Down By the Riverside

Genesis 9:8-17

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal 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 to destroy the earth.”

God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, 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 that 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 see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

Do you know that song, “Down By the Riverside”?  

I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield, 

down by the riverside (x3)

I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield,

Down by the riverside

Well that song’s been stuck in my head all week because the first lesson for today is all about laying down a weapon of war.  That bow God sets in the clouds… that bow ISN’T simply a rainbow.  When God said, “I have set my bow in the clouds” the Hebrew word for “bow” is specifically the word for a WAR BOW… It’s a weapon of war that God’s hung up.  So even though it’s not about a sword and shield, God’s still saying…

I ain’t gonna study war no more (x3)

God knows how tempting it is to use violence to get what we want… tempting to be used even as a means to achieve peace, security and safety for the world.  This story says it’s SO tempting that even God, it would seem, was once willing to try to achieve peace through the violence of a flood.  

Surely, God once thought, with a God-sized war bow a God-sized flood could be rained down on the earth and surely THAT would bring the world to peace.  But it didn’t.  Even a good guy with a bow couldn’t force the world into peace.  Even in Biblical proportions, it STILL didn’t lead the world back to safety and peace.  This story is put right at the very beginning of the whole of Scripture, in the hopes that we might learn, right off the bat, that even if we could bring God-sized violence to the earth, it would still NEVER lead to our security, our safety or to peace.

This story screams at us, using the most dramatic and awful imagery we could possibly ever imagine, that our path to security, safety and peace will NOT be found with more or more powerful bows of war, raining down even Biblical amounts of fury on the world.  In this story God is pleading with creation to learn this lesson… to learn directly from the Divine experience… the ONLY place for a bow of war, is hanging in the clouds.   

This week, was the 18th school shooting this year… that’s three per week… so once again it's clear, that we have not yet learned that lesson.  We have turned our national back on the wisdom of our God who showed us the futility of violence and demonstrated for us the only way forward was to hang up the bow.  In 2012 following Sandy Hook, Gary Wills wrote an article for the New York Review of Books entitled “Our Moloch.”  I try to share it, following the lead of a friend, after every mass shooting… although there are so many, I confess that I miss some.  Moloch is the name of a demon from Leviticus… a god to whom communities would sacrifice their children in exchange for the Moloch’s promise of security.  Wills writes, “Few crimes are more harshly forbidden in the Old Testament than sacrifice to the god Moloch… Ever since then, worship of Moloch has been the sign of a deeply degraded culture.”  “The gun,” Wills contends, “is our Moloch.”  

What that means, is to think that we have simply have a gun problem misses something much more deeply disturbing and that is that we have a demon problem.  This demon insists on being fed our children three times a week in exchange for the promise that we will somehow be safe!  I have yet to see even an inkling of a delivery on that promise of safety and in any case, the price this demon asks is much, much too high.  Now, I’m not into literal demons, although there is much more to the universe than I can wrap my mind around, but this metaphor is the best way I’ve found to explain the senseless, illogical, continued devotion and worship of a thing that demands the lives of our children three times a week!  

So where do we go from here?  How do we fight a demon!  Where do we find hope?  I believe hope is to be found, not coincidentally, DOWN BY THE RIVERSIDE.  In the waters of Baptism we have the answer.  Because in the sacrament of Baptism there is an exorcism.  It's not referred to by those words anymore and it's not anything like the movies, but that's what it is.  We ask, “Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?” and the reply is “We renounce them!”  We ask, “Do you put your whole trust in God’s grace and love” and the reply is, “I DO!”  And when we come up out of the water we hear the same words said over us that were said over Jesus… “You are my child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” and so in Baptism we put down our trust and devotion and worship of the sword and shield and exchange them for the long white robes of Baptism as we are clothed in Christ: 

I’m gonna put on my long white robe,

Down by the riverside (x3)

I’m gonna put on my long white robe,

Down by the riverside

You see, in baptism, we, like Jesus are given the strength to go into the wilderness of our lives and into the wilderness of this world and live even among the wildest of beasts, resisting the temptation to take down that bow of war and attempt to manufacture our own safety.  In our baptisms we are connected to the power of the resurrection, a power no weapon of war could ever even begin to match.  In the resurrection is the real power to bring peace out of fear and life out of death.  

May we hold tight to God’s promise made to us in our Baptisms, that there is safety and life only in the ways of the God, who long ago hung up the Divine Bow for good and proclaimed so that we might follow:  

I ain’t gonna study war no more (x3)