical free throw in the last second of the game.  What does it mean to be on the losing side of life?

Curiously, both the Old Testament and the Gospel for today talk about losing, though it is not apparent at first glance.  The first lesson is the conclusion of the story of Noah and the great flood.  This may not seem like a story about losing.  After all, it ends with a promise that never again will God destroy the earth in such a way.  But what if we try to look at this story from God’s point of view?  If you read the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis, you will notice that, at the end of each day, God surveyed the creation and said, “It is good.”  This phrase echoes over and over again like a refrain as the days of creation passed.  When we get to the sixth day, God creates human beings.  What does God say about that day?  “It is very good!”  Very good.  The Bible presents humanity as the crowning glory, the ultimate achievement of creation. Not the solar system or the galaxies, not the forces which hold together the atom, but the creation of human beings warrant such a modifier on goodness. “ It was very good.”

But immediately things began to go sour.  By the time we get to the story of Noah and the ark, just  chapters after the Garden of  Eden, God– who had seen humanity as the greatest act of creation – is terribly disappointed.  “The Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” (Gen. 6:6) The divine heart was so broken that God decides there is nothing to do but wipe the slate clean and start over.  In the story of the great flood, god was the great loser.  God’s beloved humanity, God’s precious children, God’s best day of creation had gone wrong.  I like to think of the flood as simply the weeping of God – the tears of God drowning the earth.  And the rainbow at the end of the story – it is set in the clouds to remind whom?  To remind God to never again send such waters over the face of the earth.  The rainbow was set in the heavens to remind God of God’s promise.

I have told this story before; I tell it again because it fits so well.  Walter Wangerin, classmate of mine at college and seminary,  contemporary  Christian author (who by the way is seriously ill with cancer) wrote about his son Matthew.  Matthew was one of those boys who, as soon as he learned to read, fell in love with comic books.  And being good, well-meaning parents, Matthew’s parents limited his comic book intake.  He could only have so many comic books per year, so he would also read something of quality beside comic books.  But one day Matthew’s parents discovered – hidden away in young Matthew’s room – stacks upon stacks of contraband comics.  As they examined this find, they learned that they were all from the public

library.  They weren’t checked out; they were stolen.  So Matthew’s parents gave h im a lecture about honesty and stealing.  Then they made him gather up all those comic books and, with shame, take them back to the library and confess what he had done.  They hoped and prayed that this was the end of the story. 

But a year later they again discovered contraband comics in young Matthew’s room.  This time they learned the books had been pilfered during a family vacation, at a convenience store down the road from their cabin – several states away from home.  It wasn’t realistic for Matthew to return them from where he had stolen them, so they gave him a lecture and made him put all his comic books in a fire, one after another.  Again, his parents hoped and prayed that he had learned his lesson.   But before too long, they again found stolen comic books in Matthew’s room.

His parents were desperate to find some way to get their message across.  How could they stop his stealing?  The chose the method many would disagree with; they chose corporal punishment.  Dad took Matthew to his study, giving him both the lecture and a serious spanking.  Afterwards the father said, “You sit here in my chair in this study and you think about what you have done and what will happen if you do not overcome this.”    Then Walt went out, closed the door to his study, leaned against the wall in the hallway, and he wept.  He wept because of what his son had done.  He wept out of fear for what the future might hold for this child of his.

Years later, when Matthew as an adult, he returned home and his mother and he reminisced about his childhood. Somehow or another, the story of the comic books came up.  Matthew had grown up to become a normal person; he wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t a thief.

Matthew’s mother asked him about this, and he said, “Well, you know after that time when Dad spanked me, I never stole again.”  She asked “Was that because he spanked you?”  And Matthew replied, “No, it was because after he left the room, I heard him crying, and I could never take anything again.”

The story of the great flood is the story of God’s tears for the fallen, failing humanity.  Anytime you or I fall into the failures, the sins, the misguided ways of our life, God still weeps.  When we hurt others or ourselves, God’s plan fails.  Of course, we lose too but – in a very important way – God loses.  We fail; God weeps.

At first blush our gospel also doesn’t appear to be a story about losing.  It is the story of the very earliest days of Jesus’ ministry, his baptism and temptation, his calling of the first disciples, and then the initial preaching of Jesus.  For the most part, it isn’t about losing.  Yet, in a single short phrase buried in the middle of that story, there is a huge defeat.  For right in the middle of that story, it puts a marker on the occasion when Jesus began his public preaching.  The story says, “After John’s arrest, then Jesus began...”  John the Baptist, we might say, lost.  John was a fiery, hellfire and damnation sort of prophet.  He preached his message of repentance, and he offended the political leaders of his time with accusations about their immorality.  So it si no surprise that he was arrested.  Later, we learn that he was executed in prison.  Here, in the very beginning of his gospel, Mark plants the clue about what’s in story for Jesus.  “After John’s arrest,” Jesus takes up the mantle as successor to John.  John’s arrest and execution are a foretaste of what’s going to happen with Jesus.  With that in mind, this gospel becomes a story about a mission that initially, and by all counts, appears to fail.  It is a story of a mission that

people neither heed, nor hear, nor respond to, and I tends, it seems, in death.  A public execution.  As we begin Lent, we always have to have our eye on the end of Lent.  And Lent is always the story of our preparing for the end.

Bette Jo Bell has written a wonderful story about an experience working as a hospice nurse.  She narrates how a husband carries his terminally-ill wife from the bed to the bathroom, but in a beautiful, poetic fashion, she tells it as if the two are dancing in a magnificent ballroom:

Her slippered feet, just below her gown, are set atop her lover’s shoes.  Their perfect timing is an illusion he creates as he lifts her feet on his and draws her nearly weightless body up with his arms.  He only sees the beauty she must have once been. The dance is only one of many ways he finds to show his love and to let her keep her self-respect.

In the end, there’s just the end.  We live.  We fail.  In our own way, we steal our comic books.  And we die.  Outside of the story of Jesus, there is just losing.  Dying.  As we go through these days of Lent, and as we are confronted with our own personal and moral failures, and as we look ahead to the inevitability of our own death, we understand that God in Jesus Christ has lifted us up and put our feet on his.  And god dances with us.  In love and in God’s eternal effort that we might keep our self respect – losing sinners though we are – in Christ, God causes us to win.