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A pastor was talking one day with some men whom he knew were not actively involved in any religion. He was surprised to learn that all of the men believed in God. But when they gave their reasons for believing, they all told stories of some narrow escape in which they assumed that God had miraculously interceded to save them or someone they knew from disaster. One told about a narrow escape in a traffic accident, another told of a day when, if he had not been late leaving for work, he might have been involved in a possibly fatal traffic accident. Another told about a narrow escape in battle during wartime. Still another told of being healed of a serious illness. It was obvious that all of these people thought of God primarily as one who intercedes in crisis situations and saves.

There are lots of things wrong with thinking of God only in that way. Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that way of thinking turns God into a "God of the gaps," a God on whom we call only when we no longer feel that we can manage things. He said that it reminded him of the mechanical gods that the writers of ancient Grecian dramas frequently had brought onto the stage when the human situation had gotten into such a mess that only a miracle could fix it. Bonhoeffer said that we need to think of God, not as the god of the gaps who stays off stage until there is an emergency, but rather as a God of the center, whom we think of as one who is involved right in the middle of all of our everyday lives.

Of course, Bonhoeffer was right. And yet - and yet - there is something about the way that those men thought of God that does tell a piece of the truth about God. God, the God of the center, the God who is God all of the time and who is involved in all of our lives, is one who is always saving us. God is always saving us from disaster, which is always a possibility, and giving us being and life. That realization can come to be a very significant aspect of our experience of God. If we can come to experience God in that way, we will have both something to believe in and something to hang our hopes upon.

We all know the story of Noah's ark, don't we? It was one of the first Bible stories we learned as children. There is something about all of those animals lining up and going into that big boat that just lends itself to being told as an illustrated children's story. We teach our children songs about the animals going in "two by two." We decorate their rooms with pictures of smiling cartoon animals coming to enjoy a boat ride.

We know about the story. But do we really know what the story is about? Do we know what the story is intended to teach us? When we ask those questions, we discover that this is anything but a children's story. It is a profound piece of adult literature that introduces us to a way of thinking about life and reality that may be new and mind boggling to us. It can give us a new way of seeing ourselves in our relationship with life that can both fill us with reverent awe and also lead us to rediscover and take seriously our own responsibility in life. Let me begin this exploration by announcing the topic. This Bible story is about salvation.

Already, we find the story stretching our way of thinking. Most of us have grown accustomed to believing that salvation is a matter of professing faith in Jesus Christ so that we can go to heaven when we die. That is part of it. But the Bible's understanding of salvation is much bigger than that. Get ready to have your understanding stretched or maybe even exploded.

Perhaps the best way to get started is to ask, "What was the significance of the flood?" To the ancient, desert--dwelling people of the Bible, water, the sea, especially the dark, swirling, angry depths of a storm--tossed sea, was just about the most threatening thing imaginable. It was something beyond control, something that could swallow you up, something that could surge in and sweep everything away.

For the ancients, the sea became a symbol of darkness and death, and of the primordial chaos out of which God created everything.

Does the concept of chaos have meaning for you? Chaos is the condition that soon emerges in a house full of children, or a school classroom, or a business, or a nation when it is left alone for a while without the attention of the ones who are responsible for keeping things in order. Some of the most ancient biblical images of the creation of the heavens and the earth suggest that, in the beginning, everything was chaos, a mass of confusion that our minds cannot even imagine. But, God brought all things into being by bringing order out of chaos.

That idea comes remarkably close to some of the things that we have learned from modern science. We now know that matter, the stuff that everything is made of, is really composed of molecules and atoms that are of little bits of energy held together in a magnificently balanced set of relationships. Disturb the order of the atomic structure of things and what do you get? Hiroshima! A kind of chaos that the Bible writers could not imagine. Now can you imagine what it means that God created all things by bringing order out of chaos?

For the Bible writers, that act of creation was an act of salvation. God saved the world out of chaos into existence. Theologian Paul Tillich wrote a lot about non--being and the threat of non--being that is always there in our lives. God's first saving work was to save all things out of chaos into order, out of non--being into being, out of death into life. Does that stretch your understanding of salvation? It is only one of the ways in which the Bible will stretch that understanding.

Now here is something for you to file away for future reference. It was love that made God call all things into being, and the love that is at work in God is the model of the order into which God hopes to bring all things. That needs more attention than we can give it right now. Just remember it and think about it when you have the chance.

Let's go back to the flood. Where did that come from? In the understanding of the ancients, there was no guarantee that, once things were created they would stay created. The darkness and death and chaos were simply pushed back and held at bay so that order and life could emerge. But they didn't go away. They were always hovering there on the edge of all existence as an ever--present possibility, ready to sweep back in and to envelop all things at the first opportunity. God has to keep on working to hold chaos at bay so that all things can continue to exist. Every mother with a house full of children knows that if she doesn't keep on working 24 hours a day to maintain order, chaos will re--emerge. That is why one of our creeds says that God "... has created and is creating."

Then why did the flood happen? God has chosen to give us freedom and responsibility like his so that we can participate with God in God's creative work. That is part of God's plan for us. But that puts God and God's order at risk. We were created and called by God to work with God and to live in keeping with the loving order through which God keeps all things in existence. But the Bible says the people whom God created didn't do that. It says they slipped into corruption and wickedness and violence (we still do).

As a result, the creation fell under the judgment of God. The story tells us that God decided to destroy the world and to start over. Sometimes the Bible writers talk as if God acts in purposeful ways to punish our wickedness. Sometimes they talk as if God simply abandons us to suffer the consequences of our own actions. That is what the flood represents. As a result of the wickedness of humankind, chaos came flooding back in to cover and to consume everything.

Now, it is significant to notice what kind of sinfulness caused the flood. It was not irreverence or immorality. The Bible has plenty to say about those things in other places. But in this case, the Bible says specifically that it was corruption and violence that brought chaos flooding back in upon the world. What do the words corruption and violence suggest to you right now?

It must have grieved the heart of God to have to allow that to happen. God found one person who had remained righteous and worked through him and his family to save a remnant of humankind so that God could start over again. And, when the whole story was over, God hung a rainbow in the sky and promised not to let that ever happen again.

Now, there are lots of dimensions of this story that we could explore. We could think about all of the inner misgivings that Noah must have had to overcome to follow an order to build a ship in the middle of a desert. We could think about the courage it must have taken to do that in spite of the ridicule of the people around him. It is not always easy to live in participation in the saving work of God. But let's pass all of those thoughts and go directly to thinking about the experience that Noah and his family must have had in the ark.

Can you imagine what it must have been like to be shut up in a wooden ship that was creaking and groaning in a storm--tossed sea and knowing that all around you, all beneath you, was chaos and darkness and non--being and death that would envelop you and put an end to you if God were not somehow keeping you afloat and enabling you to remain suspended above it all? Do you think you can't imagine that? Do you think you have never been there? Some of you can remember some time in your life when you had an experience that was like that.

The truth is you have been there. Think about it. Do you remember the pictures that have come back from the Hubble Telescope, in awesome color, of galaxies no one has ever seen before? Remember what you know about the beautiful little blue planet that orbits an insignificant star in the midst of all of that vastness. Remember what you know about the molecular structure of all of the matter out of which all of those things are made. Remember what you know about DNA, the awesome genetic structures that transmit the wonder of life in all of that. I say remember what you know advisedly because none of us knows very much. But we all know enough to know that things like that don't happen by accident. All of that order must exist as a result of some miraculous creative act. God keeps it all from slipping back into chaos by a saving work of love.

Now think about the wonder of your own existence. Try to become aware of the blood passing through your veins and of the breathing in and out that you just keep on doing in spite of your not thinking about it. It has not always happened, and, it will not go on forever. But, for this brief beautiful time in infinity, you are miraculously suspended in a sea of non--being and you have life. Think and rejoice.

Think also about the complex relationships you have with yourself and with others and with life as a whole that gives you personhood. That is probably the thing we worry about most. We take our physical existence for granted. But our hopes and our fears, our commitments and our sense of who we are and who we hope to be, those are the things about which we are most anxious. That is what we feel is most threatened by the chaos and the non--being that presents itself in so many forms in our personal experiences. That is what we are most driven to struggle to preserve. And somehow, in a way that we cannot really claim to have accomplished by ourselves, it is preserved. Somehow, in spite of all of the storms that rage around us, we continue to exist as persons. If we can catch the vision that our existence is preserved because someone much greater than we cares about us and wants us to be, our personhood is doubly affirmed. That is a gift of God. Your person--hood is miraculously suspended over the abyss of meaningless and impersonal existence.

And look at the world around you, at your family, your community, your nation, your world. You can actually identify the kinds of chaos that are there waiting to destroy those things that are important to you, can't you? That can and should terrify us. But in spite of all of the hate and the greed and the indifference, in spite of all of the tyranny and exploitation and war that swirl around us, somehow those social structures upon which we depend continue to survive, like a family huddled in an ark while a storm rages outside and the depths of chaos swirl around us.

As this is being written, the country that once felt invincible and secure is staggering because of the terrorist attack on America in September of 2001 and the economic turmoil that has followed in the aftermath of the collapse of several major American companies and accounting firms and a war that has set our country at odds with most of its friends. These specific catastrophes are only conspicuous expressions of corruption and violence that have pervaded our way of life and the structures of life in our world. They have the potential for bringing a flood of chaos upon the nation and the world that can seem almost apocalyptical in its proportions. And yet - and yet, we dare to trust God to keep us afloat through this storm, too, and enable us to start over one more time.

Can you see that this is a part of the saving work of God? Can you see that it is a gift of grace? If you can, there are two things we ought to do about that.

First, we ought to realize that we exist because of a miracle and never stop standing in awe of it and rejoicing in it and enjoying it and giving thanks for it to that great someone beyond ourselves who is saving us into being. Just that remembrance can change the quality of our lives.

The second thing we should do is to remember that the chaos is always still there, hovering in the darkness just out of sight. And, even though God has hung his rainbow in the sky and promised never to let the world be utterly destroyed again, those forces of non--being and chaos can still do terribly destructive things. We need to learn to live in participation in that creative work that God keeps doing to keep our world in existence and to keep it moving toward fulfillment of God's good purpose for it. We ought to learn and to live by that love through which God has created and is creating.