Second Sunday after Trinity, 2009
Text: Gen. 6:5-8; 13-22
The Rev. Jerry Kistler
St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church
Montrose, Colorado
“The Ark of our Salvation”
"And behold, I Myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life… But I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall go into the ark.”
Two ships. Two ships captivate our imagination like no others. One has become the symbol of the destruction that follows when the sin of man’s pride is unleashed; the other is an ancient symbol of the instrument of salvation that carries us safely through the destruction when God’s wrath is unleashed on sin. Two ships: Titanic and Noah’s ark. Both are the story of a surprise flood and a great ship.
Life was going on just as everybody expected. People assumed they would simply go on eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage. The future promised only smooth sailing. The rich enjoyed their power and privileges over the poor, and when the moment of truth arrived, violence revealed the heart of man: every man was for himself. Then in a moment of awful surprise, terrible events took place, and suddenly the panicked crowds were scrambling for the highest peak to escape the drowning flood.
There are some amazing parallels, aren’t there? For both Titanic and Noah’s ark, life was in the ship. Outside the ship was only certain death. And yet the crowds went about their daily business totally taking for granted that their lives were completely tied to the ship. The one crowd trusted that Man’s ship was unsinkable; the other crowd thought God’s ship was unnecessary. And so for taking the ship for granted, only a few were saved.
The ark was one of the earliest Christian symbols for the Church, reminding us that it is in the Church that God saves us through the deep sea of death. And yet who really trusts that life is in this ship… in this ship alone? How many of us take for granted that our salvation is completely tied to our membership in the Church? How many of us take for granted that it is the one and only God-ordained instrument for bringing us safely through the sea of death? Is that making too great a claim for the Church? Is putting our faith in the Church not like putting our faith in the unsinkability of the manmade ship? Some would have us believe so. Well let me ask you this: Do you think Noah trusted that it was the ark itself, the work of his own hands, that would save him? Of course not. Noah trusted in the God who called him and his whole family to enter the ark, and sealed them in with his own hand. But the ark was still essential. God saved them in and by the means of the ark. Noah wasn’t given the option to trust God to save him outside of the ark.
God said to Noah, “But I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall go into the ark.” Life is in this ship and not outside of it because, like the ark, the Church is the sphere of God’s covenanted grace. It’s the ship that bears His promise that, if you remain onboard, you will never sink into the waters of judgment.
In the ancient depictions, the cross stands inside of the ark as the mast of the ship. The cross of Christ is inside God’s ship. It can’t be found in man’s ship. The cross once stood outside the old city, but now it stands inside the walls of the new city, the New Jerusalem. For “you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,… to the general assembly and church of the firstborn… to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.” The sacrificial animals were carried onboard the ark. So the sacrifice of Christ is to be found inside the Church for all those whom God has sealed into His covenant.
A person is sealed into the covenant, sealed into the saving grace of the cross, through water. It’s the apostle Peter himself who brings out this typology of the ark – the ark “in which,” he says, “a few, that is eight souls, were saved through water.” That was the type. “There is also an antitype,” he says. There is something this points forward to: baptism – baptism “which now saves us.” (St. Peter’s own words). Baptism, which brings us safely through the waters of death, safely through the judgment of God into the ark of salvation “by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ” (again St. Peter’s own words). Baptism is no magical rite. It only “works” because God appointed it as his means of bringing us out of the sphere of judgment in to the sphere of his grace.
Then God said to Noah, “You shall take for yourself of all food that is eaten, and you shall gather it to yourself; and it shall be food for you and for [your family].” Life is in the ark because this is where the food is. God has made provision to sustain his people through the tempest of life by giving us the imperishable food of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. That food can only be found here, inside the ship. The food on Man’s ship may be more appealing to the eye, more delectable to the taste, but it’s the common fare served on God’s ship alone – the bread and the wine – that can sustain us through the flood of death.
So to summarize with St. Cyprian’s famous maxim: "Non salus extra ecclesiam est," which all of you know means, “There is no salvation outside of the Church.” “You cannot have God for you Father unless you have the church for your Mother.” St. Paul said it himself: the Jerusalem which is above is the Mother of us all (Gal. 4:26).
But doesn’t this cut completely against at least a couple of our most cherished convictions as evangelical Christians: 1) that we have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and 2) that we are saved by faith alone? Growing up as an evangelical Baptist, the distinction for me was always between Christianity and “Churchianity,” and the difference between me and the Catholics and the Episcopalians and the Lutherans, and all those other “church” people, was that they had “religion” and I had a “Personal-Lord-and-Saviour.” But that dichotomy is a false one. Yes, we have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He is our personal Saviour. He is our personal Lord. What we don’t have is each our own private, individualized covenants with Jesus Christ. God makes covenant with the people in the ark. Actually God makes covenant with righteous Noah, who as a type of Christ brings his whole family into the ark of salvation with him.
See, for evangelical Christians to claim that what it means to be a protestant is to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ immediately, that is apart from any instrumental means, apart from the instrumental means of the Church, is really to deconstruct our Protestant heritage and to reconstruct it according to modern, American democratic individualism. The Protestant reformers had no such notion of a private, individualized Christianity. And lest there be any debate about that, here is what John Calvin had to say on the matter of the Church as our Mother:
“There is no other way to enter into life unless this mother conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us at her breast, and lastly, unless she keeps us under her care and guidance until, putting off mortal flesh, we become like the angels… Furthermore, away from her bosom one cannot hope for any forgiveness of sins or any salvation, as Isaiah and Joel testify. Ezekiel agrees with them…” They testify that “God’s fatherly favor and the especial witness of spiritual life are limited to his flock, so that it is always disastrous to leave the Church.”
How can you have Christ for your Bride-groom if you are not in fellowship with His Bride? How can you have Christ for your King if you are not a citizen of his holy nation? How can you have Christ as your head if you are not a member of his body?
Do we bind God by saying that there is no salvation outside of the Church? Absolutely not. God can save anyone He wants. But the point is that God has bound Himself to the Church; that’s what the word covenant means. It means "a bond." Vernon Staley put it this way: “Within the Church, we are within the circle of covenanted grace. Outside the Church there is neither the warrant nor the certainty of grace.” In other words, outside the Church there is no covenanted assurance that anyone will be saved. Can God save people outside of the Church? Certainly. But to reject the Church, to treat it as unnecessary, to leave the Church to go it alone, is to make the greatest presumption upon the general benevolence of God, when in terms of the covenant you’ve jumped over board into drowning sea of his judgment, into place without promise. It’s to presume that you just might be okay treading water out in the middle of the ocean. God just might rescue you immediately with his invisible hand. That’s a foolish presumption when an ark is available!
The Church is God’s ark. It was His idea. It was His plan from the beginning. It is not a manmade institution. It is His instrument to save His people. How important this is for us to realize, especially when we have a purpose statement that begins by stating that we are to be Christ’s instrument of salvation in our community. What kind of instrument? We are to be the Ark in the midst of a drowning world. Never forget it. Never take the Church for granted, not for yourself or for your neighbor who has not yet been saved through water.
Life is here in this ship. Salvation is in the Church, because this is where the cross of Christ is planted. This is where the font of the waters of regeneration are to be found. Here is where the rich food of the body and blood of Jesus Christ is given to all who are sealed into his covenantal ark. Here is where God speaks His word of forgiveness and renews his promise to save us through the deep sea of death. Only here. Only in this ship.
And so as Noah offered his sacrifice of thanksgiving for having been saved in the ark, let us offer our eucharist, our entire lives as an ongoing, living sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, for we have so much greater a salvation in so much greater a ship – the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. And may the glory be to Jesus, the great Captain and Builder of the ark of our salvation. +
