(The Book of Genesis tells the story of a Great Flood at the beginning of time. God, pictured as a mighty warrior with a great bow, is angry at how bad the world has become. Humanity is doing so much evil that God sends a flood to clean everything up – to wash away the evil, and save the good. But when the flood is over and the survivors and God get together, God does not say what we might expect. God does not say, “Now let that be a lesson to you, people – never to be that evil again!” Instead, God says, “Oh my! I almost washed everything away. I will never do that again! I promise, from now on I will use my power to save and maintain– not to destroy, all life on Earth.”)
Rainbows
are wonderful things. What do you feel
when you see one? How does it make you
feel?
That’s
important, because there are other times in life as well – times when it seems
the world has come to an end.
It
probably feels that way right now for the parents, the families and the friends
of the 14 young people and 3 adults shot at a high school in Florida this
week.
I
wonder if it felt that way somewhere along the line for the young man who has
confessed to the killings – like his world had come to end, and that’s part of
the reason he did what he did.
There
are times in life when everything we want, hope for, count on in the world no
longer is there, or is true. It happens
in all kinds of ways and on all kinds of levels.
Like
when your boyfriend or girlfriend breaks up with you. Or when a marriage and a family falls
apart. When you lose a job. Or get the diagnosis you were fearing from
the doctor.
The
end of the world can be as big as 9/11 or as close to home and personal as the
collapse of your hopes or the falling apart of your family.
And
what do we do when it happens?
Do
we blame, find out whose fault it is, and punish them?
Do
we give up – on ourselves or on others?
Do
we get angry, and make the world and other people around us, suffer as much as
we do?
Do
we try to make the world somehow more secure, more pure and perfect? Try to get rid of everything and everyone that
doesn’t measure up to what we want the world to be?
The
Bible tells a story about God seeing the world God loved, ending. It takes up three chapters (chapters 7-9) in
the early part of the Book of Genesis that tells stories about how the world is
made, and what the world is really all about.
It’s the story of the Great Flood, and today we read the very end of the
story.
In
the story, God has made the world to be good and wonderful – put day and night,
land and water and air in good order, and has filled the Earth with all kinds
of life and beauty and goodness. Plants
and animals are everywhere, and human beings are put in charge of it all – to
take good care of everything, to take care of things the way God intends.
But
by chapter 7 things have started going terribly wrong. People – the very creatures God put in
charge, have turned out to be capable of evil and because of it all creation is
suffering.
It
breaks God’s heart to see it, and at first God gets angry. God decides to strike back, and to clean the
world up by eliminating whatever and whoever doesn’t measure up.
That’s
what the Flood is about, the story says.
It’s God’s way of washing away all that’s bad, leaving only the good
behind.
Through
the Flood, though, God learns two things.
Lesson
one – that by reacting that way, God almost loses everything. When God sees all the world under water, God
sees how close he has come to losing it all for good. If God were human, we’d say that God scares
himself at the power of what he can do when he doesn’t stop to think through
what might happen.
And
lesson two – that even the ones God saves and helps survive the Flood, who are
supposed to be good, are really also a mixture of good and bad just like
everyone else. For all their apparent
goodness they are not really that different from others. Nothing and no one is “perfect.”
So
... what does God do?
Basically,
God promises to stick with it as it is.
To accept the Earth, all life in it, and even all humanity such as we
are. And to do whatever is necessary to
keep it all going, to keep it whole and alive in its ongoing, evolving life.
There’s
a teaching in Buddhism called “the wisdom of no escape.” It’s about being open to wherever you are and
whatever is, committing yourself to it, letting yourself be touched by it, and
letting yourself grow into loving relationship with all that life is.
That’s
what God does. God sees the wholeness of
Earth, and God promises to sustain all of Earth’s ongoing and unfolding
life.
This
is it, says God. God commits – promises,
to work with it and within it, in all its mixed-up goodness and badness, in all
its living and normal imperfection, to make it as good as it can be day by day,
year by year, life by life, age by age.
And
that, the story says, is what the rainbow is about, and why it’s a sign of hope. It’s a sign of God keeping the promise to put
away the divine bow and arrow, and never use it again.
God’s
bow is still hanging up on the wall, and instead of taking it down and using his
power to destroy things, God is still working with us to make all life on Earth
good.
And
that helps us keep going when things turn bad.
We trust God to keep promises like that.
And
we do the same thing.
Because
we share in the life and responsibility of God, and live in the image of God, we
also make promises -- very specific and particular promises all through our life, that help make Earth and all life on it as good as we can day by
day, year by year, life by life.
And
we do our best to keep them.
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