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Homily for Thur of the 6th Wk in OT, 20 Feb 2025, Mk 8:27-33
“You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” This is what Jesus said to Peter. Another way of saying that is: “Your thinking is not in accordance with God’s will.”
Let us relate this now to our first reading from Genesis about the covenant that God made with Noah after the great flood that supposedly destroyed all living creatures, had finally subsided. Picture in your mind the scene of the opening of the ark’s door, and Noah, his family, and all the other creatures coming out of the ark, and lifting up their eyes to heaven to look at the rainbow, which symbolized God’s offer of a new covenant.
Covenant is the word used in the Bible for a mutual agreement. The rainbow was supposed to be the symbol of God’s invitation to a new relationship that demanded a commitment to follow God’s will, or God’s original purpose in creation. That if Noah’s descendants were to follow God’s will and keep the covenant, God was also committed never to allow the earth to be destroyed ever again.
The invitation to a covenant relationship is a consistent theme in the Bible. We hear about many other covenants in the Old Testament, aside from the one God had made with Noah. We hear also about the covenant with Adam, the Abrahamic covenant, the covenant with Israel through Moses, and the covenant with David. But what makes the covenant with Noah most unique among them all is the fact that the agreement is not only between God and human beings. It also involves all the other creatures that were with Noah’s family inside the ark. Interestingly, all the other creatures came in pairs, so that they could reproduce, repopulate the earth, and start a new creation.
I like the image of the ark, not just as a rescue boat for human beings, but for all of God’s other creatures. It is portrayed not just as a home but as some kind of a school where all creatures had to learn to live in peace and harmony with each other. What the author describes is almost like a natural habitat, a whole ecosystem that God himself saves from destruction, in order to give creation a fresh start. The boat becomes symbolic of a temporary abode, where the human family had to learn to be family also with fellow creatures, the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees, and all other fellow residents in a common home. The forty days of disaster were like a time of incubation for a new relationship among God’s creatures. They had to learn to live with each other in a manner attuned to the will of the Divine.
Yesterday, I was with a group of bishops that had a zoom conversation with a group of environmental activists specialized in various areas of expertise in the ecological advocacy. They call themselves inhabitants of “Naturapolis”, in complete contrast to the destructive and unsustainable lifestyle of the inhabitants of the “Metropolis”. They live with the indigenous Aetas, plant thousands of local hardwoods, promote a biodiversity of endemic plant and animal species, produce clean and sustainable energy, eat healthy foods free of pesticides and herbicides, live a lifestyle of simplicity that incarnates the Church’s social teachings of solidarity, subsidiarity and servant leadership. They try to foster the “Small is Beautiful” principle through what they call “Area Economics” that consciously counteracts the disastrous effects of sectoral economics. They are not just reinventing the Noah’s Ark; they are also trying to live the Noah Covenant. I am sure our Pope Francis will be very happy with their quiet experiment in Zambales, as the rest of the world is preparing for the inevitable cataclysm of apocalyptic proportion that is caused by the serious climate crisis brought about by human greed and abuse of creation.
