Genesis 9:8-17; I Peter 3:1-18

First Sunday in Lent

March 1, 2009

Pastor William S. Waxenberg

The play.  It was great!  A couple of weeks ago, Carol and I went to the Dallas Theatre Center and saw the play, In the Beginning.  It’s the story of the opening chapters of Genesis. The Scriptures were read aloud, actors portrayed the different characters—Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and his family.  There was music, commentary, and then, when the play ended, there was dialogue between the actors and the audience.  It was a delightful evening.  I hope some of you saw it.

What pleased me most about the whole affair, however, what I found to be most exciting, was that they got it!  The writer, the director, the actors all got exactly what was going on in these critical opening chapters of the Bible.  They understood what sets the tone for everything else.  They understood that with each of the stories they told, we learn something about God’s judgment and we learn something about God’s mercy.  Not just one or the other, but both, held in tension with each other.

So in the creation story of Adam and Eve.  After they eat the forbidden fruit, we hear of God’s judgment which culminated in God sending Adam and Eve forth from the Garden.  But before they leave, we also hear of God’s mercy when God becomes the first tailor, making clothes for Adam and Eve, a sure sign of God’s care, even though they’ve terribly disappointed him.

In the story of Cain and Abel, again we hear of God’s judgment, when, after Cain kills his brother, God sends Cain forth to roam the world and to get his bread by the sweat of his brow.  But when Cain fears that others will take vengeance upon him, God’s mercy is portrayed when God places a mark of protection on Cain’s forehead.

And then we have the story of Noah, a part of which we heard as our First Reading this morning.  Before we reflect on today’s text however, a brief review is in order.  So hearken back to your childhood for a moment, when you may have heard the Noah story for the first time.  Remember?

God has created the world and all that is in it, but God sees the wickedness of his creation, God sees into the hearts of the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve, and God sees only evil thoughts and desires.  And God’s own heart is broken.  The Lord God is sorry for all that he has made.  God grieves as God decides to blot out everything. 

Well, almost everything.  For there is a glimmer of hope.  There is Noah and his family.  Here are eight people, a remnant, whom God chooses to save.  So God commands Noah to build an ark, 300 cubits, by 50 cubits, by 30 cubits.  And God tells Noah to collect all the animals of the earth—one male and one female—and bring them into the ark.  Noah does, and then the heavens open and the rains fall, forty days and forty nights.  Remember?  And eventually the rains cease, the wasters abate, dry land appears, and Noah and his family are able to leave the ark and re-populate the earth.

That’s the story in a nutshell.  And if you want to read the entire story, it can be found in Genesis, chapters 6 through 10.  Or, if you want to listen to the story told in a wonderfully humorous way, get a hold of comedian Bill Cosby’s rendition of the Noah story.  It’s priceless.

Of course, what we have here up to this point in the Noah story, is God’s judgment upon his creation.  The entire creation hasn’t responded to God’s desire for the creation to be as God intended it to be.  Nothing is as God had hoped.  Sin, wickedness, evil, disobedience, a lack of trust—all describes the heart of humankind, and even the heart of the entire created order.  And God’s initial response is a word of judgment, which God has a right to render, because, after all, the creation is God’s gift.  It’s God’s game, and God gets to set the rules. 

At the beginning of Lent, it’s important for us to remember that God’s word comes to us in two separate and distinct ways.  One of these is the judgment of God which comes to us as God’s Law.  For one of the functions of the Law is to accuse us of our sinfulness, our unrighteousness. 

The Apostle Paul understands that.  In the seventh chapter of his letter to the Romans, Paul writes that he wouldn’t know what sin was all about if it weren’t for the Law.  He wouldn’t have known, for example, what it was to covet if the Law hadn’t said, “You shall not covet.” (7:7)

Jesus even intensifies the power of the Law.  He looks at the religious leaders of his day who’ve become proud about their obedience to the Law, and calls them to account.  “You’ve heard that it was said, ‘You shall not murder,’” he tells them.  And then, in effect, says, “And I’m glad about that.  I’m glad that you haven’t taken the life of another.  But look into your hearts.  For I say to you that everyone who is angry with another is guilty of murder in his heart.”  Or again, “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’”  And Jesus would have affirmed their faithfulness to their wives.  But Jesus would also call them—and us—to look into our own hearts, for “everyone who lusts after another has already committed adultery in his or her heart.”  (Matthew 5:21-22; 27-28)

Jesus deepens our understanding of the Law and its power to accuse us.  For we all stand guilty.  No wonder, then, that when Luther writes about the Ten Commandments in his Small Catechism, he tells us that “we are to fear…God.”  We are to fear the Law that accuses us.  And we are to fear the ultimate judgment of God.

But the Law with its accusatory finger is never the final word.  For as God’s word comes to us as Law, it also comes to us as Gospel.  And that’s what we get in today’s story about Noah.  We get the Gospel, which comes to Noah—and to us—as a promise. 

As Noah and his family step out of ark onto dry ground, God makes an incredible promise to Noah and his wife, to his sons and their wives, to future generations, and to the entire created order: God promises never again to destroy the earth by a flood.  And then to affirm this promise, God puts a rainbow in the sky. 

But notice why the rainbow’s there.  It’s there, not just for our benefit, but for God’s benefit.  It’s there to remind God of his promise!

“When the bow is in the clouds,” God says,
“I will see it and remember the everlasting
covenant between (me) and every living
creature…that is on the earth.”

And that’s pure Gospel.  It’s pure Good News.  It’s a promise—an irrevocable promise.  An everlasting promise.

God, through the Gospel, continues to make promises to us, and God continues to offer us signs of his promises.  Plunged into the waters of baptism, God claims us for his own, making us his sons and daughters, placing the sign of his promise on our brows in the form of a cross.  The cross itself, looming large over us, is a sign of his promise, his Gospel, that in the death and resurrection of Jesus God is doing a mighty work, redeeming the world—all the world, all the created order—from its sin and brokenness.  The bread and wine of Holy Communion: signs that the crucified and risen Jesus is among us still to embrace us with his forgiveness and mercy.

God’s word, coming to us as both judgment and mercy, as both Law and Gospel.  In fact, God has set it up in just this way so that when the Law accuses us, it drives us to the Gospel, to the open, loving arms of the Christ. “Christ…suffered for sins once for all,” writes Peter in today’s Second Reading, “the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.” 

So no wonder that Luther writes we ought “to fear and love God.”  We fear the Law and its judgment, but we love the Gospel and what it promises.

This one of my favorite stories.  You’ve heard it before, and you’ll undoubtedly hear it again.  It takes place in Sweden, in the early 1800s, in a country parish.  The story, in its entirety, is about a young pastor who isn’t very good at what he does.  He doesn’t know what to do or what to say when people are in crisis.  But, then in a way, he doesn’t need to, because there are lay folk in his parish who do.

One of those is an old woman, named Katrina.  She lived there once in the parish but moved away.  She’s heard, however, that one of the old men in the congregation, a man named Johannes, is dying, and she makes a trip back to see him.  When they’re together, Johannes confesses that he’s terribly afraid to die.  He’s terrified of God’s judgment because, he says, “Katrina, I am a sinner, a great sinner.”  And Katrina looks at him, and she says, “Yes, that you are, Johannes.  But Jesus is a still greater Savior.”  (The Hammer of God, Bo Giertz)

Law and Gospel.  Judgment and mercy.  Katrina makes no attempt to brush off Johannes’ sins.  She makes no attempt to pat him on the shoulder and say, “Oh, it’s not so bad, Johannes.  You’re not any worse than the rest of us.”  No, instead, she tells him the truth.  She pronounces a word of judgment, “Yes, Johannes, yes, you are a great sinner.”  But then immediately follows that with a word of pure Gospel, pure promise, pure mercy: “But Jesus is a still greater Savior.”

Come to think of it, that’s not a bad epitaph for anyone’s tombstone:

Here lies William Waxenberg,
A great sinner,
But for whom Christ is a
Greater Savior.

Judgment and mercy.  Law and Gospel.  Fear and love.

Amen.