Noah’s Ark: A Boat in the Floodwaters & Bow in the Sky
Noah’s Ark: A Boat in the Floodwaters & Bow in the Sky
Genesis 6:11-22, 9:8-17 (selected verses)
July 12, 2026 Retold: Children’s Bible Stories You Thought You Knew
Rev. Cynthia Cochran-Carney, First Presbyterian Church, San Rafael, CA
PDF OF SERMON LINK BELOW
Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence.
And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. And God said to Noah, "I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth. Make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits.
…..and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. Genesis 6:11-15, 18-19
It rained for 40 days and 40 nights.
Then God said to Noah, “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. Genesis 9:8-15
I remember a gift someone sent us when Jackson was born. A wooden ark with wooden animals. It was simple and lovely. This is how we often regard the story: as a gift for children. It is the subject of Sunday School an dVacation Bible School lessons and youth choir musicals. It's something for the kids to enjoy.
Except that it’s not. The story in Genesis is a heavy story. And it is interesting that a worldwide flood story seen in many cultures. Archeological and geological evidence of a massive flood in many cultures and religions. We can see this as a way of humanity trying to make sense, to give meaning. If people saw violence and greed and suffering around them, them maybe God had had enough.
God looked around and saw the cruelty and the violence that people inflict on one another. God was heartbroken so the story goes that God decided to wipe the slate clean.
The only kink in the plan is that God looked down and saw Noah. God remembered him and said, “Well, Noah isn’t so bad. In fact, he’s rather good. His wife, his sons, and his daughters in law are good too.”
When we read this story as adults, we hear all kinds of special touches to make this story bigger, better, more legendary. Noah was five hundred years old when he became a father. He was six hundred years old when the rain started to fall. At that advanced age, he was able to build a huge boat, line up the crocodiles and tigers without getting hurt,. And I imagine Noah and his family made the voyage as vegetarians; there’s no use in eating your cargo.
Let’s look at the story again. It helps sometimes to locate who is the protagonist of the story; who is this story about? Who is the initiator of the action? This story is not really about Noah. It’s not about the evil people or the animals or the storm. This is a story about God. Of God the Creator, offering original blessing in the creation story of Genesis, a blessing to all creation and knowing the capacity for selfishness, ego, greed.
This is a story about a relationship between God and humanity. How do we interpret the story?
Several years ago on PBS, Bill Moyers brought together a lot of different voices to talk about the stories of Genesis. This is a text held in common by Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Moyers thought it would be fruitful to host conversations around the ancient stories, and he was right.
For the Noah story, Moyers asked his panel what kind of headline they would write to describe it. A newspaper editor said the headline should be, “God Destroys World.” Across the table from him sat the Rev. Dr. Samuel Proctor, for many years the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the leading church in Harlem. Dr. Proctor said, “Oh no. The headline ought to read, ‘God Gives Humans Second Chance.’”
Proctor said, “I learned the Noah story from my father, a Sunday school teacher. When we grew up, we laughed at the far-fetched details, but we didn’t try to rewrite the story. We drew our lessons from it what it said. And it held before us the possibility of another opportunity to get things right.”
He said, “Every Wednesday, my daddy would press his trousers and go down to the Philharmonic Glee Club rehearsal. These sixty black guys – table waiters, coal trimmers, truck drivers – would give one big concert a year to the white population. Even though our daddy was singing, we had to sit in the back. But in the midst of all that rejection, hate, and spite, they went. And every concert they ended by singing the same song: ‘Yesterday the skies were grey, but look this morning they are blue. The world is singing the song of the dawn.”
Rev. Proctor said, “That’s the story of Noah! Sixty black guys in tuxedos in the 1920s, with lynching everywhere and hatred. But they had something we need to recover right now. I can’t let go of this story of Noah and the flood because after all of the devastation, there’s a rainbow. I’m not going to live without that kind of hope.”
Here is the hope: after every thunderstorm, there is a rainbow somewhere. God takes his archery bow, the very weapon of war, and hangs it up in the sky. God will influence us without resorting to intimidation. And that bow in the sky is a symbol, a sign of God’s covenant, promise. Stop using symbols of violence like a bow and arrow.
In chapter 9, God is doing all the talking. Noah can’t get a word in edgewise, and he doesn’t dare interrupt. After forty days and nights of rain, God gives a speech to the eight human survivors and a whole lot of animals. The speech is summed up in a single word, a word God uses seven times in nine verses. The word is “covenant.”
“Covenant” begins as God’s word. A covenant is an agreement. That means it’s a covenant with us, an agreement with the whole human family.
Although, there is continuing evidence of short-sighted human behavior and self-destructive tendencies, sometimes we remember this story and see Noah – and we remember we have a second chance to get it right.
Elie Wiesel once said, “God created us because God loves good stories.” The story of the human family keeps on. No doubt, God is regularly disappointed with some of the plot twists. As God knows so well, a flood never did wash away the all-too-human tendency to mess up our lives. Sometimes we get stuck in the mud. Yet God chooses to keep living with all of us. This is the promise of God’s covenant.
We give thanks for the covenant. What about the ark that Noah built? That centerpiece of the story that ends up perched on Mount Arafat on dry land and the dove brings back the olive branch? That boat, ship, vessel larger than we can imagine? There is more there.
The same English word is used for Noah’s Ark and the Ark of the Covenant, the gold-plated wooden chest, box, that housed the Ten Commandments.
But those two words in Hebrew are actually different. The Hebrew word for the ark in Noah’s story is teiva; whereas the Hebrew word for the ark of the covenant is aron. Surprisingly, the Hebrew word for Noah’s ark, teiva, is used in only one other story.
And that’s the story of Moses, who, as an infant, was put into a teiva, and sent floating down the river to be safe. So the word teiva, refers not only to an enormous boat that carried an entire household and presumably all the animals of the earth, but also to that small cradle, often depicted as a basket, in which a vulnerable baby was laid and sent off to float on the water to the place his mother hoped would be safe – Pharoh’s daughter.
The two seem quite different at first, but we can see the similarities between the ark that carried and saved humanity, and the “ark” that carried Moses, who eventually will lead God’s people out of slavery in Egypt and to the promised land.
The ark is simply a means to bring us safely from one place in life to another.
We who are gathered here this morning, are here to build an ark. An ark that holds us, that grants us a safe space to be ourselves. Ultimately, we have built community, and that is an ark that delivers us from storms of our lives and the world.
I hope and pray that the church can be such a place, all stages of life, and especially for those who are the most vulnerable and marginalized in our society.
The church can be a place that helps usher us towards liberation, a place that provides a space that is life-giving and lifesaving, a place that is safe enough to ask hard questions.
Building and preparing for the unknown, through trial and error, is exactly what the church should be doing right now.
The ark can be big; the ark can be small. The ark can take many forms.
We can trust the one who draws the blueprints for the ark, the creator of the universe, the one who promised to never forsake humanity again our God who covenants to love us always and unconditionally, We are called to build relationships with the holy one. Build community. Build for the future, Build an ark of hope together. Amen.
Resources
Rev. Bill Carter, “The Bow in the Sky,” 2/20/21 The Bow in the Sky Bill Carter Blog
Rev. Joann Lee, “We Make the Ark by Building,” 4/16/23 We Make the Ark by Building Calvary Pres.