When Should We Leave The Coffin?
What is the opposite of faith?
Is it doubt?
Is it fear?
Is it evidence?
How you answer that question says a lot about your worldview. Maybe you’ve been told throughout your upbringing that faith is believing even against the odds, and so you’ve got this picture of “lacking concrete proof” in order to call something faith. Maybe you were reared into a confident achieving environment where faith is putting your best foot forward, believing in yourself, and finding that within your own person you had the strength to make it the whole time. Maybe faith is supposed to mean certainty, and as such your lack of faith can be… disturbing… What if I told you the Bible doesn’t offer us much reason to agree with any of those answers? What if the scriptures give us a weirdly much more specific description of faith’s opposite?
The “Children’s” Story
As you journey through the scriptures you come upon one of the blurrier puzzles of the text rather quickly, as divine beings seem to intermarry with beautiful daughters of humanity and it results in a sort of less-than-human creature more powerful and dangerous than average God-intended humanity roaming the lands and achieving fame and glory for themselves… (definitely a knock on the power-grabbing-claim of ancient kings to be a son of the gods). I make no assertions to know the depths of meaning for that story. That’s a rabbit hole I will look at only carefully enough to prevent breaking an ankle as I cross over it. What I do know is that it’s situated immediately before one of the Bible’s most famous tales (Gen. 6:1-8:5).
During the days of the generations where these god-like-sub-humans are kicking butt and taking names, there’s born a normal human man named “Rest.” We know him as “Noah.” The creator God singles Rest out and gives him a message of judgment, decreation, salvation, and the remaking of the world into a place where life can truly flourish. He tells Rest that he’s going to flood the earth, that he will save humanity through his family alone, and that he’d better brush up on his boat making skills. But this is a message of judgment and death. God tells Noah to build a “tevah” (the word for ark) which, for all you nerds out there, is a word from ancient Egyptian (not from ancient Hebrew) and it frequently refers to an actual coffin outside of the biblical texts. God finds one man among all humanity who is doing it right (righteous) and commissions him with the opportunity to find life by going through death; to save all of God’s creation by obediently self-electing to build his own coffin and lay down in it. As Noah builds this boat, his family and all of creation with them will be rescued through the watery-chaos of death and destruction just outside the tar-pitched walls. That’s actually how we were introduced to this “Rest” guy. His dad named him Rest because he hoped that he would finally bring the earth rest. And then after the chaos waters flood the earth, this little Micro-Eden floats on those waters for 150 days before it finally makes landfall (finds “rest” on a mountain). A full season of death. Then Rest and his family and all of creation with them will have to endure 40 more days of waiting before the first moment which I want to truly highlight here from this story…
Noah Sends The Raven and The Doves
I think one of the weirdest portions of this strange yet famous flood story is this little part where we see Noah meander on over to this window he made in the ark (apparently he added a window to the blueprints) and he opens it up, takes a raven and tosses it out to see what it would do (Gen. 8:6-19). Many of the waters have receded by now, but he watches and watches and the raven never finds land. It flies back and forth, back and forth unable to rest anywhere. Simply waiting in exhausted flight for the waters to dry up. Ravens are frequently seen as creatures that thrive on death in narratives like these. Birds of plunder and scavengers of corpses. This raven found nowhere to land, but there’s no indication it ever returned to Noah’s place of safety. After the Raven, Noah sends a dove out of his little window. Doves frequently represent the Spirit of God in the scriptures, fluttering over waters such as in the beginning or at Jesus’ baptism. This dove looks for land, but finds none, and curiously returns to the safety of the ark’s perch, caught by Noah himself. Then we get another weird detail in this weird story. Noah waits seven days.There are no coincidences in the Bible. Seven is a frequent play on words for the scriptural authors. In the originally written language, seven sounds like “shevah” and the word for wholeness, completion, or perfection is “shavah.” Those words sound an awful lot like “shabbat” as well (sabbath) and there are no coincidences in the Bible. Noah engages a sabbath pattern, waiting and watching before he sends the dove out again. This time, it returns with a little bird-beak worth of hope. The smallest glimmer, an olive branch indicating that land might be discoverable soon. Then we feel the pattern emerge as the man named Rest engages yet another sabbath rhythm of waiting 7 more days aboard his creation-coffin-salvation-vessel on which he rode out the storm of chaotic and deadly flood waters. After the second set of 7 days of waiting, Noah sends the dove out again and this time it never returns because it found that the land was once again a suitable place for life to thrive.
What’s With All The Waiting?
At its face-value this is a story about Noah trying find out if the ground is ready enough for him to open the door and leave the ark… but when you start to poke and prod and ask “Why? Why this and not that?” of the story, you find yourself swimming with the majesty of the scriptures. The majesty of the book of Genesis. The majesty of the Spirit of God. What do we see in this story about Noah’s waiting, testing, patient observation, and listening for the voice of the creator as he looks out at the now sunny sky through his little ark-window? We find a second Adam, fresh off the heels of the decreation of the God’s good world, living in God’s restful rhythm and waiting on God even within death before chasing or grasping at life on his own. In the garden the first Adam chose to take from the tree on his terms, but in the ark the second Adam chooses patient trust in the spirit of God and his guidance. Noah walks in step with God’s spirit. He doesn’t run ahead of him. He willingly enters death amidst God’s sin-cleansing judgment, in order that humanity and all creation might know life. And then he walks in step with God’s spirit. He tests and observes that the world outside the coffin is currently only fit for the restless scavengers who thrive on the carcasses of those unfortunate souls who went before them (raven). He then tests and observes that the quiet faithful ones can’t yet find a place of rest (dove number one). Then he’s patient with God. He waits on God. He ‘shabbat’s for another period of “shevah.” Then he does it again, and this time the gentle one comes back with evidence of life and Noah grows in confidence that the meek will inherit the earth (dove number two). And then he waits again. Patient. Enduring. He could have opened the door then, but he doesn’t. He recognizes that in the light of the hope of life to come the right thing to do is to patiently trust God’s pace. Finally, after a God ordained 7 more days of quiet-trust, he “tests the spirit” and lets loose the dove yet again, this time rejoicing that the faithful have found rest in the land and the just judgment is finally over (dove number three). Rest is a patient man. I would have rushed to get off that boat. Desperate for the touch of dry ground after 200 days of a claustrophobic rollercoaster ride of chaos and disaster. But he waits. And while thinking about that, I think we’ve discovered the opposite of faith.
The Walking Pace of Faith
Adam and Eve take… before they have the chance to receive from Yahweh.
Abraham takes Hagar and produces Ishmael… before he has the chance to receive Isaac.
Jacob takes the blessing by deceiving his father… before he had the opportunity to receive a birthright of his own.
Israel chooses the golden calf to worship… before they have the chance to choose Yahweh who is still up on the mountain with Moses.
King Saul improperly offers sacrifices on the battlefield… before Samuel the prophet arrives on the scene.
Peter rashly cuts off the roman’s ear in the garden… before he has the chance to take his cues from Jesus.
What if the opposite of faith is getting ahead of God?
Noah waits. He waits on the guidance of the Spirit, to make his next steps clear. He waits for God to bring all of reality into the state in which life can flourish. Noah’s job was never to make the earth ready for life. It was simply to remain faithful until God had finished his life-making work. There’s a beautiful song I love with the lyric “I’ll be right where I belong if you lead me one step at a time…”
What if God wants to form us into people of love? What if the Spirit is far more concerned with our patient trust than he is with our results? What if the results were never ours in the first place? I love how in Exodus 4 at the scene where God commissions Moses to go free the people of Israel from their Egyptian slavery, when Moses protests that he “don’t speak good” God’s response is not “sure you do!” but rather, “Who made the mouth?” What if God placed you exactly where you are on the spectrum of your ability? What if God never wanted to see you perform, but rather desires our patient trust, so we can walk out of the coffin into new life where we’ll find that he already did the life-making work we’re so quick to strive after? It seems to me that God still wants to walk with his people. And if you don’t feel his presence in your life, maybe we shouldn’t be asking “Do you doubt? Are you fearful? Are you sure?” but rather, “are you getting ahead of his Spirit?”
Slow down. Patient trust. He is making all things new. We saw the first fruit budding on the tree of God’s plan. Christ is risen. Stomping on death and devil. Can we trust that he will also give us all things? May we send the dove out and wait for the glimmers of hope. May we trust that God will make-straight our path in his right timing. May we be people who “follow” our walking-pace savior. One step at a time. May we find shelter in the storm within the death of our lord and trust that new life, true life, awaits us on the other side of those ark doors. May we walk at the pace of faith in Christ.
May that be true.
(I took this photo of the beautifully intimidating waters off the pacific coast at Canon Beach, Summer 2021)
Song Reference: One Step, by Gas Street Music & KXC & Manor Collective
The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), Ge 6:1–8:5.
The New International Version(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), Ge 8:6–19.
Biblical Studies Press, The NET Bible First Edition; Bible. English. NET Bible.; The NET Bible (Biblical Studies Press, 2005), Ex 4:1–17.