GRACE?  AMAZING!

A sermon by George R. Pasley

Genesis 6:9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19

Romans 1:16-17; 3:22b-26

Matthew 7:24-27 

When I was in seminary I made a trip to Philadelphia one weekend and visited the Museum of Art.

While I was there I bought an art print- I can’t remember the artist, but I’m certain that Mary could tell me his name. The print was a picture of Noah’s ark, and the animals were lined up and boarding the great ship, just the same way we board Alaska Airlines to escape Ketchikan, just as if it were an ordinary thing to board a ship and watch the world disappear under a torrent of water. It was a lovely picture and I bought it and give it to my newborn niece.

But reading the story of Noah again this week I am reminded of an altogether different picture, an illustration in an old Children’s Bible, in which the water had already risen, the ark was beginning to lift off of the ground, and those were left- those people who were not Noah and his sons and his daughters-in-law and his grandchildren- they were trying to grab on, pounding against the doors, looking for something afloat to grab onto. That was not a pretty picture, and I put it out of sight and out of mind.

But not far enough, because I remember it now.

Maybe that picture, in that long forgotten book, is not one that you would purchase to post on your living room wall.

Maybe that picture of death and destruction and hopelessness is not one that we would frame and hang in our sanctuary.

Maybe that picture of God’s judgment and wrath is not a picture that any of us want to think about, let alone remember.

But I think we need to look at it, no matter how unpleasant that experience might be.

You see, I look around at the world and I see that most of the world’s money is held by a very tiny percentage of the world’s population, and that tiny percentage includes me. So I have to wonder if we are really keeping the commandment to love our neighbor in the way that Jesus told us to keep it when he told the parable of the Good Samaritan.

I hear that 30,000 children die every day from hunger, and I cannot avoid seeing that picture of people trying desperately to get on the ark.

I hear stories about girls sold and women lured into slavery by the sex trade, and I cannot help but feel there are some who deserve to be pounding on the doors of the ark.

I catalog a list of places in the world where there is immense, immeasurable suffering BECAUSE WE HAVE NOT DONE ENOUGH! They are places like Darfur, Haiti, and Somalia, and when I list them I feel as if I deserve to be pounding on the side of the ark, begging for my life before an angry God.

But sometimes I don’t have to look so far. If I dare, I need only look inward to see horrible sin. I know that my flesh is corrupt, and that even my best deeds are not offered in pure love.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Those are the facts, and they are troubling. But the biggest trouble is this: we cannot build a life on those horrible facts.

If you are building a boat you cannot build it with rotten wood!

If you are building a life you cannot build it on the rotten wood of your own sin, and since there is no escaping our sin, how can we build a life for ourselves or for all humanity if all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God?

We cannot. There is no way around it.

So what are we to do? It will do no good to IGNORE the facts because the wood will still be rotten.

There is only one thing that we can do, and that is to look again at that first painting, that lovely picture of Noah’s ark with al the animals waiting in line to take their stall.

That picture might gloss over the ugliness of our sin, but it is possible to look at it in another way, and I think that it is truly necessary for us to look at it in another way if we want to build a life for ourselves and for all humanity.

That picture is a picture of God the life guard.

That picture is a picture of God saving life in the midst of death.

That picture is a picture of a God who will not give up on either humanity or creation.

That picture is a picture of the same God who became a man, lived as one of us, and suffered our death in order to conquer our sin.

That picture of salvation from the flood is a picture of the God who saved us time and time again from sin and death.

If it were not for the many similar pictures of God found in our Bible we could not gather every week to praise God and enjoy fellowship with Father Son and Holy Ghost, because the only God left to us would be one be one who sends floods but does not build arks.

But God did send Noah to build an ark and Jesus did die on a cross.

That’s the story we tell at this communion table, and that’s why Jesus himself invites us to take, eat and drink, and know that we are forgiven.

We call that grace, and it is amazing. But we can build our life on it.

In the name of the Father, Son & Holy Ghost. Amen.