A reading from the book of Genesis (9:8-15)
God spoke as follows to Noah and his sons with him, ‘I am now establishing my covenant with you and with your descendants to come, and with every living creature that is with you: birds, cattle and every wild animal with you; everything that came out of the ark, every living thing on earth. And I establish my covenant with you: that never again shall all living things be destroyed by the waters of a flood, nor shall there ever again be a flood to devastate the earth.’ God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant which I now make between myself and you and every living creature with you for all ages to come: I now set my bow in the clouds and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I gather the clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, I shall recall the covenant between myself and you and every living creature, all living things, and never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all living things. When the bow is in the clouds I shall see it and call to mind the eternal covenant between God and every living creature on earth, all living things.’ God said to Noah, ‘This is the sign of the covenant I have established between myself and all living things on earth.’
The Flood takes up four chapters of the book of Genesis (chapters 6-9). The story of the Flood, an ancient traditional theme found in many civilisations, is in the Hebrew Bible an attempt to explain the devastating natural disasters human beings and the whole of creation periodically experience. They cannot be God’s will, and therefore, or so it seems, must be caused by human sin (6:5-7). Our passage tells of the resolution of the crisis and the establishment of the ‘covenant’ (berit), the solemn bond between God and human beings. This is the first time in the Scriptures that the term is used to denote the relationship between God and creation. The word appears seven times in verses 8-17, indicating completeness and the perfection of God’s new initiative, which is celebrated by the wonderful natural phenomenon of the rainbow. God is committed to the well-being of creation, both human beings, the animals, and the natural world. The ‘covenant’ confirms this. It is human abuse that undermines the rainbow beauty of God’s work.
Psalm 25 (24) Focus on the covenant continues. The psalm expresses in a fresh way the message of the story of the Flood. All the ways of the Lord are steadfast love towards the covenant partners. God’s mercy reaches back in history and forward into the future.
A reading from the first letter of St Peter (3:18-22))
Christ himself suffered once and for all for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to lead you to God. He was put to death in the body; he was raised to life in the spirit, in which he also went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison. They had refused to believe long ago, while God patiently waited, in the days of Noah when the ark was being built, in which only a few, that is eight souls, were saved through water. Baptism which this prefigured now saves you, not the removal of physical dirt but the pledge to God of a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of God, having entered heaven with angels, authorities and powers subject to him.
Death and life are the focus here. Jesus was put to death in the body, and raised in the spirit. The ‘proclamation to the spirits in prison’ is obscure, but might be pointing to the releasing from death through the resurrection of Jesus of people of earlier generations. Salvation from the waters of the flood becomes in its turn a pointer to the Baptism ‘which now saves you’, and gives access to the new covenant, brought by Jesus Christ.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark (1:12-15)
And at once the Spirit drove him into the desert and he was in the desert for forty days, being put to the test by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and the angels looked after him.
After John had been arrested, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel from God and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has drawn near. Repent and believe in the gospel.’
From the Gospel of Mark, the earliest gospel, this is the original and terse report of Christ’s being tested. It is as if the evangelist is embarrassed even to mention it. The Spirit ‘drives’ Jesus to this encounter. Like Moses and Elijah, he must spend forty days in the desert. Biblical tradition reports that Moses was forty days in God’s presence on Sinai (Exodus 24). Elijah travelled for forty days to the holy mountain (1 Kings 19). No details of the temptations are provided in this stark account, but the accompanying statements proclaim Jesus as the new Adam, for he is at peace with all creation, and is close to God, and served by God’s angels. Jesus is, as St Paul explains at length in Romans 5, the Adam who through fidelity to God brings grace, life and salvation. Despite being tempted, Jesus chose to be faithful.
Jesus is like us in all things but sin. Jesus resists the lure of Satan.
For those who work to combat the exploitation of creation, we pray.