Blessing, Sin, Judgment, and Grace

Humans keep building on flood plains and barrier islands and eroding seacoasts, and keep expecting someone else to pay for re-building their foolish enterprises when the floods come...and they will come....

...and they have come, again and again through human history,

a judgment on the decisions we make.

Some will question what floods would there be in Israel, but yes, they can afflict that land as well.

Before the modern use of most of the water in the Jordan River, it could and would flood in impassable ways.

And also, an unwary person venturing into one of the many narrow dry canyons leading to the Dead Sea may only have seconds to react if there has been a thunderstorm many miles away and the runoff gathers and thunders down that narrow passageway.

One can be looking at bright sun-shining skies overhead and be caught up and killed in the sudden flood.

[A memory from a few years back:

Sisters sometimes play wonderful tricks on each other.

Donna's sister got our kids some toy equipped with horrible sounds.

Donna returned the favor the next Christmas with a Noah's ark filled with a hundred little plastic animals that undoubtedly would get spread all over the floor.

And we all laughed.]

But the Noah story is not really a laughing matter, is it?

Its death and destruction is not an easy childhood theme.

And, we do have to acknowledge that there are flood stories in a number of ancient cultures, not just the Bible,

and that primeval death and destruction are a common element in their histories.

But, no matter the original source of the flood stories, the final editor of the Genesis stories has used the ancient narratives of flood as part of his laying out the pattern of God's actions with his people, his love in spite of the disasters we face.

It begins with grace.

We heard that in the creation stories:

“Good” God declares, “very good.”

The whole of creation, including man with all of his potentialities and inter-relationships, is “good.”

And the problem is there from the very beginning as well.

One of the potentialities is that man make choices...and do we celebrate choices!

Just look at the modern supermarket, and how our choices have multiplied!

But one of the key choices is not about which cereal to choose, it is about putting oneself in the place of God, and, sadly, we make that choice again and again.

Since the very beginning, when Adam and Eve made that choice, so have all of the rest of us.

As a shorthand for that choice-making, we have that little 3-letter word as a summary: sin.

It is convenient for us to try to limit the scope of that word to “doing bad things”, because we can more easily control that.

We can say, “Well, I haven't murdered anyone today, I haven't testified falsely in court today, I went to the church's worship today, I haven't said anything nasty to my father today; therefore, sin is not a problem for me.”

But a check-list like that is not sufficient.

Sin is rebellion against God in all of its forms, and is not limited to a list of especially bad things done.

It is about attitudes and acts; it is about what we place first in our thoughts and lives; it is all-encompassing.

It is the sticky mud into which we sink deeper with each step.

One day, our parents went shopping and my brother, sister and I decided to go for a walk back over the hill to the swamp at the southern edge of the cow pasture.

Over the years, my father and grandfather had cleared the swamp and planted sudan grass there, and in mid-summer one can walk through there dry-shod.

But this was early spring and things were quite soupy.

In our galoshes, we stomped around the edge of things, and then went a little bit further, and further, ...and then my sister's boot was stuck and she couldn't move.

We pulled and tugged, and finally lifted her out of the mud...but the boot stayed.

My brother and I had to carry her all the way back to the house. The loss of the boot was serious, because this was the only pair of boots that there was going to be for that year.

(We went back to search, but never did find the boot.)

Putting our pleasure in place of good judgment was a costly decision, and there were consequences, as one can imagine. Ouch!

Putting anything at all in place of God is a costly decision, and there are consequences each time.

In a pleasure-seeking society such as ours, we have a hard time convincing folks that this is the case.

“Get out of my way while I do whatever I want to do, whenever I wish,” is the kind of thing we hear all the time.

Dr. Wendt has proposed that in our thinking we need to add a few words to the first article of the creed:

I believe in God the Father almighty, maker and owner of all that is.

We are not the bosses; only the managers of creation.

The implications go on and on:

we are not the bosses of the gift of life, but only the managers of it.

The doctor's oath to, first of all, do no harm is in accord with this understanding.

In whatever ways we step beyond that, we have gone beyond our role and put ourselves in the place of God.

And there are consequences for sin.

We use the word judgment.

1^st story--Adam and Eve were barred from the garden.

2^nd story--Cain had to become a wanderer.

3^rd story--those who laughed at Noah were drowned.

4^th story--those who built the tower to try to reach God were scattered over the face of the earth and could not speak easily to one another.

--and that is judgment as it is portrayed in just the first 11 chapters of Genesis... and we could go on!

Every bit of it is the deserved judgment on the rebellion against God.

And it plays out in so many ways in our lives also:

There is post-traumatic stress syndrome for women who have undergone abortions.

There are children bouncing from parent to separated parent, not knowing what to call home.

There are people who live and die by the rise and fall of the stock market.

And those who try to hide from God under the blankets on Sunday morning.

And so many more results of our choices.

That is not the end of the matter, however.

God is not content to let our foolish decisions dominate the situation, leading inexorably to death.

1^st story...Although Adam and Eve must leave the garden, God has provided enough so that they will survive by way of hard work.

2^nd story...Although Cain must be a wanderer, he will not be killed because God has placed a mark of protection on him.

3^rd story...Although mankind is nearly wiped out because of their utter foolishness, still a remnant remains, Noah and his family, and they will repopulate the earth.

4^th story...Although the hubris of mankind is demolished and people are scattered to the four winds, still God has chosen to work now through one man, Abraham and his descendants.

These are the things in the first 11 chapters of Genesis that we label “grace,” God's good gifts that are given after sin is pointed out and judgment rendered.

Grace is hope, a fresh chance, a new opportunity to hear God's intentions for us, and how we can live, now and always.

We can hear the pattern established in these four stories:

1. we grab the idolatrous possibilities in God's good gifts.

2. there are consequences for those decisions.

3. God gives yet another chance .

In summary: sin, judgment, and grace.

We heard that third part in today's first lesson: God granting a fresh start after the flood, and declaring that he is giving a covenant to Noah and to all of creation, that discipline when it is needed would take forms other than destruction.

God decides to continue the conversation with us, resumes the journey with us, under the sign of the rainbow.

How does it work out in our lives?

Self-centered-ness is our state from the very beginning.

The judgment on this is death, the death in the drowning waters of baptism.

Just as the terrible past was washed away in the flood, so in baptism the old ways are washed away and a new creation is begun in God's mercy.

Luther reminds us that baptism begins with a few moments and water, but that it takes a lifetime to finish.

We keep dying to the old, mistake-prone, idol-making, sin-filled ways in order to rise to his new future.

We continue to be dependent on God to keep working on us through this pattern, to take us back when we turn away, forgive us, and start us out again.

Sometimes we would like to think that we can short-circuit the cycle, that sin is an illusion, God's judgment on it unnecessary, and that we just move from grace to grace.

Instead of being sinners, we are told again and again that we are victims, and of course victims are not responsible.

Not so fast.

Our sin is real, and it is serious.

Thanks be to God! Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.