Noah, the story: by Bishop John D Davies

The Noah story has engraved itself on the imagination of people, from our earliest days. Surely, this is because it appeals to our interest in the well-being of animals. This is what speaks to children of all ages; God is on the side of the animals; the animals share our world, its dangers and its hopes. We do not have to be too adult about this; it is deep in our picture-book minds. It fits in, too, with the message of the first chapter of Genesis, which tells that human beings are in the same category as animals; we were created just before knocking-off time on Friday, sharing the same environment, the same diet, and the same mandate for reproduction as the other creatures which had arrived a few hours earlier. So, if humanity is doomed, animals are doomed with us. But not totally; in the Noah story, God provides a device to prevent the animals being destroyed altogether. Human violence and stupidity do not have the last word. As in Genesis 1, humans are given responsibility for the rest of creation. "You are in charge," says God. The Noah story tells how God loses patience with human irresponsibility. Humans defile creation with their violence; innocent animals are caught up in the punishment which is inflicted on guilty humans. But there is a second chance, for the humans and for the animals. This second chance is reinforced by a covenant, a commitment. The humans are committed to new responsibility: God is committed to maintaining the reliability of the creation's processes of fertility. The animals are saved for their own sake. They are God's creation, and exist in their own right. They are not preserved merely so that they can be exploited by humans. Noah, the representative human being, is mandated to ensure their survival. But the story recognises that humans are able to be - indeed, may be designed to be - carnivores. So humans are acting within the terms of their obedience to God if they eat meat. And to do this, they have to kill. But they must do this responsibly - they kill to eat, not for 'sport'. They must recognise that they are depriving a living creature of its life, which is represented by its blood. They must treat this seriously. Personally, I have not killed anything bigger than a chicken. But I recognise the instinct of some peasant communities, that when you kill an animal you should tell it why it has to die. At least we should have a standard, that if you are not in principle prepared to kill you should not eat meat. For most of us in western culture, the notion of sacrifice is miles away, because both physically and spiritually we are miles away from the nearest abattoir. The covenant between God and humans is certified by the rainbow. The rainbow is God's signature on the covenant, renewed whenever it appears in the sky. That is the bare bones of the Noah myth. Just as the mandate in Genesis 1, which gives humankind 'dominion' over the rest of creation, can be misapplied, and interpreted as making 'man' the 'master and owner' of everything else, so it is possible to read the same sort of message into the Noah story - but only if we ignore the fact that the whole story arises from God's intolerance of human violence, and if we forget that our place on the earth depends on the covenant which God has made with us, requiring us to take responsibility for the well-being of the rest of creation. The rainbow is the sign that God continues to be the God of the Second Chance. Evil is powerful, but it does not inevitably and permanently rule. There is a real alternative. The sign of the reliability of God is the sign of the broken spectrum. The white light of God's purpose has many colours, fitting many different situations. The white creature of human creation consists of a huge variety of types and styles - the 'Rainbow People of God'. There are the opposites, or complementaries, the reds and greens. There are those at the edges - the dangerous reds and the passionate purples; and there are the mild and middling ones, the oranges and the blues. And there are those who are beyond our ability to see, the infra-reds and ultra-violets, which can represent those who have died and those who are yet unborn. The violence which stirred the wrath of God is very often a violence of refusing to accept the variety within the human rainbow. Further, no two people see exactly the same rainbow; it depends on where you are. The angle of sun and raindrops for me will be slightly different from what they will be for you. And it can't be exactly predicted. In other words, God seems to have chosen a remarkably subtle symbol to represent the Creator's reliability. When you see the rainbow, let it remind you of your responsibility within the creation. Let it encourage you to feel the hope that there can be a new beginning. If you are a Christian, let it remind you of your own immersion in the water of baptism, your own new beginning, the start of your commitment to share consciously in God's purpose for the creation.