Our Ark and Helmsman: The Third Sunday After Trinity (June 25, 2023)

1 Peter 3:18-21, “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:”

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

There’s a kind of fallacy called a sunk cost fallacy where, the more invested someone is in something, the less likely they are to give it up, even if the thing becomes toxic. An example of the sunk cost fallacy might be continuing to pay for expensive repairs on an old, beat up car, knowing that, in the long run, it might actually cheaper to buy a new-to-you car. Last week we talked about responding to God’s commands with trust and obedience. Today, I want us to ask why we should we respond to what God tells us with a posture of trust and obedience? What makes our perseverance in faith different from a sunk cost fallacy? To answer that, it’s important to remember that God’s commands are not superfluous, even if we can’t always see the why behind them (though, he usually gives us some hints as to why). Last week, our Old Testament reading was God telling Noah to prepare the ark. That’s what Noah did and our reading from Genesis 9 is the result of that: Noah and his family were saved from the flood because they listened and obeyed. And so, last week we explored the topic of faith which expresses itself in that trust and obedience, but today we ask why: why have faith? What’s the point? The story of Noah is our story. Noah had to follow God’s command and was preserved from the destruction of the world, along with his family, through the flood. Similarly, our goal is to reach a new creation, the new heavens and new earth, through the Ark of the Church by which we’re saved from sin and destruction.

It’s important to remember that sin is nothingness. Sin some substance that has its own being in the world; it’s always the lack of a thing. Gluttony is the lack of the virtue of temperance. Pride is the lack of humility. Lust is the lack of fidelity and chastity. Scripturally, we know that the end of sin is destruction. In Matthew 7:13, Jesus exhorts us to “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:” St. Paul puts it more concisely in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death.” Of course, we see this demonstrated later in the book of Genesis in the destruction and Sodom and Gomorrah and we see it in the flood here in Genesis 6-9. The point is that all of us who are born, with very few exceptions, are born with what we call original sin. Original sin isn’t really the sins we are personally do; original sin is the sickness of soul that makes those sins possible. And when we’re born with the sickness of soul that we have, we inevitably slide (or some of us run headlong) toward our own destruction. Experience tells us that we might lull ourselves into a false sense of security by burying our heads in the sand through self-justifications, but, somewhere deep down inside ourselves, we know the great lack in our souls. We’re not the parents we’re supposed to be, or the children, or the spouse, or the employee or employer, or the friend, or whatever else. And so most of us can identify with the tension St. Paul describes in Romans 7:15 “What I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I” which leads him to cry out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

Surely we were created for more than the great nothingness that is sin. Something tells us that we were made for more than that. Indeed, our very natures, while struggling under the disease of sin are still good because they still bear the image of God. This tells us that we were created for something True, something Good, something Beautiful. This is what Noah and his family experience: after being delivered from the flood waters, they step out into a beautiful world that has been purged of the ugliness of sin and been made new. There’s peace and harmony between humanity and creation, as demonstrated between God’s reminder that the animals will be held accountable for the human blood they shed. There is peace and harmony between human beings as violence is forbidden because human beings are created in the image of God; this is the undoing of the violence of Cain towards Abel that came to characterize the antediluvian world. Sin results in disintegration and isolation; but we are created to be whole, to be part of something bigger than ourselves, and to flourish as part of community. But does this mean that God has given up on us? Are we trapped on the outside of the vision, only briefly gaining glimpses at what was supposed to be? No, the ruins of the human soul will be rebuilt! How? Through the person and work of Jesus Christ. When our nature was scarred and made by sick by sin, he assumed a human nature and united it to God, healing it. Our moral failings made us unclean and unable to approach God; Jesus became both our high priest and our sacrifice through which we can approach the Father. Our milieu of fallenness has planted us in vicious cycles of domination, exploitation, and violence; Jesus reveals what an authentic humanity centered around love looks like. And this is why baptism matters so much. Baptism transfers us from the genealogy of Adam, a genealogy characterized by sin that ends in death, into the genealogy of the New Adam, Christ. St. Peter likens those who have experienced baptism to those who were saved inside the ark because baptism makes us a part of the Body of Christ. Jesus is our ark. And so when we’re baptized, we’re planted into a new story, the story of Jesus, and by that identification, we are placed in harmony and peace with God, his Church, and creation.

We should never think, however, that life becomes easy once we pass through those beautiful waters of baptism. In America, we have large swaths of the Church that have been deceived by the Prosperity Gospel that tries to tell us that believing in Jesus will make us temporarily happy, successful, rich, or powerful. Friends, not only is this not a guarantee, Jesus actually tells us most of us will experience the opposite. Now, it’s important to note that immediately getting off the ark, Noah and his family are told “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.” Remember, this is our story and this command is for us. Now this doesn’t necessarily mean that we are all bound to have as many kids as possible; but rather, we should understand this spiritually: we are to increase in holiness and virtue through sacramental participation, prayer and devotion, and good works. But this isn’t easy; it’s not always smooth sailing because we garner opposition from three places. First, we experience opposition from our own flesh through concupiscence, those fleshly and carnal desires that we too often feed. We are our own worst enemies. Second, we experience opposition from the world where we’re pressured by others in our contexts to follow their examples instead of Christ’s. And of course, finally, we experience opposition from the devil who our Epistle tells us is a roaring lion seeking to devour us. This is where faith—the response of trust and obedience—come into play as we “fight manfully” under the banner of Christ crucified, knowing that the struggle now comes with it a “peace that surpasseth all understanding.”

And good news: you don’t have to make this journey alone. Our Gospel reading this morning reminds us that God is like a good shepherd or a woman desperate to recover her lost dowry coin. And these are imperfect pictures: God’s love is infinite and more intense than any example our imaginations can conjure up. His love for us is revealed in the fact that he sent his only Son to die on the Cross for us. He has saved us individually at the moments of our baptisms. And now, what’s true at baptism is true in an ongoing way: we have been saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved. And we have Jesus as our ark and our helmsman. He is the means by which we’re saved and he is the bishop and shepherd of our souls who leads us to the green pastures of salvation. And he bestows on us great gifts to get us there: he gives us the sacraments. He gives us his very body and blood as the manna from heaven. He gives us access to absolution through the sacrament of penitence. He also gives us the Scriptures and the teachings and liturgies of the Church which all points us further up and further into relationship with him. And finally, he places us in a community which he richly endows with all sorts of spiritual gifts for the mutual edification of the Body. And so based on the preponderance of evidence, we can join St. Paul’s proclamation in Philippians 1:6 “that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.”

Every day we baptize a person is a great day. A number is added to the Church; heaven rejoices and hell suffers a great loss. But it’s also an opportunity for each of us to examine ourselves. Are we progressing towards the beautiful way of being that God designed for us? Do we trust him as the pilot of our ark and the good shepherd of our souls? It’s never too late to trust in the God who died for us, who made us alive by his Holy Spirit, and who continues to guide us and our order our steps.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.