Noah Part 4: Drowning

"He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces..."

- Isaiah 25:8

Today we’re wrapping up a four-part series on Noah. This covers the part of the story where Noah plants a vineyard and samples too much of his supply. Yep, that’s right: Noah gets drunk. Here are the relevant verses:

“Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent.” - Genesis‬ ‭9‬:‭20‬-‭21‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Noah lived for 350 years after the flood. I have no doubt that he dreaded the anniversary of the flood every single year. It’s easy for us to look back at this story and focus on all the animals, the redemption of Noah and his family, the doves, and the beautiful rainbow at the end of the story.

Except, that wasn’t the end.

The story continues.

And what happens next gives us a glimpse into Noah’s emotional and mental state long after the waters had receded and the bodies of the victims of the flood had decomposed. I think it's safe to say that Noah's emotions immediately after the flood would have been a mixed bag. Sure, on the one hand he and his family had survived a dangerous ordeal and were safe. But on the other hand, everyone he knew outside of his immediate family had died. So, assuming this passage is painting a picture of a distraught man overcome with grief, I think we can all relate to Noah on some level here. Like Noah, many of us dread certain anniversaries.

For me, the most significant of these is the day my cousin, Derek, died. I still remember where I was sitting when his older brother, Steven (more like a brother to me than a cousin), called me emotionally distraught and explained what had happened. The first news gave us hope that he may survive. Subsequent updates confirmed our worst fears. They hadn’t been able to save him. I remember just muttering the word “no” over and over again as the reality of what happened settled in and I struggled to accept it. Today, we are less than two weeks away from the horrible anniversary of that night.

We were born 4 months apart. I’d known him my whole life. From the outside, we probably seemed like very different people. We grew up only a few miles apart but in many ways we really grew up worlds apart.

Our paths did cross at church occasionally, and most family birthdays and other holidays. Our entire family, probably over 40 of us, consistently gathered at our grandparents’ house for Thanksgiving and Christmas for decades. He and I would each take a turkey leg. That was our thing. Everyone knew the tradition. No one fought us for them. That was a me and Derek thing. I look back on this seemingly insignificant tradition with extreme fondness.

We bonded over WCW wrestling. He and Steven were more into WWF which was a little too extreme for my taste, but they enjoyed WCW too. We watched many Monday Nitro's and other shows together.

Technically, the first song I ever wrote was with Derek and Steven. I still remember most of the words and the melody. We were six years old. Not to brag, but we were on the cutting edge of boy bands. Had we progressed beyond one song written in our grandmothers front yard, we would have blazed the trail for N’Sync and the Backstreet Boys. “Best Girl” could have been a chart topper.

Me, Steven, and Derek went cliff diving in Kentucky one time. We ducked out of a family reunion after raiding the potluck and spent a Sunday afternoon hiking to various cliffs. Fast forward to late that afternoon and we were hiking to a 55 foot high cliff when we crossed this very tiny stream of water running down the hill and over the cliff into the lake. I was in front and the second I put my foot in the water I slipped and went over the cliff headfirst. I thought I was going to die. I had about 10 seconds to contemplate my life, but this was interrupted by Derek looking over the cliff to check on me. He yells “Hey man, are you alright?” And then promptly falls over the edge of the cliff himself. I can still see him like Wile E. Coyote scrambling to climb back up the cliff in mid-air - his hands reaching to grab onto something but only finding air. I remember thinking “Great, if the fall doesn’t kill me, this idiot is going to land on me and kill me.” Miraculously, we both emerged from the lake unscathed, a little shaken, and a lot relieved.

These memories make me both laugh and cry, which is pretty standard when it comes to grieving, I think.

Why am I sharing all this?

When I think about all these good times we had, I’m filled with emotions of happiness, fondness and joy. But there is also a part of me that is filled with deep regret, shame, and remorse.

I can’t help but wonder if Noah had these same conflicting emotions and the way he responded to them was to get blackout drunk and pass out.

Now, I am purely speculating with this theory. To my knowledge there isn’t really any consensus around what was going through Noah’s head here. But, as someone who has experienced significant loss that still presses my emotional buttons years later, I find it entirely possible that Noah was drowning his sorrows in wine. I’m sure with little effort you can come up with names of people whose loss still impacts you. I have names. Derek is one for sure. Noah had names. Don’t minimize this. He had names.

Everyone he knew outside of his immediate household has just physically drown, but now Noah is drowning in a flood of emotions. He’s spiraling. And his response is not at all foreign to us today - he decides to numb this pain with wine. In fact, Noah probably had PTSD for years after the flood. He was likely haunted by the cries of those who missed the Ark.

I’ve said before that we tend to dehumanize the real-life people written about in the Bible by viewing them simply as characters in a fantasy novel. But this was no fantasy for Noah. It was a living Hell. People he’d farmed with, fought with, dined with, grown up with, socialized with, people he loved and cared for, were all dead. All of them. No one survived.

When Noah walked off that boat and looked around, he only had a few different people looking back at him.

Can you imagine the survivor’s guilt? Can you imagine the weight of wondering if he’d done something different if anyone would have joined them? He didn’t get anyone outside his immediate family to believe in the coming destruction. And now it was too late. They were all gone. Every. Single. One.

In Noah’s case, he had to know for certain that none of those who died in the flood would be redeemed. In Derek’s case, I honestly don’t know. I know he spent years learning about Jesus and grew up in a family that, as a whole, believed in God and encouraged Christianity. I do not pretend to know anyone else’s heart and do not believe that succumbing to addiction or any other vice of this world is a final verdict on one’s status with the Almighty. And I don’t just say this to ease my own regret or placate my family as I have other close family members who have died and I have no hope that they are with Jesus. It’s a crushing reality.

My cousin Steven, Derek’s brother, granted me the great honor of selecting one of the songs for Derek’s funeral. I was torn. Anyone who knows Derek knows that he loves a specific genre of music and I was tempted to choose something that fit that style. But instead I decided on the song “Rescue” by Lauren Daigle.

This song is about someone who feels forgotten, hidden, overlooked and unimportant. Someone who doesn’t believe their life matters. My greatest regret with Derek’s death is that I did not take the opportunity to tell him how much he mattered. This haunts me. I can’t overstate how deeply I feel this regret. I wonder what would have happened if I’d followed through on the numerous times I had the urge to connect with him. And I have really good reasons that I never did reach out and all of those really good reasons are garbage in hindsight. Was I the army God was trying to send? Well, if I’m a follower of Jesus who has a relationship with someone who needs to be reminded how much God loves them, then yes. It was me. I was the army that never showed up. And so I played this song as a final attempt to let Derek know that he mattered.

Losing Derek was a wake up call for me. There are people in my life who need a lifeline, a listening ear and, ultimately, need Jesus. Like the people of Noah's day, I operate as if the end is never coming. I express zero urgency. I live as if I have all the time in the world to not only warn the people I know and love about the coming destruction, but also introduce them to the person who came to rescue them.

In Revelation, John quotes Isaiah and reiterates that he will "wipe every tear from their eyes," but also adds "There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain."

The Bible says that at the end, God will be wiping our tears. I think usually people interpret this as simply implying that we won’t have pain or sadness or anything like that in Heaven…and that’s probably a decent interpretation. I would certainly agree with that conclusion.

But, when I read these verses and then go back and read this part of Noah's story, it makes me wonder if there are tear-filled eyes in the last days because in that moment, the thoughts of us who are saved will be drawn to those we’ve left behind. I think that the overwhelming crushing guilt of the conversations we never had, the time we never spent, the wasted opportunities to share the love story of how a God who didn’t have to died for humans who didn’t even want Him to - I think the awareness of these things would ruin eternity for us. We will have names.

I wonder if God will have to wipe away tears because in this moment we will all be fully aware of the eternal consequences of our lack of effort to point those around us to the rescuer and to help them into the boat. Because in this moment God will no longer be calling us to pursue our family, friends and neighbors with the Gospel - that chapter will have closed just like the door on the Ark.

Instead, I wonder if this will be the moment that Jesus simply holds us in his arms as we both grieve for the ones who didn't make it.

I wonder if Jesus will wipe away our tears to keep us from drowning.