The early Christians thought about Noah’s flood a lot. They assigned great significance to this event, and saw it as important foreshadowing of things that would come later. We see this insight already in the New Testament itself, for example in today’s second reading from the First Letter of St. Peter. St. Peter tells us that in the days of Noah, a few people were saved, through water. And Peter already realizes that, in hindsight, this deliverance from the flood that Noah and his family experienced, was really about baptism. In fact, we see direct mention of this in the liturgy: in the blessing of the holy water that forms part of the baptism ritual, there’s a reference to “the waters of the great flood” which God “made a sign of the waters of baptism, that make an end of sin and a new beginning of goodness.”
This dramatic scene from thousands of years ago in which God washes away the built up wickedness and depravity of the world: he does that for each one of us in baptism. But something essential is different. Noah’s flood manifested an almost reckless destructive power: the wicked themselves were washed away, right along with their wickedness. Baptism is different. In the Great Flood, the wicked were washed away and the very few righteous people survived. The waters of baptism are every bit as powerful and destructive as the Great Flood, but the destructive power of baptism is directed more precisely, more surgically. In the Great Flood, the world was cleansed of wicked people, and the righteous remained. In the even-Greater Flood of Baptism, that dynamic takes place inside each one of us. What happened in the Flood on the scale of the whole world, takes place in baptism within an individual human person. We are submerged in the Greater Flood of baptism, but we come out the other side alive. We don’t die in the flood; only our sins do. The destruction is every bit as real, every bit as powerful. But this time, only our wickedness gets washed away. We survive, and not only do we survive, we are re-made: we emerge from this Greater Flood reborn: pure, spotless, radiant, washed clean in the Blood of the Lamb. What is wicked in us is washed away, and only what is pure and righteous remains.
The other reason why the Church, since the very beginning, has always been so captivated by Noah’s Flood, is this idea of the covenant, represented in the rainbow as a sign and promise from God. This is one of several moments of covenant in the Old Testament that, in hindsight, have so much meaning and power in light of the perfect covenant that Christ brings. God says the word “covenant” to Noah five times, just in the few verses we heard this morning. God promises to establish and maintain this covenant with Noah and his family, and indeed with every living creature. A covenant is a kind of contract, except that it doesn’t have to do with property or services rendered or anything like that. A covenant is a “sacred family bond.” It’s about forming a permanent relationship between God and those he draws into relationship with him. So today we see a sacred family bond forged between God and Noah. In other parts of the chapter, God gives various directions and instructions for this relationship, some rules of behavior and morality, and expectations for prayer and sacrifice: the means that God gives to keep this relationship alive and well. Of course, we know that Noah and his people won’t follow even these simple instructions for very long, and things sort of fall apart again. The fallenness of man reasserts itself and things go south pretty quickly, and the covenant falls apart. But that causes God to form an even deeper and more profound covenant, and then another, and then another. God keeps trying even when humanity doesn’t hold up our end of the bargain.
This pattern plays itself out throughout the Old Testament, until finally, in the fullness of time, God makes a covenant that can never be broken, because it’s a covenant that unites God and man directly, in the person of Our Lord, who makes the perfect sacrifice for our salvation and destroys sin and death forever. That’s what we look to as we begin to prepare for Easter: the perfect fulfillment of Noah’s Flood, the perfect sacred family bond centered in the person of Christ, and a new and eternal covenant that washes away our sins, uniting us to God, definitively and forever. May we rejoice in the relationship God has formed with us, and seek to live out the grace of our baptisms in the joy and peace of those who have been redeemed and saved.