I Peter 3.18-22: A Baptism Story

 A baptism story. Noah as a baptism story. The author of I Peter uses it as such to highlight the eight members of Noah's family who "were saved through water." (I Peter 3:20) This text is read on the first Sunday of Lent in Year B. In the early church, catechuments would have been preparing for their Easter baptism. So, a baptism story. Eight people were saved. 

We are used to seeing images of Noah's ark in baby nurseries, children's Sunday School classes, children's book illustrations. Cute giraffes stick their heads out of open windows. Elephants' trunks are visible. Birds of many kinds roost on the roofline of the ark. We've turned this story into a children's story because of animals and rainbows. 

Michelangelo had a different vision of the story. In the story as seen on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the Ark is in the background. The focus of the story is the people in the foreground. 

Michelangelo Buonarotti. The Flood. 1509. Vatican: Sistine Chapel. 

People at the lower left are moving to higher ground, trying to escape the rising waters. They are carrying all manner of things. Some are carrying the things of this world: pots and pans, casks, bundles of clothing. In the middle ground at right another group of people are huddled on an outcropping of rock under a fabric shelter being blown by the rising wind. In the center of the composition a small boat begins to capsize.

The ark moves off into the distance, even as additional people stand on the raft base of the ark, imploring Noah to let them in. Noah, dressed in red, reaches a hand out of the right side of the ark, pointing to heaven. 

Where are the animals? Where is the rainbow? They aren't here. 

Michelangelo has made this story about human suffering. How does that fit with the idea of I Peter 3 as a baptism text? How do we acknowledge the saving nature of baptism and the continuing reality of human suffering? Do we baptize out of fear of divine judgement? The story is easier when we focus on the pandas and moose and zebras. 

Philippians 1.21-30: Suffering

For he has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well--since you are having the same struggle that you saw I had and now hear that I still have. (Philippians 1:29-30) It may be hard for us to reason our way to suffering as a privilege, even suffering for Jesus. So what happens if we turn the equation. If someone is suffering for Jesus, is Jesus not suffering with them? And if you are the cause of someone's suffering, then as sure as you make someone else suffer, you are making Jesus suffer. 

That was the reminder in the stained glass window called the Wales Window, given to the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL, in 1965. Following the 1963 bombing of the church and the deaths of Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Denise McNair and Carole Robertson, stained glass artist John Petts felt called to respond.

John Petts. Wales Window of Alabama. 1964. 16th Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, AL.

His work shows a Black Christ figure, arms outstretched, superimposed over a cross. Above his head is a rainbow representing racial equality. At the bottom of the window is a paraphrase of Matthew 25:40 saying that what you did for the "least of these" you did it for Christ. The change in voice here reminds those who see the window that the bombing and killing were done not just to the building and congregation of 16th Street Baptist Church, the bombing and killing were also done to Jesus. The text on the window says "You do it to me." 

The window was the gift of the people of Wales to the congregation. Small donations were collected from across Wales so that the window would truly be a gift from the whole of the Welsh people. 

For the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, click here.