First it's a story about the protection and preservation of animal species in a time of rising global water levels. Sound familiar? And people think the Bible is not relevant to contemporary problems!

But there's a more intimate, more personal connection between then and now. For I realized that what makes an ark an ark is the same thing that makes a sanctuary a sanctuary. Each one of them - ark and sanctuary alike - is a place of safety for everyone who comes inside.

This sanctuary has famously been a place of refuge and safety over the years. Particularly for students who come in here at all hours of the day and night to escape from the maelstrom of college life, and find refuge in the quiet, hallowed beauty of this space.

In this story, Noah's fabled ark was also a place of safety, indeed, it was the only place of safety in the whole world during a catastrophic flood. Thinking people today question stories like this and I understand their skepticism.

Wolves and bunnies, that is, predator and prey, sharing quarters below decks? Lions and zebras in one room? Snakes and mice? And what about polar bears? How the heck did Noah get them all the way from the arctic down to Mesopotamia and onto the ark?

It helps to remember, as we often point out, that the Bible is not meant to be a science textbook. It's not science, it's not history, it's not biography, and it's not meant to be. It's the Bible, which is to say, it's a book of stories. Divine stories. True stories.

To apply strict literal or scientific standards to this story is to miss the point, the divine point. It's to miss God's promise to be in a covenantal relationship with humanity - and indeed with all living things.

God said, "This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

Surely that's the main point of this story. It's about God and the promise God makes. Or is it? Is that the main point? Is God the main character? On this Earth Day Sunday, I can't help but wonder if the main point may well have something to do with the animals. Maybe it's those wolves and bunnies, those lions and zebras who are the real stars of this drama.

This story was a long one, and there was a lot in there. But did you notice how much attention is given to the animals? In our day we think of the animals as a kind of charming, kid-friendly addition to this otherwise unsettling adult story. But the text is very clear on this point- every wild animal of every kind, and all domestic animals of every kind, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every bird of every kind-- every bird, every winged creature. They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life. Aardvarks to Zebras, in other words, and everything in between.

In their insistence and their range, what those commands are saying is that in the divine economy, in the divine ecology, every single species is as valuable and important as homo sapiens. Every bird and every mammal, every insect, every reptile, every living thing, every single species, tamed or untamed, is worth all of our best efforts to save and protect it.

In this story saving them is not optional. It's not like a piece of legislation that can be voted on, that needs to take into account the economic impact of this policy on landowners or small businesses or corporate interests.

No, it's not like that. As the seas are threatening to rise, God gives Noah a simple, clear, primordial command: Save everything that lives. I, Yahweh, created it. You, Noah, save it. Every species, every living thing is as precious as you are, Noah. Save it all.

Ancient people would have immediately understood this command. As far back as the dawn of human consciousness, indigenous people have known intuitively that every species is sacred. They didn't have to be told, or persuaded, on that point, as we white folks do.

If you were here a few weeks ago, you'll remember that the Lakota people conclude all their prayers and religious ceremonies with the phrase mitakwe oasin. Which literally means, all my relations . What they really mean by that is that we humans are part of the web of life; that we are related to everything that is; that in a spiritual sense the wolf and the buffalo and the grizzly and even the lowly grasshopper are as much kin to us as our extended family. (Some of you would probably rather have a grizzly for a relative than your crazy Uncle Bob.)

Ironically, those of us in the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition are among the last people on earth to realize this. We have lived not as part of the web of creation but above it, with scissors and insecticide in hand. We have abused and exploited the natural world so completely that we've turned the truth of this story, the story of Noah, almost completely on its head. In short, we have become the flood.

In a terrible kind of confluence, our environmental practices, our industrial policies, our consumption patterns and lately even our theology have all come together and now threaten those same animals God commanded Noah to save.

To survive, animals that once flourished in the forests and on the plains, including the buffalo and the wolf and the grizzly, have been forced into National Parks and wildlife preserves - tiny little arks in the midst of the ferocious flood of our efforts to dominate the earth. And now another flood, brought on by global warming, threatens to rise and engulf the land once again.

So, what to do? The best answer to that is, absolutely everything we can . Of course not all of us can do everything. In fact none of us can. But we all - each one of us who cares about this story, who cares about the species God commanded Noah to save - each of us must do what we can. If you do what you you're passionate about, and if I do what I'm passionate about, then perhaps we can stem the tide.

Some of you will create sanctuaries for birds and animals and plants on your own property. Some of you will continue to write letters asking our president and congressional representatives to find other ways to decrease our dependency on foreign oil than drilling in the heart of ANWAR, North America's last great untouched wildlife habitat.

Some of you will join the growing number of people who are voting with their wallets. People who, by their consumption patterns, are sending the message that corporations must begin to operate in ways that are environmentally responsible and sustainable.

Others of you will educate the next generation on matters of ecology and conservation, opening their minds and hearts to the wonders of the world's diversity.

Some of you will donate to organizations that are working to save rivers, to reintroduce the American chestnut, to buy land and put it into trust, returning it to the birds and animals forever.

Taken together, you know what all those efforts amount to? They amount to building an ark. Friends, we have been the flood. But like Noah and his stalwart wife, it is now our job to build the ark. Indeed, it is our job to become the ark--to be people of safety, creating an entire world that's safe for every living thing that has breath.

Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh--birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth--so that they may abound on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.

From aardvarks to zebras we are all related, and we share quarters together on this sacred ark we call the Earth.

Thanks be to God!