One of the joys of Theological Hall is that I get to hear numerous sermons on the same lectionary readings each week. This week I heard 3 sermons, in addition to mine, reproduced below. Enjoy!
SB
Since I started thinking about the lectionary readings for today, two things have been going through my head. Firstly the song: “the wise man built his house upon a rock” and secondly visions of myself as a six year old playing with a Noah’s ark set in Sunday School. I can’t for the life of me remember there being any theological significance to these stories from those early days: but the stories are in my head. For those of us who’ve been around churches for a long time the images we have of these stories from our early childhood are deeply imbedded in our minds: but have we thought since about what they might mean? Do they have any more to offer us than being nice stories we remember fondly from childhood?
The first thing that strikes me is that both of these stories are particularly fitting given the world has just experienced two horrific natural disasters in the last few weeks: the terrible cyclone in the poor country of Burma - a country already living under the control of an oppressive military junta - and the tragic earthquake in Sichuan province in China. Although there is great wealth developing in the big industrialised megalopolises of the Beijing and Shanghai, the areas worst hit by this disaster are poor villages in remote rural areas. And the biggest victims are children trapped inside shoddily built school buildings. Certainly not ones built by wise men on firm foundations. We hear these stories of epic biblical natural disasters at a time when our near neighbours are suffering from similar events. How do we make sense of these two biblical stories in our world today?
Both of these stories - the story of Noah’s Ark and the story of the wise man who build his house upon a rock - are stories of action. In the Noah story, God has had enough: in Gen 6:11 we hear that the earth was corrupt in God’s sight; the earth was filled with violence. God needed to do something: to perform an action in order to wipe away all that he was so unhappy with. And so he chose Noah, a righteous man, blameless in his generation - in fact, the story tells us that Noah was a man who walked with God. God established a covenant with Noah. He asked Noah to build an ark to shelter his family and two of all of the animals of every kind that walk the earth. God promised Noah that he will keep them alive.
An ark apparently was not a great big safe boat which could withstand terrible storms and rough seas. The same Hebrew word is used for the small basket in which the baby Moses was placed in the story in Exodus. The word ark describes a vessel capable of floating in order to deliver its occupants from danger. Strictly speaking the ark was not a boat, for it lacked both a means of power and a steering mechanism. Therefore the course it took and its ability to deliver its occupants were completely under God’s direction. Noah, the one who walked with God did all that God commanded him. And God kept his covenant with him and kept him safe.
Unfortunately this action of Noah and of God was not enough to change the world: it did not rid it of violence permanently. If we fast forward to the New Testament we again see God in action. Once again the people are not able to keep their covenant with God: as Paul tells the Romans in the epistle reading for today: all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. There is no righteous man who God can rely on as he did in Noah’s time to build an ark. However in the very next verse, Paul reminds us that God acts in our lives just as he did for Noah and his family. Paul writes that even though they are sinners, the Romans are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. God’s action in our time is to offer us the free gift of his grace: we can enter into relationship with God through the death of Jesus. Not because we deserve it: we have fallen short of the glory of God just as the Israelites of Noah’s time had done. We have no grounds on which to boast.
Jesus is like a new Noah sent by God to act in the world. The early and medieval churches saw Jesus as a new Noah sent to save the world from its self. There are paintings in the catacombs from the very earliest days of the church which depict Jesus as the new Noah, the one who makes a new covenant with God on our behalf.
However Jesus speaking in the reading from Matthew takes this further. In this story it is clear that accepting the gift alone is not enough. If you hear the word and do nothing else, then you deceive yourself. The point of hearing is not hearing: the point of hearing is doing.
So how do we build a house on a rock, an ark? We do this by developing a strong relationship with God. We do this by ACTIVELY practicing living graciously towards others. A Sunday school faith with simple answers is not enough. In order to build a house upon a rock that can withstand the storms of life we must actively deepen and develop our faith. Just hearing is not enough. We must “do” – faith must become a “lived” experience.
How we treat others reveals how deep or shallow our Christian foundations are: whether they are sunk deeply into the bedrock of God’s love or shallowly in sand. To have deep foundations is to have deeply received the wonder of God’s acceptance of us. In accepting that there is nothing we can do which will make us worthy to accept the gift of God we can begin to absorb that grace into the way we act towards others. It may take a long time, but as we learn to love God and ourselves more deeply, we become empowered to love others more compassionately and generously.
How then do these two biblical stories make sense of the suffering in Burma and China? God calls us to act here too with grace and love. We build a house on a rock, or an ark like Noah if we respond to God’s call to us to treat those who are suffering with grace and love. As the retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said: God has no hands but our hands, no feet but our feet.
Because acting on God’s word is about bringing God’s hope to suffering humanity. And hope is behind the story of Noah’s Ark. After the wildest storms imaginable Noah, his family and all of the animals are finally delivered. God remembers Noah. Once this action occurs the storms abate and the waters finally recede. Yet it is months before they can finally walk on dry land. Noah sends out a dove, and on its second journey the dove ventures afar and returns, a living sprig in its beak. Noah’s entire world of life had been reduced to the seething mass of life, and his hope is reduced to this: a tiny branch with the teeniest green growth – providing hope that new life and growth was occurring somewhere nearby - hope that the waters would recede and they could leave the Ark because God had kept the covenant he had made with Noah. The story of Noah is like a second creation story: with God re-creating the world as God had intended it to be.
Just as God is faithful to Noah, so he is faithful to us in our time. God keeps God’s promises – Christ’s death and resurrection invites us into the fullness of relationship with God. However we are also called to act: it is not enough to hear God’s good news and sit back and do nothing. We are called to be like the Noah’s of our day, loving God’s creation, helping to save people and creatures in distress and helping the world to move into God’s promised future.
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