Bishop Brian Cole reflects on the story of the flood in Genesis and how its meaning is different in light of the recent flooding in the Southeast.
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Transcript
Hi, I’m Bishop Brian. I’d like to read to you today from the end of the flood story in the book of Genesis from the translation, The Message.
Then God spoke to Noah and his sons, “I’m setting up my covenant with you, including your children, who will come after you along with everything alive around you birds, farm animals, wild animals that came out of the ship with you. I’m setting up my covenant with you that never again will everything living be destroyed by flood waters. No. Never again will a flood destroy the earth. God continued. This is the sign of the covenant I’m making between me and you and every living thing around you and everyone living after you. I’m putting my rainbow in the clouds. A sign of the covenant between me and the earth. From now on, when I form a cloud over the earth and the rainbow appeared in the cloud, I’ll remember my covenant between me and you and every living thing that never again will flood waters destroy all life. When the rainbow appears in the cloud, I’ll see it and remember the eternal covenant between God and everything living, every last living creature on earth.”
And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I’ve set up between me and everything living on the earth.”
When I was a kid, I remember reading the flood story over and over again and having it read to me. And I remember that sense of comfort that somehow God was making a promise that nothing like that would ever happen again.
This week, you and I are living in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and the damage it’s done across the southeast, in particular, for those of us who live in the mountains of the Appalachian region who often don’t think about hurricanes, we’re having to think about the storm and its impact. And our neighbors, particularly in the eastern edge of this diocese and in Western North Carolina, they are living this story, this biblical story, and with the sense that somehow God has not kept a promise that they are living in a time when their world has been destroyed by water.
It reminds me of my friend Lauren Winter, who several years ago talked with us about the idea of dislocated exegesis. And so often where we read Scripture and how we interpret it matters because of how and where we are reading it.
So, to read the flood story this week in Unicoi County, or Washington County, or Cocke County, or in Johnson County, or along the East Tennessee/Western North Carolina border, to read this story there this week and be to sit with folks whose worlds have been destroyed. So, as we continue to give care short term, mid-term, long term, continue to reflect on how and where we read Scripture. That so often we read Scripture in say places in Sunday school rooms or church school rooms that are real places, but often removed from the context where we live, our everyday lives.
This week, many of us are living in close proximity to folks who have lost everything because of water. So as we continue to lean into Scripture and the biblical story that we trust and know and digest and read and reflect on and consider, realize this week this text is alive and living and active in ways that are not necessarily comforting. To allow colleagues and friends and neighbors to lament and to ask why? For us to sit with him, not with easy answers, but with a sense that the God who has suffered is suffering with them, not removed from them, not making covenants and calling them easy words, but with them lamenting and suffering and asking why along with them.
You and I are called to be people who comfort and care. Not often with words, but more just with the presence. Not with easy answers, but present as folks reflect, consider, ask why and ask for help. Let’s be helpful. Let’s be hopeful. Let’s be present now and for the long term. Thank you.