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 St. Peter, the very first Pope, already realizes that, in hindsight, this salvation 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 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 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’s different.  Noah’s flood manifested an almost reckless destructive power: the wicked were washed away, right along with their wickedness.  Baptism is different.  In the Great Flood, the wicked were washed away and the righteous survived the waters.  Now, the waters of baptism are every bit as powerful and as destructive as the Great Flood, but the destructive power of baptism is directed more precisely.  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 we not only survive, we emerge from this Greater Flood reborn: pure, spotless, and radiant, washed in the Blood of the Lamb. 

Over the course of these next five Sundays, the Sundays of Lent, we’re going to be seeing five critically important moments in the Old Testament, starting with this one, five examples of the idea and reality of covenant.  And we’re going to talk about this concept in greater depth each of these weeks, because when we get to Good Friday and Easter, we will see the most important covenant of them all, the New Covenant, the final and perpetual covenant.  This is the other reason the Church, since the very beginning, has always been so fascinated by Noah’s Flood.  Because it’s one of the several moments of covenant 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 read this morning.  He promised, through the sign of the great rainbow in the clouds, to establish and maintain this covenant with Noah and his family, and indeed with every living creature.  So what is a covenant?  It’s kind of like a contract, except that it doesn’t have to do with property or services rendered or anything like that.  A covenant is different from a contract because a covenant is a “sacred family bond.”  It’s sacred, because God is involved.  It’s a bond, because it’s not about a specific transaction; it’s about forming a permanent relationship.  And it has to do with family, because the relationship that’s formed is deeper than collegiality or even friendship: the parties to a covenant become family. 

So this covenant that we’re considering today is 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.  And again, not in a transactional way: like, if you don’t say your prayers, you don’t get this covenant.  It’s not like that.  It’s more like instructions for keeping this sacred family bond alive and well.  Of course, we know that Noah and his people won’t follow even these simple instructions for long, and things sort of fall apart again.  This covenant with Noah repairs some of the damage caused by Adam and Eve in their disobedience, but the fallenness of man reasserts itself again and things go south pretty quickly, and the covenant falls apart.  But that causes God to form an even deeper and more profound covenant, which we’ll get to next week.  This pattern continues of course, 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 prepare for Easter: a new and eternal covenant that washes away our sins, and that unites us to God, definitively and forever.