In the Boat
With Jesus
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous
for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.
He was put to death in the body but made
alive by the Spirit. 1Peter 3:18
If you have even been to the Crystal Cathedral in southern California, you
may have noticed, or read, that the church sanctuary is shaped like Noah's
ark--if it were positioned sideways. The design works well, but it also makes
a theological point which is the same we read in 1 Peter. Robert Shculler,
Sr., its founding pastor, wanted the architecture to remind people that the
church acts like Noah's ark, in that it is the vessel where we find refuge
by God's grace.
I like that idea.
What Peter is saying is that baptism into Jesus' death, is like being on
the ark, and floating above God's ultimate judgment on sin.
And it is more as well. Our faith in Christ, and His presence through the
Holy Spirit, gives us the vessel in which we can float through the storms
of life. Sometimes that boat feels more like the one Jesus and his disciples
were in when the storm blew up on Galilee--not nearly as large as Noah's
ark, and one where the disciples felt very frightened and vulnerable.
There is a painting of General George Washington in a boat crossing the Delaware
River. He is standing fearless in the bow as they row toward the opposite
shore.
When life gets stormy, that is how I want to see Jesus--standing fearless
in the bow of the boat pointing toward a safe haven.
That is what Jesus disciples wanted too, but what they had was Jesus asleep
in the rear of the boat oblivious to the howling winds and waves that threatened
to swamp them.
Do you remember the song, "I Saw Raindrops" by sister Mariam Therese
Winter?
The third stanza goes:
I saw Christ
in wind and thunder,
Joy is
tried by storm.
Christ asleep within my boat,
Whipped by wind, yet still afloat.
Joy is tried by storm.
The alternate reading this morning from Mark's gospel, which I am not using,
refers to the time of Jesus temptation in the wilderness following His baptism.
It is the first of the world's two greatest battles.
The second is Gethsemane.
In those two places, Jesus fought battles that were meant to deflect him
from his mission.
He won both.
Had he lost either, the history of our planet would have been vastly different.
There would have been no absolute and ultimate remedy for our tendency to
destroy ourselves, our lives, our planet and our relationship with God.
We would have been locked into a never ending cycle of futility and God would
have had no choice but to end His experiment with human life on planet earth.
He could simply have left us to our own devices and destroy ourselves, or
do like he did in the time of Noah and just end the experiment Himself.
We are told there are a number of good sized asteroids in our solar system
that would do the job nicely.
But when God set a rainbow in the sky in the time of Noah, it was a reminder
of the covenant between us and God, and a foreshadowing of what Peter tells
us:
That in Jesus we have our ark.
God has taken the necessary steps to pluck us from this self-inflicted cycle
of destruction.
We have Christ in the boat.
More properly, Jesus has us in the boat with Him.
At times it may feel a bit rocky and we wonder if we are going to drown.
Do you remember the scene from Jaws when the police officer played by Roy
Scheider is out on the fishing boat with the scientist and the wild shark
hunter? He is the first to see the great white shark that is terrorizing
the community. It surfaces menacingly, its jaws agape and is over twenty
feet long. The policeman turns to the shark hunter and says to him, "We are
going to need a bigger boat!"
We all have those moments when the problem looks very menacing and we are
sure it will swallow us.
Folks, we have something better than Noah's ark.
We have Jesus in our boat. Actually Jesus has us in His boat and that's all
the boat we need.
As Paul writes in Romans, nothing can separate us from the love of God.
Not life or death, not nakedness or peril or sword. Not past or future.
Because Jesus has us in His boat.
If Christ be for us, who can be against us?
The answer is no one and no thing.
That confidence is what Peter calls "the pledge of a good conscience toward
God."
What does this mean?
It means that when we recognize what Jesus has done: Peter says he has died
for sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that it means
Jesus has done on one occasion what all the sacrificial system of the past
could not do. He has removed the sins of all for all time. And he compares
this to Noah's ark. We are taken aboard into the safety of God's mercy.
We all live our lives with things we have done or things we wish that we
had done, that we cannot go back and do, or undo as the case may be.
If there is no possibility of restitution or we have done our best on that
score, then Peter is saying indirectly that we lay it to rest.
Do you remember the novel The Scarlet
Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorn?
Hester Prynne is a single young woman who is pregnant--by the village pastor
as it turns out, but she refuses to tell who the father is. The penalty for
adultery would have been death, but since they cannot prove adultery, she
is sentenced to a different penalty instead. The scarlet letter "A" for adultress
is attached to her cloak and she must wear this scarlet label of her sin
on her cloak for as long as she lives among them.
Peter says we have the pledge of a good conscience with God. Jesus has removed
whatever our letter would be.
Our scarlet "G" for gossip; our "L" for liar; maybe even "T" for thief if
we have stolen what does not belong to us...and so on.
Whatever our letter might be, Jesus has removed it. In fact we read in Paul's
writing that the written penalty against us was nailed to his cross and he
died for all our scarlet letters. And as Peter says, having died for them
all--once for all, we have the mercy both of forgiveness and a clear conscience.
This does not mean that there are never times when we do not regret what
we have done--of course we do. What if means is that at the end of the day
we lay our head on our pillow and sleep the sleep, not of the innocent, but
of the forgiven. Our conscience between us and God is clear. He is now on
our side.
Instead of Jesus asleep in our boat, we can lay our heads down and sleep
safely and securely in His boat.
This is the heart of the gospel.
May God be thanked and praised.
Amen
Preached March 1, 2009
Dr. Harold McNabb
West Shore Presbyterian Church
Victoria, British Columbia
Notes
Sr. Miriam Therese Winter, I Saw
Raindrops, Medical Mission Sisters, Vanguard Music corp., 1965
Online Resources Consulted
http://www.preachingtoday.com/
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