Ark of Salvation
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November 30, 2019“As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.” (Mt 24:36)
Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the first day of the new year. We are invited to set out once again on the journey to the Lord’s mountain, the journey from darkness into light, the journey from drowsiness into wakefulness and readiness to receive the Lord who is coming. Today’s gospel reading puts before us the image of Noah’s ark. It is interesting to note that the story of Noah and his ark begins in the same place as we find ourselves at the beginning of Advent: the situation of humanity’s dire need for salvation. After Adam and Eve are dismissed from Eden, the chapters that follow in the book of Genesis detail the descent of humankind into greater and greater depravity. This culminates in a decision:
“When the Lord saw how great the wickedness of human beings was on earth, and how every desire that their heart conceived was always nothing but evil, the Lord regretted making human beings on the earth, and his heart was grieved…. When God saw how corrupt the earth had become, since all mortals had corrupted their ways on earth, God said to Noah: I see that the end of all mortals has come, for the earth is full of lawlessness because of them. So I am going to destroy them with the earth.” (Gen 6:5-6, 12-13)
Noah is the one with whom God shares his grief and on whom he bases his plan for salvation. In these days of Advent, we will be hearing daily from Isaiah, another man whose ear was bent to listen to God’s grief:
“Hear, O heavens, and listen, O earth;
for the Lord has spoken:
I reared children and brought them up,
but they have rebelled against me.
The ox knows its owner,
and the donkey its master’s crib;
but Israel does not know,
my people do not understand….
The whole head is sick,
and the whole heart faint.
From the sole of the foot even to the head,
there is no soundness in it,
but bruises and sores
and bleeding wounds;
they have not been drained, or bound up,
or softened with oil.” (Is 1:2-3, 5-6)
The message given to us as our new year opens is this: the situation is dire; humanity and creation are in shambles. You don’t need me to join the dots for you between these biblical words and the events of our world today. Social and economic injustice, widespread violence, ongoing failures to protect the weak from predation by the strong, ongoing attacks on the dignity of the human person and ongoing pillaging of the world’s natural resources make up the conditions of our time. And each one of us is personally embroiled in the sinful state of the world. That’s what makes it so hard to put a stop to the evil. Perhaps the contents of the daily newspaper is not something we need to be brought to our attention. Perhaps the danger rather is that it all becomes too much to process and we grow numb, we give up. What we need, rather is to turn from the bad news to the good news, from the newspaper to the Word of God, so that we can learn how God sees the conditions of our time. Today the Scriptures say: Wake up! Listen! Something must be done. God must step in and save his people.
In every generation, God finds someone to listen to him. We read that Noah found favor with God, that he walked with God. Perhaps this means he was the only one willing to cooperate with God on a hare-brained project. God’s plan was that Noah should build an ark with three decks and a door, big enough to house his family and a sample of all the creatures on earth – a male and a female of every species, or in another, perhaps more practical version of the story, seven pairs of every species. The purpose of the ark was to save them from the catastrophic flood God would send to cleanse the earth of evil. If we insist upon a literal reading of this story, we have to conclude that God intended to save only the best of people and animals to repopulate the earth. This would be a sort of divine eugenics, designed to reprogram creation so that things would be just perfect the second time around. But we learn later in the story that Noah has his weakness too, and his sons fall into sin and produce offspring who are likewise flawed and prone to falling. Humanity and creation after the flood rather closely resemble humanity and creation before the flood. So what was the point? Did God need to go through this kind of cathartic process in order to learn that it wouldn’t work that way, to come to the realization that he would never destroy the earth and its people in order to save them?
The Scriptural authors choose to speak of God using anthropomorphic language, language that attributes to God human emotions and ways of acting. They say that God grieved and regretted his creation, that he learned in the process of the flood that he didn’t actually want to destroy people and the earth, even though he knew they would continue to be inclined to evil. I think we can interpret this as a way of expressing how we humans come to understand ourselves, the world and God. We are the ones who need to learn that our hearts are inclined to evil, though they can be purified and turned to God. We need to learn that the well-being of humanity and creation is intertwined, and our moral failure leads inevitably to the destruction of the natural world. We need to learn of God’s endless patience and continuing desire to save us from our worst inclinations.
Noah’s ark is a symbol of salvation. It stands for God’s way of working with us through concrete persons and circumstances, calling those who will listen to cooperate with him for the salvation of all. Those who dwell in the ark are called there not because they are better than the others, but because Noah listened. They are called to live out the salvation God intends for all creation. In other words, it isn’t that the people in the ark are the lucky ones and everyone else is doomed. Today’s gospel refers in a similar vein to some being “taken” and others “left,” and we could get nervous and start thinking that perhaps God is only interested in saving some people. The ark stands for the salvation of all. This reading is in line with the dominant message of the Scriptures as a whole. God is interested in everything he has made without distinction. His abiding intention is the salvation of all. Some will listen and others will not. Some will follow and others will continue with their eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. But God wants to save all.
God’s ultimate hare-brained plan was to save the world by becoming a human being. This is the good news, the astounding news we are preparing to celebrate at Christmas. He did not choose to start from scratch with a more perfect humanity, by some cosmic event which would fix everything all at once. No. God chose to enter creation and live his life within it. God chose to start at the very beginning of life as a single fertilized ovum in the womb of Mary. Mary is God’s ark. She carries the salvation of the world. She will give birth to a child, who will grow and develop into a man. This man, Jesus, weak and fragile as any one of us, subject to suffering and historically contingent to boot: this man will give his small and limited human life, which is also his everlasting divine life, for all. This is God’s chosen means of salvation: not to destroy in order to save, but to allow himself to be destroyed in order to eliminate the power of evil. And it reveals to us our most basic mission: to allow Christ to live his life in us. The ark is also a womb in which we grow to the full stature of Christ. We must become human, molded and hewn by circumstances both favorable and unfavorable, and ultimately give our life, small and contingent as it is, for all.
The ark in which we travel through the chaotic waters of life on earth is the Church, and in its particular instance, the Church of Wrentham: our monastery. The ecclesiology of Vatican II makes clear that the mission of the Church is the salvation of all. This does not mean that all will enter the visible Church in the course of their earthly lives. We can certainly desire and work for this, but we have no right to insist upon it, because God is free to work through the Church for the salvation of those outside its visible communion. Not everyone is in the ark, but the ark is there to save all. Likewise, not all are called to the ark of the monastery. This doesn’t mean that we are the cream of the crop here, humanity at its best. Hah! No, we are just those who listened to God’s call, and were crazy enough to say yes to this hare-brained plan of his. And perhaps those outside getting on with their normal lives, eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, look at us and wonder why we’re sitting here in our ark looking a little foolish because there’s no flood. Not everyone recognizes the state of our present world as a flood.
Aelred of Rievaulx uses the image of the ark in his Mirror of Charity to speak about life in community. He interprets the different species of birds, animals, reptiles and insects as different sorts of persons. We are to learn to love each one in an ordered way. We don’t have to love all just the same, but each according to their place in our life. Each person has their place, no matter how difficult a relationship it may be. There’s something to that, don’t you think? Our mission in daily life is to learn to live together as the Body of Christ, the ark of salvation. Our part in the salvation of the world is right here, before us, every day, in our life of prayer, work, community, our call to continual conversion and purity of heart. Each one of us has a gift, a unique flavor of the Cistercian charism, which is our personal mission. We were reminded of this on Thanksgiving Day. I would like to suggest that we use this time of Advent to concentrate on giving our gift more consciously and deliberately, for the good of our fellow ark-dwellers. It may be the gift of prayer or silence, the gift of cheerfulness or enthusiasm, the gift of ready service or sacrifice, the gift of honesty or integrity, the gift of responsibility or suffering. Let us give what we have, and it will suffice: our life for the salvation of all.
Image: Manuscrit Frère Laurent, Dominicain La Somme le Roi
