The Door No One Can Walk Through
The water and blood that streamed forth from Christ, streams us back into him as we are buoyed up by the waves of baptism, through the wound, and into the body of God incarnate.
If the Lord were not a gracious God, the Bible would have been a mere six chapters long. For in Genesis 6, God stands ready to take the world he had so perfectly created, and which had so imperfectly imploded in sin, and pour it down the drain. “The end of all flesh has come before me,” he said, “for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and look, I am about to destroy humanity with the earth,” (6:13).
Yet Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
We find grace not only in the eyes, but in the wounds, of the Lord.
Because of grace, the Lord made this man the first ship-builder, the first sailor, and a sort of Adam #2 to begin creation anew. Buried in a watery grave was a world of sinners who chose death over life. Down they sank beneath the waves of woe that engulfed the world they had flooded with corruption. And above those same waves floated the ark of salvation that Noah had constructed for him and his family of seven. Nothing stood between them and certain death but the wood of the ark buoyed up by the promise of a good and gracious God.
Noah and his family entered the ark through a door in the side. And in so doing, they gave us a preview of the way in which we enter a greater ark, to be saved in a greater flood. We find grace not only in the eyes, but in the wounds, of the Lord. The portal in our ark of salvation was not made with a saw and hammer but a soldier’s spear. It pierced the side of our Lord as he hung upon the cross. Out flooded blood and water. Through that door in the side of Christ we enter the ark of saving grace.
But we don't walk through this door.
No one can.
We are carried by waves through this door.
The water and blood that streamed forth from Christ, streams us back into him as we are buoyed up by the waves of baptism, through the wound, and into the body of God incarnate.
“Baptism now saves you,” Peters says (1 Pet 3:21), because baptism is the flood reenacted, but with a wondrous twist. We are sundered from the number of the unbelieving, pass through the pierced-portal in the side of Jesus, and are preserved dry and secure in Christ, the ark of life. "He ferries us across death’s raging flood." He preserves us dry and secure in the holy ark of Christendom.
As Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, we find that same grace in the wounds of our Lord. Of him the water, the blood, and the Spirit cry, “He is our ark; he is our life; he is one who is drowned in our sins that we might float safely to the heavenly harbor of the Father.”
*This reflection is part of a series of mediations on hymns that I presented at the “Day of Singing Boldly” at St. John Lutheran Church, Seward, Nebraska. It quotes from and alludes to the language of Martin Luther's Baptism Liturgy and the “Water, Blood, and Spirit Crying” by Stephen Starke (Lutheran Service Book, #597).
