The Flood
- Rev. David Collins
- 1 day ago
- 11 min read
Genesis 6:1-9:19
April 12, 2026
Rev. David Collins
Today we are going to cover three and half chapters of Genesis as we tackle the story of Noah and the flood.
The flood is all tied up with so many things in Christianity. It’s one of the first stories we tell children about God. It makes a beautiful wallpaper border.
Also, taking the concept of a worldwide flood literally is one of the foundations of Young Earth Creationism, which has many side effects … like measles…and the collapse of democracy.
(Talk to your doctor to find out if Creationism is right for you.)
And catastrophes like floods are one of those things that the worst kind of religious people like to use as a club in their political agenda. A lot of us grew up with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blaming hurricanes on gay marriage. But then they always become meteorologists when one of their houses floods.
When I was a serious Christian teenager (one of the side effects of being a serious Christian teenager is full time pastoral ministry. Talk to your doctor to see if being a serious Christian teenager is right for you.)
But I flirted with creationism back then. I saw a late night interview on one of the Christian cable channels with a creationist who really sounded smart about the days of Creation and Einstein’s theory of relativity and how time works at a cosmic scale, so I went to Zondervans and bought his book and then I got to the part about how they believed that the flood was actually what caused the Grand Canyon and just made it look like it took millions of years to form…but it really just took a very short time and I thought…
ROCKS! YOU DOUBT ROCKS?
THERE'S A GEOLOGY CONSPIRACY NOW?!!!
And they actually had an answer for that one. They said “yes actually many geologists believe that if the earth is as old as geological time says it is, then evolution could be true and… yada yada yada…you can sin all you want.
(It was always about being able to sin all you want. Which is always an option, right?)
So I’m just trying to imagine how these geologists want to be able to sin without guilt so they go into Geology? “Ah yes the sedimentary layer, that’s the foundation for sex without commitment. Mwah hahahahaha.”
So anyway, we’re back into the Untitled Open-Ended Study Bible project now after taking two week off for Holy Week and Easter. We’re doing this project to try and undo some of the damage we’ve seen that’s been done to the Bible and the people who read it by simple explanations and readings that don’t account for how the Bible really came to be and the controversies that we were all born into that formed the way that we read it.
A fine scholar and good Irishman named John Crossan sums it up like this:
“My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.” ― John Dominic Crossan
Some Points to Get Out of the Way
If you read the whole story of Noah and the flood in Genesis chapter 6 through 9, you'll notice a few things. First it's about 2000 words which is just a few words shy of how long my sermons usually are so I'm not gonna read every verse.
A few months ago I talked about how the Bible before it was the Bible was this box of fragments …of memories, things you never throw out, and that when the Bible was stitched together, that the editors had to make choices about where to include it all.
So if you read this story like a detective or a grad student you'll notice that. The most obvious place you’ll notice it is that the story gets told by two different traditions, all chopped up together in the final version. One tradition refers to God as The Lord and the other as God.
In one thread, the Lord specifies that Noah bring 7 pairs of clean animals, because at the end of that thread, Noah offers a sacrifice. In that thread, the flood comes from 40 days of rain, and the Lord is pictured as very emotional and embodied, and comes this close to apologizing for the whole thing when he says he will never do it again. After all that, Noah gets good and drunk.
In the other thread, God sends Noah one pair of animals each, to the delight of church nursery designers everywhere, and gives instructions for the building of the Ark that will sound familiar to everyone who has ever struggled through the last chapters of Exodus, with all the specifics about the tabernacle. But the coolest thing about this thread is where the flood waters come from.
Remember how God made the world in Genesis 1? How on the second day God separated that watery chaos that was just kind of there? Well, in this other thread, God just reverses that creation. In this conception of the world, the earth isn’t a rock floating in space, but is land that rests on top of water and below water …which God just kind of undoes. Which is great theology…and absolutely terrible geology.
Here is a handout if you want to take a look.
If you read the whole thing in your Bible, you should also notice what fine work the final product is. There’s a reason this is one of the most famous stories in the Old Testament. It beautifully told.
Oh also, if you start reading at Genesis 6, it starts out with three kind of weird fragments that aren’t really connected either to the narrative before or to this one, about how angels took an interest in human women and made super babies with them, and then God puts an end to the long lives of the patriarchs that came before, and also there were monsters or maybe heroes, called the Nephilim.
If you’re hoping that I’m going to explain those four verses, well, get used to disappointment.
But I do get why they stitched those fragments in there. It paints a picture of a world gone wrong, and maybe runs a little interference for the catastrophe that God is about to unleash.
But before we get into the story, it’s worth knowing that this isn’t the only flood story out there. There’s an even older one in the Epic of Gilgamesh… which tells a very similar tale.
And that makes sense, because large-scale floods really did happen, especially in the ancient Near East, which was a river valley, and when waters rise far enough and fast enough, it’s not just a bad storm… it feels a world wide flood.
Heck, even today when something catastrophic happens, a lot of people just assume… God did it.
And that’s where this story starts… but it’s not where it ends. Because ultimately this isn’t a story about floods, and animals going into a big boat two by two.
It’s about who God is… and what God is like.
So let’s try to hear this story, not as two threads, or fragments… but as the story we receive about a world gone wrong… and the God who loves it all so much that he goes a little nuts.
The Story of God, Noah and the Flood
The Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that he had made humans on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. Genesis 6:5–6
So God looks at the world and it’s a mess. Not just a few bad apples, but something systemic.
And God feels it, not as a distant observer… or a someone yelling at the tv, but like someone who deeply cares about what they made.
Like a parent watching their kid make the same terrible choices over and over again… and realizing it isn’t just a phase. Parents with troubled kids know what it’s like to love someone so much you kind of want to kill them.
So what were the people of Earth doing that was so bad? Drugs? Sex? Cursing?
Nope.
6:11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.
Violence.
Not just individual bad behavior… but a whole way of living where people use each other… exploit each other… take what they can and call it normal.
Of the rich eating the poor,
Of war in the name of patriotism,
Of deathliness for the environment.
-Walter Brueggemann
And if you keep reading the Bible, this keeps coming up. The problem isn’t the stuff that religious people tend to fixate on.
It’s people hurting each other, and those who weren’t hurt turning a blind eye. So whatever you were taught growing up… the Bible keeps coming back to this.
Violence is the sin that won’t go away.
God truly sees that and feels it. So much so that…
6 And the Lord was sorry that he had made humans on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out from the earth the humans I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air—for I am sorry that I have made them.”
Now since we know that the story ends with God saying he will never do something like this again, what do we do with the claim that God did it in the first place?
Is this just violence being answered with more violence?
Is this the author being so honored at being made in God’s image that they’re returning the favor?
Is this our tendency to conflate God with fate? Or with the universe? So that everything that happens must be God’s will?
Is it okay to even ask questions like that?
Because it’s always important that we don’t shut off our moral reasoning… especially when we’re reading the Bible. If God wants anything from us, it’s not blind agreement… it’s truth. It’s discernment. It’s learning to recognize what is good…even when that means questioning what we’ve been handed… or what we’ve always assumed.
For now though, what we need to do is understand this story as it comes to us… and notice what it’s showing us about God. Because the God we meet here is not an abstract idea… not an unmoved mover, or the ground of being, or some distant, perfect force.
The God we meet in Genesis… the God who will later take on flesh in Jesus… is a God who feels deeply.
A God who is affected by the world, who grieves and reacts. That’s a part of what it means to be like God. It is probably what Noah was like too.
But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord. Genesis 6:8
We also hear that
6:9 Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God.
That word “righteous” can trip us up… because we tend to hear it the way certain parts of the church use it. We hear “righteous” and think… morally pure. Rule-following. The kind of person who doesn’t cuss and obeys the law.
But that’s not really what this word means.
In Spanish Bibles, the key word in verse 9 is translated as “just”… and that’s actually closer.
In Hebrew, the word is tzaddik… and it has more to do with how you treat people than how well you follow rules.
A righteous person is someone who lives rightly with others… someone who is fair, who is just, who not only doesn’t participate in the violence that everyone else has decided is normal, but does what they can to stop it.
And that’s the kind of person that God chooses to start the world over with. A man of great feeling
… who doesn’t just mind their own business while the world goes to hell…
Wait.
That’s kind of exactly who Noah is.
Because Noah doesn’t go out and try to fix the world. He doesn’t organize a movement. He doesn’t try to control other people or force them to change.
What he does… is build a boat.
And he builds it for a long time. Long enough for people to notice, and ask questions. That’s his witness.
Imagine that you’re his neighbor. Day after day, year after year, this guy is out there building a massive boat… nowhere near water. (HOAs aren’t all bad, I guess.)
But building this boat is his witness. And you have a choice about what to do with that.
You can ignore him, and laugh at him. Or you can pay attention.
Righteousness, in this story, isn’t about controlling other people. It isn’t about winning arguments or making sure everyone else lines up and behaves.
Because the truth is… some people can’t be argued with. So Noah doesn’t try.
Instead, he builds something.
A space. A family. A way of life that stands in contrast to everything around it.
And maybe that’s what righteousness looks like for us too.
Not controlling the world… but creating something different in the middle of it.
A community that bears witness… partly by what it says… but mostly just by existing.
The Flood
So the flood comes. Everything is destroyed. And Noah and his family and large menagerie float and wait…for a year. You know how the story goes. No one tells it better than Bob the Tomato.
And then it’s over. And here’s where the great theology comes in. After the whole ordeal is done.
the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of humans, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. Genesis 8:21–22
After all that water, all that death and destruction, nothing changed. The inclination of the human heart is still evil from youth. Still capable of the same nonsense.
After all that… nothing changed. And that makes sense, doesn't it?
Because fear doesn’t actually change people. Punishment doesn’t fix the heart.
It might stop behavior for a while… but it doesn’t heal anything.
And God seems to realize that. So instead of doubling down, God changes. God, at least in this story, doesn’t try to control it, or force people into submission.
Instead… God chooses something harder. To live with us.
To stay committed to a world that is still unpredictable…and very , very messy.
Instead of control, God chooses covenant.
“As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you 10 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. Genesis 9:9-10
Genesis 9:9–17 is basically God talking… a lot, because God has something important to say. What God says is that things are going to be different now. No threats, or destruction, but commitment. There’s not even a command here, no “if you do this, then I’ll do that.”
Just a promise to hold the world together, to keep it going, and stay faithful to it. That’s what the Bible calls a covenant. And what makes this one different is who it’s with. Not a hero or a special group of people, but everything forever. God is all in with all of it.
And the sign of it all, the ribbon around Gods finger, is the rainbow. And not just because it has every color in it. But because it’s a bow.
As in bow and arrow.
God hung up his weapon, and like a good weapon owner, leaves it pointing away from everyone.
And the emphasis here… is on everyone.
Not just Noah.
Not just his family.
Not just the “good” ones.
Every living creature.
Every bird in the sky… every dog in the yard… every cat that ignores you until it wants something.
Every person… whether they deserve it or not.
This covenant is as big as creation itself.
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: 13 I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth Genesis 9:12-13
And if that’s true… then it means something for how we live.Because this isn’t just a nice idea about God. It’s a claim about reality.
That we are all bound up together in this. People… animals… the earth itself. What happens to one… affects all of us.
There is no escaping it.
No way to say, “that’s not my problem.”
Because we’re all in the same boat. Literally… in this story. And in real life.
That’s how Genesis restarts creation. God takes it all down to the studs and starts over.
But listen to the end of this story more than the beginning. Because it ends, not with judgment but with the idea, the truth, that we really are all one. That all the lines we’ve drawn between ourselves are arbitrary.
We are all one. People, animals, earth.
Let me give Victor Glover. pilot from the Artemis II the last word.
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