Genesis 6:1-22, 22:1-18
Decisions. We make decisions, and they affect other people. That happens today, and it happened back in Old Testament times. We celebrate our forefathers in the faith for the decisions they made, but those decisions affected other people, people who had no choice in the decision, but who had to go along with it: Noah’s wife, for example, and their three sons, and their wives; and Sarah and Isaac.
The Bible doesn’t name Noah’s wife or the wives of the three sons. No-namers, non-entities, not important. They don’t make the decisions, so they don’t need names.
Noah comes into the house one day and says, “God’s going to flood the world. I’m going to build an ark, which we’re going to fill with animals, and we will survive the flood by living in the ark for a year or so.”
And Mrs. Noah, the woman with no name, says to herself, “Excuse me? We just built this brand-new house, with all the latest appliances, with a built-in vacuum system, with a big screen TV, with the kitchen just the way you designed it, and now we’re going to go live in a boat?! With animals?! I think you’ve stood out in the sun too long.”
But to her husband, she just says, “Yes, dear,” because that’s all she’s allowed to say.
So Mrs. Noah and the three daughter-in-laws begin to pack.
As the piles build, Mrs. Noah reminds them, “We can’t take everything, dears. In fact, we can’t take much of anything. The animals will fill the bo… I mean, ark.”
Mrs. Shem drops what she was picking up. “You mean, we get to decide what to throw away?”
Mrs. Japheth looks at the pile she wanted to pack. “Like Aunt Elizabeth’s silver pitcher?”
Mrs. Ham holds up a worn and frazzled blanket. “And this blanket Uncle Zechariah gave Canaan?”
Mrs. Noah shook her head, not to tell the young women to keep those cherished items, but to wonder how you live without all the things you have lovingly collected over the years.
Mrs. Shem asked her mother-in-law, “How do we say goodbye to the neighbors who shared our children’s memories? The women who canned vegetables with us?”
“We shared cinnamon rolls with them.” added Mrs. Ham. “And what about the times we all cooked spaghetti with for fund raisers?”
Mrs. Japheth raised her hands in dismay.
But Mrs. Ham asked the question they all considered, “And why should we, anyway, just because Noah decided he doesn’t like it here anymore! He’s always complaining about the neighbors, how evil they were. Why does he have to do this to us?”
And the tearful farewells.
Finally, the ark was built and the ramp dropped. Mrs. Noah remembered telling her neighbors, Elizabeth and Judith, they were going to leave.
Anna looked at the animals boarding the ark. “You’re going to go live in a houseboat with two1 or seven2 of every kind of known animal and bird?”
Judith’s eyes grew wide as she asked, “And why?”
***
At least, Sarah had a name. She’d been through a lot before this child was born.
Hearing the men outside throwing firewood in the back of the pickup, she refused to let go of her child.
“Mother, why can’t I go help them? Father says I get to go with them!”
But Sarah knew the reason for the special sacrifice. She would not let him go. This child was her whole life! Having this child validated her as a human being. A childless woman was worth absolutely nothing in her society. Now she had value because she had a son. Or did she?
They had argued all night.
“Just what makes you think you’re the only one who hears God speaking? I heard him say that I—she emphasized that word—that I was going to have a son.”
She remembered her reaction. “Didn’t I laugh at the thought of it? Didn’t God hear me? Didn’t God tell us to name him Isaac? Laughter?”
Her voice rose as she argued. “God said, ‘I will keep my covenant with your son Isaac, who will be born to Sarah about this time next year.’ What good is that covenant if you do this?”
Abraham did not argue as she continued her ranting.
“So why are you taking the son who was to be the beginning of all our descendants? To some mountain in Moriah to sacrifice him?”
She paused to catch her breath. The men around them sometimes offered their sons to their gods. Was that what Abraham thought he had to do? Did he have to do what they did?
“God would not do this to Isaac, to the son of the promise. What good is the promise?”
As the light replaced the darkness, Abraham rose. He said simply, “We have to go.”
Sarah turned her back to him and prayed, “God, protect my child, your child,” repeating it over and over.
In the end, Isaac joined his father and the two servants as they drove away.
***
Mrs. Noah heard the rain on the roof of the ark. It started as a shower, but the raindrops fell heavier and heavier.
“The animals are all loaded, Father,” she heard Ham say. “They’re bedding down in their separate rooms, like they expect to stay for a while.”
“I was afraid we wouldn’t get them all in before dark,” Noah replied. “But we did. This is going to be a long night, this first one, for all of us.”
Mrs. Noah looked around her in the semi-darkness. The shapes of whatever household goods would fit reminded her of all that had been left behind—the priceless treasures they had spent their savings on. The painting by Picasso, the Chinese vase, the 42” TV.
“My iris! Planted in such neat rows! The weeds will take over. If we ever get back, it will take a month of solid yard work to put them back into anything that looks good again. Will Anna help me like she did when we planted them?” She rolled over for the fifteenth time. “I sure wish we could be sharing a cup of coffee right now.”
She did not sleep that night, and by the tossing and turning of the others, she knew they did not either. Were her sons fuming as she was? She knew their wives were.
And it continued to rain. And then it rained some more. It just didn’t quit raining. And she began to wonder if maybe Noah was right, that this flood was going to destroy the whole world.
***
Every morning Sarah woke up and looked out the window to see if anyone was coming back. She knew where they were going, a three-day drive. They left yesterday, so they wouldn’t even get there for two more days. Then another day for the … well, it would probably be at least three days after that before they … Abraham, that is, returned. She tried to busy herself around the house, even watching the soaps for a little while, but that didn’t help. She did some bookwork on the computer, which usually relaxed her, but it didn’t help now.
God’s will. She looked out the window.
How did one really know God’s will? She remembered back when the “visitors” came. While they sat and ate on the patio, she was inside the house, but the windows were open.
And one of them said, “About a year from now, Sarah will have a child.”
They looked like men, they talked like men, they ate like men, they even smelled like men, but would a person make such an unlikely prediction?
Abraham and Sarah talked about the statement after the visitors left.
Abraham sat next to her. “They were not ordinary men,” he said. “As I walked with them, one of them said he was going to destroy Sodom. I bargained with him, since Lot lives there. I don’t know if it will do any good.”
“Do you think that was God?” she asked.
“I’ve never seen God in person, but I’ve heard his voice. That one sounded like what I hear in my head when God speaks to me.”
He raised his shoulders and let them drop. “At least, they were messengers from God.”
That was the end of that conversation.
But Sarah didn’t have the same feeling about this latest message from God, to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. As she sat on the hill outside the camp, she tried to understand.
“Abraham believes it was God. Believes it sincerely. Was it possible that Abraham could have been mistaken?” She shook her head. He wouldn’t think so.
“But how does one know? How can one tell? What are the criteria for something being the word of God? Obviously, believability and common sense don’t help! Nobody would have believed I would birth a son at my age.”
Sarah didn’t know as much of the traditions about Jehovah as Abraham did, but she couldn’t remember any such stories. And she just didn’t believe that God would give them this child and then take him away. That was not the way God works.
Blind obedience. What did that get them? Well, a couple times it made them richer.
Abraham had been wrong before. At least twice. They moved around a lot. Once they went to Egypt. Abraham was afraid that if the Egyptians knew that Sarah was his wife, the pharaoh would kill Abraham to get her.
When bad things happened to the pharaoh after he took Sarah, he found out that Abraham and Sarah were husband and wife. He was very unhappy with Abraham, but he did give Sarah back to him and sent them away . And then it happened again with Abimelech. The same story. Obviously, Abraham was capable of misinterpreting what he heard. Both times they left richer than before. Or was that the purpose?
***
When it finally quit raining, Mrs. Noah looked out the window of the ark. There was absolutely nothing but water, as far as she could see. No TV antennas, no water towers, not even any mountains! And she began to wonder. Perhaps Noah was right. Perhaps God really had destroyed everything and everyone else. Perhaps they really were lucky to be alive. Maybe it really WAS the will of God.
She knew Noah was a good man. Sometimes he drove her nuts, but he was good and kind. As time had passed and rain continued to fall, she accepted that what her husband said was the will of God. And then she, too, saw the rainbow, the symbol in the skies of God’s covenant with creation. God’s promise.
***
But Sarah could not accept what her husband said as God’s will. She could not. Right or wrong, she could not believe that the God who gave her that son would take him away.
Several days passed, and towards evening, she saw the pickup pull into the driveway. She counted the people inside again, carefully, and then again, even more carefully. Three men, and a BOY!!! Her prayers had been answered!
***
God’s will. It’s a difficult thing to understand. Sometimes we do God’s will, and things turn out fine. Rainbows, and all that. Sometimes we do God’s will, and our loved ones come home safely. But other times … other times, even when we are sure we are doing God’s will … other times, things don’t work out the way we expected. We lose instead of gain. What we prayed for falls apart.
Does that mean we heard wrong? That we were not doing God’s will? That we are being punished because we didn’t follow God’s will? Does suffering mean that we are outside God’s will? What is the message of the crucifixion? Did Jesus suffer because he was NOT doing God’s will?
I wish I could tell you the answers to those questions. All I know is that God can either work through us or around us, but that God WILL always work! God will accomplish God’s will, sometimes because of us, sometimes in spite of us. Sometimes because of others, sometimes in spite of others. Not always immediately, but God WILL do God’s will! God can do no less.
General questions
1) How does this story follow its Scripture?
2) How does this story expand its Scripture for you?
3) What is the message of this story?
4) How does the message apply to us today?
Specific questions
5) Have you had people make decisions for you that changed your life?
6) Why did the writers of the scriptures (both Old Testament and New Testament) sometime not name some of the people?
7) What is the effect of having the stories told with modern conveniences, like TVs and pickups?
8) Sarah received her son back. Mrs. Noah saw the rainbow. How do the two outcomes compare?
