When I taught high school in Greenville from 2000 to 2004, one of my professors at Ole Miss, Dr Andy Mullins, told me that I would not understand the reality of the Delta unless I learned about the Great Flood that took place along the Mississippi River in 1927. In fact, the levee broke just north of Greenville. It was not only the devastation and destruction of the flood that affected Greenville and the other communities of the Mississippi Delta that hug the river, but the mistakes in the recovery efforts had such disastrous affects on those Delta communities, affecting the course of history in the Delta and in the state of Mississippi.
I bring up the topic of the Great Flood of 1927 today because in our first reading from Genesis, we hear of Noah and the great flood. In other narratives from Mesopotamia and Babylonia from the same era, there are a lot of similarities in their great flood narrative stories. Yet, whether this story is interpreted as being a literal historical account or a parable, the important thing is to discern the eternal truth that is contained in this narrative: that God is just and merciful, that human beings have turned away from God, but that God saves his faithful ones. The Flood is a divine judgement which is a foreshadowing of the final days. We can see the salvation of Noah as a foreshadowing of the saving waters of baptism. In the waters of baptism we enter into the Christian faith, receiving salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. The same water that can bring such devastation in a flood also has a part in the sacrament through which we become a disciple of Christ.
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