Baptism is Our Spiritual Ark

On the First Sunday of Lent, it is customary to hear from one of the synoptic gospels about the Spirit driving Jesus into the desert, where he will be tempted and without food for forty days. It is fitting to hear the story about our Savior entering the desert again because we proverbially enter our desert in Lent through self-sacrifice, prayer, and almsgiving. We attempt to mimic what Jesus did when he was moved with the Spirit and retreated.

Matthew and Luke give their readers more information about Jesus’ desert experience. At the same time, Mark only says that Jesus endured some testing of his spirit before setting out on his public ministry. In reflecting on Jesus’ time in the desert, we could draw from Matthew and Luke to fill in the reflection for today, but that would ignore the first reading the Church wishes us to tackle, the story about Noah and the covenant God made with him.

A review of the story of Noah is entirely appropriate for understanding the continuity between God’s covenants with his people and the ultimate and final covenant through Jesus Christ through our baptism.

Although not universally accepted, some theologians believe the first covenant of God with human beings was the creation of Adam and Eve, whereby God gave our first parents the mandate to be fruitful and gave them dominion over all the earth’s creatures. After all was done, God saw everything he had made and found it good. The story from Genesis implies that all humanity needs to do is follow God’s wishes, and in return, their lives will be without hardship. We all know that didn’t happen; all was not good anymore.

With the first covenant broken, evil began to erode what goodness was left. Not even the animals were immune. God responded to the chaos by saying. “I will wipe out from the earth the human beings I have created, and not only the human beings, but also the animals and the crawling things and the birds of the air, for I regret that I made them.” But God would not wipe out everything because Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation, and God was moved to save some of his creation from utter devastation.

God ordered Noah to follow the divine instructions by building an ark to save his family and pairs of ritually clean animals, a pair of unclean animals, and seven pairs of each type of bird from the flood. Seven days later, as God had warned, great torrents of rain began falling and did not cease for 40 days and nights. The number of days should be familiar because Jesus’ time in the desert and the season of Lent are also 40 days in duration. Nonetheless, the flood caused all the sinful progeny of Adam and Eve to be drowned.

After 300 days, the water level dropped low enough for the ark to rest upon the peak of a mountain. Yet 40 days passed before Noah released a raven, which did not return. A week later, Noah sent a dove who returned with an olive branch, denoting that the land was now free from the flood’s destruction. God repeated to Noah and his sons the initial mandate he gave to Adam and Eve, “Be fertile, then, and multiply; abound on earth and subdue it.”

God concluded by saying, “I will establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood; there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth.”

It’s nice to be reacquainted with Noah’s flood story, but what does that have to do with Jesus, especially with Jesus in the desert and our Lenten journey? It reminds us of the importance of baptism.

Jesus is the personification of all covenants God makes with his people. As the Word of God, Jesus is the perfect covenant between God and his creatures. He is not only the Son of God but is also the son of Mary. The divine promise and the human response are made real in the divine person of Jesus. That is why, on the night of the Last Supper, Jesus told his disciples, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you.”   

The new covenant was telegraphed just before Jesus entered the desert when John baptized him in the Jordan; he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove upon him.  Then a voice came from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”  

The symbolism of a dove connects the old covenant of Noah with the new covenant of Jesus. However, the new covenant does things in reverse.  The dove in Noah’s covenant indicated life was present again on earth, while in Jesus’ case, the dove represented life in the person of Jesus before he entered the desert, a place that had little or no life.

Just as Noah and his family avoided death brought on by water, so will the Son of Man and all who follow will be able to triumph over death and Satan through water in the ritual of Baptism. Water will no longer become the source of death, but through Jesus, the water becomes the means of salvation.

Now, it is clear to see the rationale of Lent and our efforts of prayer, self-sacrifice, and almsgiving. These 40 days reaffirm our wish to live forever with Christ. When we enter our deserts in Lent, we remember how fragile life is and how easily it can be destroyed.

Unlike Noah’s covenant, where only a few were saved from death, the new covenant gives an opportunity through baptism and righteous living for many to be saved from death through Jesus Christ. This is why we have Lent to deny ourselves, pray more, and be mindful of the poor.