Preparing
with Joy for the Paschal Feast
I
The Charge to Moses
and Joshua
II
The Story of
Creation
III
The Future Glory of
Zion
IV
The Conversion of
Nineveh
Part V of XV
Sunday 18 February
2018
First Sunday in Lent
The Flood
Genesis 7:1-5,
11-18, 8:6-18, 9:8-13
The Lord said to Noah,
"Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you
alone are righteous before me in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of all clean
animals, the male and its mate; and a pair of the animals that are not clean,
the male and its mate; and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and
female, to keep their kind alive on the face of all the earth. For in seven days I will send rain on the
earth for forty days and forty nights; and every living thing that I have made
I will blot out from the face of the ground." And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in
the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the
fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were
opened. The rain fell on the earth forty
days and forty nights. On the very same
day Noah with his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah's wife and the three
wives of his sons entered the ark, they and 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. And those that entered, male and female of all
flesh, went in as God had commanded him; and the Lord
shut him in. The flood continued forty
days on the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose
high above the earth. The waters swelled
and increased greatly on the earth; and the ark floated on the face of the
waters. At the end of forty days Noah
opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent out the raven; and it
went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Then he sent out the dove from him, to see if
the waters had subsided from the face of the ground; but the dove found no
place to set its foot, and it returned to him to the ark, for the waters were
still on the face of the whole earth. So
he put out his hand and took it and brought it into the ark with him. He waited another seven days, and again he
sent out the dove from the ark; and the dove came back to him in the evening,
and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the
waters had subsided from the earth. Then
he waited another seven days, and sent out the dove; and it did not return to
him any more. In the six hundred first
year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up
from the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and saw
that the face of the ground was drying. In
the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry. Then God said to Noah, "Go out of the
ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons' wives with you. 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." So Noah
went out with his sons and his wife and his sons' wives. Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him,
"As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants
after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the
domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out
of the ark. I establish my covenant with
you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and
never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." 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."
In the name of the Father, and of the
Son,
and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
On this First Sunday in Lent, as we continue in our exploration
of the Old Testament readings for the Great Vigil of Easter, my focus is on the
story of the Flood, found in the 7th, 8th and 9th
chapters of Genesis.
How exactly, you might wonder, does this reading fit the theme
of preparing to celebrate the Resurrection and have a share in the eternal
Easter celebration of the Kingdom of God?
The apostle Peter gives us the answer.
In his First Epistle, Peter speaks of a connection between the Flood and
Baptism. Peter reminds us that as Noah
was saved from the flood, so also, we who have been joined to the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ, are saved by our Baptism. As we prepare to keep glad Easter, both here
and in the Kingdom yet to come, we do well to remember our Baptism in this
penitential season in which persons throughout the Church are preparing to be
baptized into Christ.
There is something very important about this Sacrament of
Christian Initiation that we need to remember.
This sacrament is not complete when the liturgical rite is
finished. And yet how often we are
guilty of thinking of our Baptism as a completed act. There is a day when our Baptism will be
complete, but that day has not come yet, nor shall it come in this life. We are preparing ourselves in the hope that
Christ will raise us from death to life eternal, and when we stand before
Christ in eternal life, only then at the eternal Easter, will our Baptism be
complete. Meanwhile, throughout this
life, we walk dripping wet in the waters of Baptism in which Jesus first
entered and from which he has called us to join him and live with him. It is this Baptismal living that both
encourages us and enables us to grow daily into the stature of Christ, in order
that with each passing day we might look more and sound more like the Christ,
in the hope that when others encounter us, they shall be encountered by the
loving God whom we worship and proclaim.
Perhaps if we remembered that famous joke wouldn’t be told so often:
Q: “How do you get the
mice out of the Church?
A: “Baptize and confirm
them, and you’ll never see them again.”
It’s interesting to note that there is also a connection between
this Sunday and Baptism, which makes our focus on the Flood and Baptism very
fitting on this First Sunday in Lent.
Today’s Gospel follows on the heels of the Gospel for the Feast of the
Lord’s Baptism, the First Sunday after the Epiphany. Today we have read the Gospel of the
Temptation of Jesus. The beginning of
this Gospel is the ending of the Baptism Gospel. In this Gospel, we are reminded that Jesus
goes into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan immediately after he has been
baptized. And why did Jesus endure this
temptation in the wilderness? Jesus went
there to face our temptations, to fight our battles, to be victorious for us
and for our salvation. Jesus goes into
the difficult places of this life to give us safe passage through the midst of a
life that often is not fair, is often anything but easy, and that, if we are
honest, we could not face ourselves. But
since Jesus has taken us by the hand and claimed us in the waters of Baptism,
the driest of deserts are life-giving springs, and our weaknesses are the very places
in which God’s power is perfectly and lovingly revealed. We are not left alone, for God is our helper;
Jesus is our strength!
And how is it that we are saved by Christ through our Baptism
into his death and resurrection? We are
saved by the hand of Christ who picks us up and places us into the ark, as once
Noah guided the animals into the ark at the command of God. And what is this ark? Look around you! We are in this ark even now. Our building is very traditional and
symbolic. Remember that we call this
space in which the people sit the “Nave” of the Church. That word which we use for this portion of
the Church comes from the Latin word ship.
This sacred space is intended to look like an upside-down ship, a safe
place from the storms that rage around that ship and the dangers that would
otherwise overwhelm us if we were not in the ship. Our Baptism gives us a place here that is
safe, for God has promised to protect us.
And the wonder of our salvation through our Baptism is that Jesus has
not saved us in isolation. Jesus has
given us a family and made us a part of the Church which is his body. As a family, we are saved together by Jesus,
who longs that we would love God and God’s people as we have first been loved
by God. And since the Church is not this
building but rather the people found regularly in this building, we know that
we are not safe merely when we are in this building. No matter where we are found, we need not
fear anything, for we know that Christ is in our midst, and that whenever Jesus
is near, so also is the Church, that sacred fellowship carried together by
Jesus through storms and hardships and every enemy that would seek to take away
our faith, our hope, and our very life.
As we journey through these Lenten days, preparing for Easter, Jesus
calls us to remember our Baptism, to draw closer to God and to one another, and
to know more fully that God is our strength and salvation that shall never fail
us. It is this remembrance that shall
bring us not only through these Lenten days to Easter. More importantly, this good news shall bring
us through all the days of this life, with all that this world can throw at us,
until at last we stand before Jesus and know by sight and no longer simply by
faith that indeed in Baptism Christ has saved us and claimed us as his own
forever.
In the name of the Father, and of the
Son,
and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Rev’d Timothy Alleman
Rector
The Church of the
Holy Cross
Preparing
with Joy for the Paschal Feast
VI
A New Heart
and a New Spirit
VII
Salvation
Offered Freely to All
VIII
Israel’s Deliverance
at the Red Sea
IX
The Valley
of Dry Bones
X
The
Gathering of God’s People
XI
In Praise
of Wisdom
XII
The Gifts
of Wisdom
XIII
The Three
Youths in the Fiery Furnace
XIV
The First
Passover
XV
Abraham’s
Sacrifice of Isaac
