Lent
The First Sunday of Lent
Genesis 9:8–17
1 Peter 3:18–22
Mark 1:9–15
Noah is conspicuously absent from much of the New Testament. When he does appear, as in 1 Peter 3, it isn’t immediately obvious why. Who were those ‘spirits in prison’ from Noah’s day? In what sense did Jesus preach to them? How can Noah’s ark help us understand baptism (apart from the obvious sense of coming through water to salvation)? And how does all this relate to what Peter is saying?
He is explaining why it is better to suffer for doing right than for doing wrong. Jesus’ innocent suffering, as elsewhere in the letter, is the model for that of Christians. And those who, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, belong to the one true God are assured that, since Jesus is already sovereign over all spiritual and temporal powers, they must not be afraid of what those powers can do to them. Standing before God with a clear conscience (vv. 16, 21), they know that whatever ‘flesh’ can do to them God’s Spirit is stronger. (In v. 18 ‘in the flesh’ and ‘in the Spirit’ are better rendered ‘by’: Jesus was killed by mere mortals, and raised by God’s Spirit.) Verses 18 and 22 set the parameters for the dense passage in between.
Christians stand before God on the basis of the fact and meaning of baptism. Coming through the water, with its echoes of the creation narrative, the Noah story, and above p 41 all the Exodus, now receives yet more colouring from Jesus’ representative dying and rising. Baptism symbolizes passing through tribulations, of which death is the greatest, to stand in the presence of the true sovereign one—as opposed to the petty tyrants who rant and rage against the subversive gospel.
Why Noah, then? Partly because he symbolizes God’s grace, saving his people through terrible catastrophe. But also because that catastrophe came about, in the story, not least because of the wicked angels of Genesis 6:2. To them, and their equivalents in the first century, Jesus has already made the decisive proclamation: their rule, based on the power of sin and death, is broken. (This announcement is not, then, the same as that in 4:6, which seems to be to pre-Christian members of God’s people.) Victory is won; the temporal and even spiritual powers ranged against the Church are a beaten rabble. The story of Noah is a vivid reminder, through the symbol of baptism, of who the Christian really is, and before whom he or she stands.
If this lesson, and this way of putting it, seem remote to comfortable Western Christians, whose fault is that? We do well to ponder the anguish of fellow Christians for whom tribunals, injustice and innocent suffering are daily realities. As we hear the Gospel story of Jesus’ baptism, wilderness testing, and kingdom-announcement, we may ask ourselves, as a conscience-clearing exercise, not on
N. T. Wright, Twelve Months of Sundays: Reflections on Bible Readings, Year B (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2002). 39-41.
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