Rally Day
I Peter 3:18-22
September 8, 2024
Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
The text I have chosen for this morning’s sermon is the Epistle from Saint Peter’s first letter.
One of the most well-known Bible stories has to be the account of Noah’s Ark. It’s in children’s Bible story books, parents use it in their baby’s nursery, and songs like The Lord told Noah to build an Arky Arky which sing about the animals coming in in Twosies, Twosies. Who can forget the cute animals or the rainbow – the sign of God’s promise to never flood the earth again? It’s a feel-good story, but what about the sad part of the Flood account? How the waters were twenty-two feet higher than the highest mountain. How every mammal, bird, bug, and reptile perished in the cataclysm. That’s a skosh more depressing than the Arky Arky song makes it out to be, right?
Noah’s Ark is a true account of both Law and Gospel, both bad news and good. The bad is that God punishes the wicked and the unbelieving. The wicked at the time of Noah were drowned in the flood, the wicked today will enter hell where they’ll long for a drop of water. The good news is that God saves all those who call upon His name. He did so for Noah in the Ark and He does for us now in the Church, the Ark of Salvation.
The world was so wicked God decided to start over with just Noah and his family. Moses writes, “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth” (Gen 6:11-12). Only eight people, eight, in the entire world were faithful believers.
What you may not know is that all the while Noah was building the Ark, he was also preaching. You had to know people were coming from all over to see the weirdo and his giant boat and Noah didn’t miss a chance. Peter calls Noah “a herald of righteousness”; Noah was calling people to repent of their sins and receive mercy that they too would find space alongside the animals. The author of the book of Hebrews writes, “Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an Ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith” (Hebrews 11:7).
This condemnation became evident with the first drops of water. Can we even begin to comprehend the scene outside the Ark when the first drops became a deluge, then the fountains of water deep in the earth bursting through? The terror, the shrieking, the people banging on the Ark looking for a last-minute booking, it had to be horrible. It was too late because outside of the Ark there’s only death.
This is pretty frightening, isn’t it? It should be! Peter says, “God did not spare the ancient world…when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly” (II Peter 2:5). The Ark was a warning sign, a flashing beacon calling people to repentance, and yet they refused to believe, at least until it started raining. All those wicked who were not admitted into Noah’s Ark perished terribly in the flood.
Not every person was wicked, were they? There had to be unbelievers who went about their day without any wickedness. There were, without a doubt, children who were too young to be consciously wicked. What about them? The heartbreaking truth is that the parents didn’t make sure their kids were on the Ark. Those who rejected God, rejected Him on behalf of their children as well. What a terrible realization! We’re called to teach children, to raise them in the Christian faith and in fear and awe of the Lord. Children, regardless of their age, need to be taught and reminded that there is only life in the Church. We must make sure children are on the Ark, and the only way to do this is to teach them, bring them to worship, pray for them, read them Bible accounts, and model for them an active Christian faith and life. There was there was only death outside the Ark of gopher wood, and there is only death outside the Church, the Ark of Salvation and without faith, all will perish.
The Church has frequently been called an Ark and allusions to boats are found in many, many church buildings. The portion of the sanctuary where you sit is called the nave, which is Latin for ship. When the pitched roof is pictured upside down it can be visualized as the bottom of a boat. Danish churches usually have a boat hanging in the sanctuary. And just as there was life in Noah’s Ark, there is life in the Church, the Ark of Salvation.
The theme for Rally Day 2024 comes from Martin Luther’s Flood Prayer, which is printed in the bulletin. Luther wrote this prayer when he reworked the rite of Baptism for use by Lutherans. Luther bases his prayer partly on the Epistle where Peter writes, “Baptism, which corresponds to this [Noah’s Ark], now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 3:21-22). The Ark preserved them from the deadly flood while at the same time the water lifted them away from the perishing unbelievers, just as baptism separates us from the wicked and unbelieving.
Noah is called a herald of righteousness because of his faith, but that righteousness didn’t guarantee him a spot on the Ark. Do you know what did? It was the mercy of God. Mercy led the Lord to shut the Ark up tight when all the passengers were aboard. Mercy kept the Ark afloat and its occupants safe. You’re part of the Church, the Ark of Salvation, for the same reason! God has called you by His grace and shown you mercy by bringing you into the Church made up of all believers, including Noah and his family.
Flood waters washed the world of its wickedness, for a time anyway. Baptism daily washes us of our sin and guilt. According to Saint Peter, Baptism is “an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” A good conscience is not about how you feel guilty for doing something wrong. Rather to have a good conscience means we stand before God forgiven of our sins and washed of our guilt. To have a good conscience is standing before God knowing that when He looks at us, He sees His Son. We stand forgiven before God by virtue of His Son’s death and resurrection. He looks at us and sees people cleansed by their baptism, washed clean in the blood of Jesus.
The flood of Noah’s day was a flood of wrath, baptism is a flood of grace. King David says in Psalm 29, “God will make a continual new flood.” As I’ve said so many times, you weren’t baptized, you are baptized, and that baptism brings you to the Ark and the salvation found within. There are going to come times when you may fall out of the Ark, you may slip back into the turbulent waters that beat against the outside of the Ark. When this happens, Martin Luther tells us what to do. In the Large Catechism he wrote, “For the ship of Baptism never breaks, because it is God’s ordinance and not our work. But it does happen, indeed, that we slip and fall out of the ship. Yet if anyone falls out, let him see to it that he swims up and clings to the ship until he comes into it again and lives in it, as he had done before.” Once the ramp into Noah’s Ark was shut there was no way to be saved. The ramp to the Ark of Salvation is never shut! When you sin, when you fall from your baptismal faith, the merciful Lord holds the ramp, never shutting you out!
We chose Luther’s Flood Prayer as the theme for this Rally Day for a couple of important reasons. First of all, I remind you parents, grandparents, and all relatives, that you have a tremendous responsibility to ensure that children are aboard the Ark. The Lord has entrusted these children to you. That children know the Bible accounts, that they know of God’s love and mercy, that they understand that they’re baptized, and what that means. God forbid that we neglect our children’s faith to the extent that they lose it and find themselves on the outside of the Ark when judgment comes. Second of all, that you understand, and more importantly believe, what it means to be baptized into the Ark of Church, separated from the multitude of unbelievers, serving God at all times with a fervent spirit and joyful hope, so that you will be declared worthy of eternal life. You have been brought into the Church, and no matter how the waves crash against it, there is life in the Ark of Salvation.
Amen
Now the peace which surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen