God said to Noah and to his sons with him:
“Behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark, every beast of the earth.
First Sunday of Lent
We begin the Season of Lent. Forty days of journeying towards Easter. On this first Sunday, the core message is at the end of the Gospel of Mark: “Repent and believe in the Good News.” The other texts begin to expound on conversion, as a work of the Spirit, and to prepare the catechesis of Baptism, through which we are incorporated into Christ.
Genesis 9:8-15
God said to Noah and to his sons with him:
“Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, as many as came out of the ark; every beast of the earth.
I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
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: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.”
This is a narrative from the Priestly source that uses materials from the Yahwist tradition. The flood was undoubtedly a natural catastrophe that is recorded in many ancient traditions of various peoples.
The Yahwist and the Priestly authors take this catastrophe and turn it into a great penitential sermon, considering it a punishment from God for sins. And this is the darkest part of the story, because it implies that God wanted to exterminate humanity, that only a few were saved, and that God’s wrath was appeased by the “soothing aroma” of a bloody sacrifice.
On the other hand, today’s passage is completely specific to Israel: God is not a fearsome being who can at any moment destroy the entire creation: God is an ally. But an ally of Israel, not precisely of all humanity. As long as Israel obeys God’s Law, they can count on Him… against their enemies.
The sign of this Covenant could not be more expressive: the rainbow. It is not a stone arch, something architectural. It is the war bow of a vengeful God. God has shot his arrows that have almost exterminated all life; but no more: the sacrifice of Noah has appeased God, and God has hung his war bow in the firmament, as a sign that he will never again try to destroy humanity.
It is clear that this is an ancient and extremely primitive tradition and spirituality. It is the prehistory of our faith. From here to the theology of John (“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son”) there is a very long way to go. But we already recognize in this ancient tradition the seed of our very faith in God the Savior.
1 Peter 3:18-22
For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.
This text was probably written in Rome after Peter’s death, and is based on his preaching. His “theology of the flood” and the action of Christ on the ancestors who await in “Hades” seems somewhat distant to us, even incomprehensible.
We are left only with the idea that it is a baptismal text, focused on “being saved through water,” an image widely used in the early Church, in which water represents evil, sin, death (as reality and as a symbol) from which Jesus is saved, saved from death by the Spirit, and we, who are incorporated into his resurrection through Baptism.
José Enrique Galarreta, S.J.