12^th August 2014

Rev Warren Clarnette at St John's UCA Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia: Sunday 20 July 2014

Lessons - Genesis 6:11-14, 17-19; 8:13-32; Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16; Matthew 5:13-16; Luke 10:1-3

INTRODUCTION TO THE GENESIS LESSON

The Old Testament brings us a story that is familiar to all - and universally misunderstood.

The great flood belongs to the folklore of many cultures, yet its place in the biblical drama is diminished because it is remembered only as an absurd tale about two of every kind of animal packed closely together in a floating pantechnicon. But we forget why it happened in the first place and do not see that the point of the story is mankind's hopeless propensity for corruption and sin as an endless blight on human affairs.
We also fail to see how the story ends by telling us that the world is saved from destruction only by the grace of God.

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Long ago a great flood destroyed the world. No creatures survived except the rats, cockroaches and beetles that found their way onto a wooden ship, along with every kind of animal and a few humans. It is a great story for children but hardly for grown-ups. Nothing in archaeology or climate science says it could have happened. Yet the story lingers in our memories, because it describes a truth that is invisible to rational thought. It is not a slice of history - it is the answer to the meaning of history.

The truth about man, the world and history is laid out with unerring accuracy. 'Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence.' So God says: 'I have determined to make an end of all flesh; for the earth is filled with violence through them; behold, I will destroy them with the earth.' Afterwards Noah is told: 'I will never again curse the ground because of man ... neither will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.'

The two fundamental realities of history are sin and of grace.

Neither is an empirical fact. They cannot be measured, weighed and calculated. Sin is everywhere, permanent and ineradicable. Grace cannot be quantified or measured. It is known only by faith. It is the only defence against the blight that corrupts individuals and ravages nations. Whilst it cannot destroy sin or cancel its effects, whilst it cannot bring a new Paradise, grace declares that the world will never be destroyed 'while the earth remains, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.'

Recently we recalled the birth of the Uniting Church thirty-seven years ago. It was not a joyful celebration. We knew that we squandered the chance to offer hope and Christian realism to the nation. We did many wrong things, and the worst of them was to seek the world's approval by adopting the fashionable doctrines of the age.

One of those doctrines is the non-existence of sin; the idea that sin is a left-over from the age of superstition. Aping the world, we expunged 'sin'
from our vocabulary. We no longer recognise it as a national and personal curse.

'Sin' is an embarrassing word. It is unsuitable for polite conversation, which is a curious fact because every Sunday we confess our sin and hear that we are forgiven. It is a familiar ritual which does not receive the
seriousness it deserves.

A psychiatrist once wrote a book called Whatever Became of Sin? in which he says that what we used to call sins are now called crimes. The police deal with them instead of the clergy. Other sins are called sicknesses, which require not punishment but therapy. Other sins are due to 'collective responsibility', which means deviant behaviour is the fault not of individuals but society; we are not responsible for them - society is. Or bad parenting, or peer group pressure. We can also blame our genes.
We were not responsible for them. My genes made me do it. The psychiatrist wants to put 'sin' back into the dictionary because he knows that confession is the shortest path to personal responsibility, and nobody can come to maturity without it. Paul, understanding human psychology as well as any psychiatrist, describes maturity as 'the stature of the fullness of Christ'.

Every Sunday we confess our sin. We admit responsibility for what we do or think, or fail to do or think. Our minds may wander during the prayer; we think of other things. But at least we agree that we are responsible, which puts us regular worshippers at odds with the world around us.

That is how it should be. Christians are not called to conform to the world. We are to be transformed by the renewal of our minds. Consider how disadvantaged people are who never have the chance to confess their sins, in public or in private. They never find themselves before the bar of conscience or any higher tribunal. People who never share in the public prayer of confession will always find it hard to take responsibility for their actions.

That explains the signature mantra of our age: From Alan Bond to Rolf Harris to Arthur Sinodinos to Eddie Obeid to Clive Palmer to James Hird to the latest union boss accused of blackmailing building companies - the cry goes up, 'I have done nothing wrong!'

The doctrine of sin makes sense of the world around us. It explains the horrors of Iraq and Syria. It explains Australia's political chaos. It explains why so much enmity, corruption and selfish ambition haunts people (whose names appear on televisions screens and newspaper headlines) caught in the toils of greed, fear and uncontrollable desire.

Grace, on the other hand, is the saving factor in history.

Grace rescues mankind after the first great transgression in the Garden of Eden, and even after, when the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his head was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, 'I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.' But Noah found favour in the eyes of the Lord. (Genesis 6:5-8)

Grace was established once and for all when God told Noah: 'I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains ... '

Do you believe it? Do you believe that that promise is a beacon of hope against every prophecy of doom that ever terrified mankind through history? We are still churning them out. Every day we are warned of new calamities, despite our technical power, our collective wealth and personal affluence, and our endless campaigns for global harmony. Why do
we take them so seriously?

Because we are afraid! We fear that another world war is coming. We fear that the earth itself is at risk. A really big earthquake will strike, or a tsunami or a volcanic eruption. We fear the terrors of night and the possibility of a global food scarcity, or an epidemic of obesity or a surge of global warming or rising sea levels and the flooding of coastal cities. The list is endless.

Why are we afraid? Because we are gripped by godless creeds and atheistic philosophies. Our political and artistic genius, our vast technological powers and our natural self-confidence are helpless against them. Because

* we scorn the idea of sin,
* we laugh at the Ten Commandments,
* we rubbish the idea of divine judgment, and
* we do not believe that grace can save the world from itself.

Why? Because 'the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth'.

Collectively we are guilty but do not know it. We do not know that sin is an incurable infection in the mind and soul of humanity. We do not even wonder how the world maintains itself in the face of so much corruption and evil, so many disasters. What saves us is grace. Grace declares that the world will not be destroyed while seed-time and harvest, summer and winter, cold and heat, day and night remain.

So what is the Church for? What are Christians for? To make sure that this promise is never forgotten! To show those about us that grace makes a difference to the way we live. Is that too trivial a task? It does not seem like much. But it is more important than we can imagine. And it is our duty: to be salt of the earth; to be the light of the world; to be like lambs in the midst of wolves.

Karl Barth was asked to sum up what he had learnt from a lifetime of theological reflection and writing. He replied, 'Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.'

Let us not be too proud to say of ourselves,

'God make my life a little light, within the world to glow, A little
flame that burneth bright, wherever I may go.'

'If I were a beautiful twinkling star I'd shine on the darkest night,
I'd seek where the dreariest pathways are and light them with all my
might. Though sun and moon I cannot be, to make the whole world
bright, I'd find some little cheerless spot and shine with all my
might.'

Is such a task beneath us?