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Sunday Service:
10:00 AM
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Let's Start Over
Genesis 9:8-17, I Peter 3:18-22,
Mark 1: 9-15
February 26, 2012 - First Sunday in Lent
Written and Preached by Fred Day
Historic St. George’s United Methodist Church
And "God waited patiently in the days of Noah . . . in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you."(1 Peter 3:21)
At our house, one TV news show or another is on while we’re having dinner. Indigestion aside, have you ever reached the point where you can’t take all the dissention, disorder, violence, and destruction and just got up and turned the blasted thing off?
God does not have that option. God does not have a remote control to change the channels. God cannot change neighborhoods or move to the suburbs or close a door to hide from all the confusion and mess. God’s eyes are not averted. God’s heart is not numbed. By the miracle of digital cable TV we have access to literally hundreds of stations and still we see only the thinnest slice of human brokenness and despair. But God sees it all.
If the age when Noah lived was anything like our own, no wonder God said, "That’s it. I’ve seen enough. No more. I declare a misdeal. Let’s start over again."
We once did a bathroom for our daughters in Noah’s Ark motif, the happy menagerie of animals, Noah and family with smiling faces on bright colorful wallpaper, soap dishes, tooth brush holders and switch plate covers arched with rainbows and floating doves. But the Bible story we call Noah’s Ark is anything but a family outing to the zoo. Noah and his family are faced with God saying, “Enough! I’m gonna blow it all up and try again!
The Noahs were only spared because they seemed like decent people caught up in a violent, troubled world they did not create. Although we do not know much about their character, God seemed to think they represented everything that was good and worth saving about creation. It wasn’t so much because of them the world needed a do-over. When they were safely aboard the ark, God sent a great flood until the world was immersed in a cleansing bath, so that new life could begin in the watery womb called Earth.
I imagine that when the flood was over, Noah and his family, the last remaining seed of the human race, did not want to wander very far from the ark. What if it starts raining again? Who wants to slosh through all that muck, mire and mess to get back on board?
But while they were still wobbling around on sea legs, before they ever left the ark, God said, "I am establishing my covenant with you." That is, "I am committing myself to you. I am going to stick with you no matter what. And as I am my witness, I am never going to send a flood like this again. In fact, I am going to give myself a reminder of this promise. I am going to hang up my bow in the sky. (Now don’t automatically think rainbow here, the word in Hebrew refers to the kind of bow that shoots arrows.) I am going to hang my bow up in the sky but this bow will be empty of arrows. I will never use my bow to visit terror upon you ever again. I am even more sick of violence and hurtfulness than you are, so I will be the first to lay down my arms. There will be times when you and those who seek after me will disappoint me, and I may be tempted to send another flood, but this bow in the sky will remind me of what I am saying to you now."
“I am going to hang up my bow in the sky but this bow will be empty of arrows. I will never use my bow to visit terror upon you ever again.” It is a good thing that God made that binding, irreversible commitment, a covenant like we call it in church, to stick with us no matter what, to refrain from destroying us no matter what we do, because look at us now. All we have to do is take in the human scene, like we do watching the nightly news, to see that when Noah and his family got on the ark, something was smuggled on board with them, tucked away in their hearts, and that is the seed of violence, confusion and struggle. That seed of violence, confusion and struggle existed even in Noah and his kin, even though they may have been among the only reason God might have to spare the world, a bad seed waiting to grow like a weed and entangle the world in violence, confusion and struggle again and again.
We do not like hearing that. We would rather believe that there are good guys and bad guys, those who are prone to violence and those who are peace-loving, those who are on the right side of violence and those on the wrong side of violence. This story reminds us that sin—if we can dust off that old word, that word we rather not say let alone admit – sin was in Noah and is in us, even in the good guys.
Before a child is baptized in our congregation, I meet with the family to talk about baptism and discuss the service. We talk about the words we’ll say, they’ll say as parents, words I’ll say as pastor, words the congregation will say as the community of faith surrounding the child with support to their growing into faith and discipleship. I always wonder what the parents are thinking when I read all the words about SIN and REPENTANCE, words about RENOUNCING the “spiritual forces of WICKEDNESS” and rejecting “EVIL POWERS of this world,” praying that the Holy Spirit will bless the waters of baptism to “WASH AWAY the child’s SIN and clothe them in righteousness, affirming that baptism offers forgiveness of SIN.
I always wonder what the parents are thinking with all the sin talk. I wonder if I don’t lose them at that point. I wonder if they don’t lapse back into baptism as coming-out-party-for-sweet-little-baby as opposed to baptism’s more radical immersion. Here they are holding this brand new bundle of joy, sweet cheeks on both ends, so wonderful, so new, so clean, so eagerly anticipated. And the Pastor is talking SIN and EVIL and WICKEDNESS. Why, the worst thing this kid has ever done is let loose some foul orders, put spit-up stains on good clothes and maybe kept us up nights.
One can understood this affirmation of sin and wickedness far more easily in the baptism of an adult, but it seems a strange gift – this nod to human depravity –to offer an infant. After all, this babe has had little opportunity for sin, and it may be some time before sin comes into play.
But it’s there all right. SIN. A seed of brokenness, violence, disorder and destruction is already there, as if nestled in the genes. It was in Noah and it is in us, as becomes clear sooner or later. People who were once bouncing, beautiful, wonderful prides of Momma and Poppa built concentration camps and bomb churches because they don’t care for certain other of God’s creatures. Tiny babies with soft skin and speaking gurgling goo-goos grow up to be hit and run drivers, shoot innocent people who are in the crossfire because of drug turf wars and join hate groups. This is why great, progressive-for-his-time theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wondered how anyone could doubt the doctrine of original sin – it is, he said, the only Christian doctrine that is verifiable by observation.
When we approach the waters of baptism, when we come to the font with our children or grandchildren, nieces and nephews, the kids in our congregation or just as fellow congregants we are NOT spectators but people who remember Noah and the flood. Both the flood story and baptism remind us, before we get to doves and rainbows, that we stand in need of God’s cleansing. In baptism God says, "Let’s start over," but this time, let’s do it one person at a time. In baptism God confronts sin no longer by shooting his bow at us threatening death, but by offering life.
In baptism we are invited to wade into the same waters that swept away our ancestors in Noah’s time, because Jesus has gone before us, calling out: “Come on in, the water’s fine! It has been blessed by my presence. Come back to the womb so that you can be created anew. You are named, claimed, called, commissioned, filled with the Holy Spirit to be an outpouring of God’s Spirit, God’s new creation.”
I saw a picture of a baptismal font at Belmont Abby College in Gaston N.C. It was made from a huge stone which had been hollowed out. The stone didn’t start out as a font but it became one. On that very stone, 150 years ago or so, black slaves were sold to the highest bidder. But today, this stone is the baptismal font at this Benedictine Abby. The inscription on the font says it all to any who enter the cleansing water:
One this stone, men, women and children were sold into slavery. From this stone, men, women and children are now baptized into freedom.
This would have been a good Sunday for a baptism, shame there wasn’t one. Maybe, but if someone would have asked me to be baptized today, I would have declined because this is Lent, a period of time reflection and repentance to remember our baptisms and all our baptisms mean, a time to teach and prepare those who want to be baptized of the same. Sometimes we baptize too quickly, too routinely, too automatically.
Human brokenness, sin, violence, manipulation, coerciveness, hurtfulness – your human brokenness and mine – still reside in the heart, BUT I AM THERE ALSO, God says. AND I WILL PREVAIL. My graceful ways are more persistent than anything you may do. And if you need a reminder of this, you do not need to look into the distant sky because the reminder is dripping from your forehead. The reminder is that close. This is my new covenant with you. Go where you will, do whatever you will. Try as others might to threaten you, try as you might to abandon me, I will never leave your side. You are mine. You are named, claimed, called, commissioned, filled with the Holy Spirit to be an outpouring of God’s Spirit, God’s new creation.” Amen.
The idea and basic outline for this sermon came from reading “Starting Over,” a meditation by Rev. Martin Copenhaver appearing in the The Christian Century’s “Living by the Word” section, February 21, 2006.
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