Opening Focus: “Walk with Me” (by John S. Rice, VU 649)
Walk with me, I will walk with you
and build the land that God has planned
where love shines through.
Reading: Genesis 8:1-19, 9:8-15 (Good News Translation)
It’s good to know we’re not the only ones – not the first, and probably not the last generation of humanity to be going through what we’re going through.
At the start, 7 or 8 months ago when talk of a possible pandemic began to appear in the news, and then as it rose up and began like a giant wave to sweep over the whole earth, we used words like “unprecedented” and phrases “like never before” to describe what was happening. But at the same time, we also knew this was not the first time we had faced something like this.
Suddenly, for instance, we remembered, and began to learn a lot about the waves of flu that devastated all nations of the world in the early years of twentieth century just after the devastation of WW1. We wanted to learn from the past, so we could anticipate what our future might be, and act as responsibly and intelligently as we can in the present.
The reading today is from an even more distant past – so distant that it’s mythic in our memory, and instead of being recorded in old newspapers and newsreels it’s in our spiritual stories,in our bones and in the shared spiritual DNA of all humanity. It’s the story of the Great Flood that swept over the face of the earth, trying to cleanse the world of impurity and evil, and this morning we read about how it ends, with a handful of human beings safe and sound in their ark of isolation and social distancing, coming back down to ground as the waters recede, their ark settles once again on solid land, and they prepare for the great re-opening and their coming out of isolation into the new normal.
So here’s the story:
God had not forgotten Noah and all the animals with him in the boat; (do you ever feel forgotten in the storms of your life, when you're isolated in your anxiety?) God caused a wind to blow, and the water started going down. The rain stopped, and the water gradually went down for 150 days. On the seventeenth day of the seventh month the boat came to rest on a mountain in the Ararat range. The water kept going down, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains appeared. (wow … it took a long time, even after the rain itself was over, for the way to be clear)
After forty days Noah opened a window and sent out a raven. It did not come back, but kept flying looking for a place to land. Some time later, Noah sent out a dove to see if the water had gone down, but since the water still covered all the land, the dove did not find a place to light. It flew back to the boat, and Noah reached out and took it in. He waited another seven days and sent out the dove again. It returned to him in the evening with a fresh olive leaf in its beak. So Noah knew that the water had gone down. Then he waited another seven days and sent out the dove once more; this time it did not come back. (stages of re-opening and re-entry is not new; it’s as old as Noah)
Finally, when Noah was 601 years old, on the first day of the first month, the water was gone. Noah removed the covering of the boat, looked around, and saw that the ground was getting dry. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry. (and we think we have a long time to wait!)
God said to Noah, “Go out of the boat with your wife, your sons, and their wives. Take all the birds and animals out with you, so that they may reproduce and spread over all the earth.” So Noah went out of the boat with his wife, his sons, and their wives. All the animals and birds went out of the boat in groups of their own kind.
… God said to Noah and his sons, “I am now making my covenant with you and with your descendants, and with all living beings—all birds and all animals—everything that came out of the boat with you… I promise that never again will all living beings be destroyed by a flood; never again will a flood destroy the earth. As a sign of this everlasting covenant which I am making with you and with all living beings, I am putting my bow in the clouds. It will be the sign of my covenant with the world. Whenever I cover the sky with clouds and the rainbow appears, I will remember my promise to you and to all the animals that a flood will never again destroy all living beings. When the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between me and all living beings on earth. That is the sign of the promise which I am making to all living beings.”
Meditation
A rainbow. Why a rainbow? We’re talking about something to hold back the floodgates of fear that humanity maybe always has about the world maybe someday coming to an end. Something to give us real hope in the darkest times of any age. And God gives us a rainbow?
But what good is pretty, what good is nice décor, what good are fairy-tale legends against our mythic, primal fear of the world – either the whole world or even just our own personal world – coming to an end because of our evil and cosmic, divine displeasure? What good is a colourful upside-down happy face on a piece of paper, when what we’re fearing is the end of our world as we know it?
I see three things this morning in the gift and sign of the rainbow.
One is that this rainbow is real, and something we all have experienced. It’s the big one – the real one, up in the sky and one we’ve all seen that cannot fail but brighten and inspire the human heart as a natural sacrament of the presence of God.
It comes after a storm and it surprises us each time it appears. Storms of different kinds come and sometimes we really fear our powerlessness in the face of the elements, and the consequences maybe of our actions. “Oh no!” our hearts whisper in the dark. “Not again! What have we have done, what have I done this time to have brought this on? Surely I must deserve to be punished. And this time is it maybe the end of the world? The end of connection, of covenant, of community?"
Do you ever feel that way in some of the storms of your life – that all is lost, that the end of your world has come?
But then, no. The end doesn't come. The storm stops. Judgement and punishment are not the last word. The sky lightens, the sun shines and a rainbow reaches across the sky like a loving embrace and a witness to the greater and lasting power of forgiveness and hope, and of the God-given chance always to learn and move on together in a new way towards a new normal. And whose heart is not lightened, whose spirit is not encouraged, whose hope for life is not renewed by the sight of it? When we stop to remember the rainbows we have seen, we all know this is the way it goes, and is part of on-going life.
A second thing about the rainbow in our time is that it’s a strong and powerful symbol of inclusion and the inclusiveness of true human community, a symbol of shared commitment to a new and grander human community.
All the colours of the rainbow held together as part of the spectrum of the whole of God’s light and glory, has become a symbol of PRIDE, of the movement for LGBTQ+ rights and acceptance. A movement that today also overlaps with Me Too, Black Lives Matter, First Nations’ resurgence, and even the longing for more harmonious relations between humanity and the natural world – with any movement and longing for life that is respectful of the deep and broad unity that God is, within and at the heart of all the diversity of life on Earth. The rainbow is a strong and powerful symbol of our new and growing commitment to sustain, preserve and protect from destruction and obliteration all life and all shades and hues of the spectrum of life.
And one last thing is the kind of theology – a new way of understanding and imaging God that the rainbow points to.
Among the ancient peoples who told this story, told it again, and told it again and again until the story itself is fractured into all the forms in which it is remembered today, the bow and arrow was one of the great weapons of the hunter and the soldier. A good archer was worth their weight in gold to any commander and king. And if the archer were God, there would be no defence anyone could imagine. So how can we not be fearful? And that, in its start, is the fearsome kind of God we must deal with.
But God says, when it seems (to you and to me) the end has come, when it seems you have reason to fear great and ultimate judgement and punishment, and I see what my righteous anger has wrought, I will hang it up and not use it, put it up where you can see it, and where even I, God says, will be reminded of my promise from this point on not to be a God of vengeance and destruction, and not a God whose last word is judgment and punishment. The rainbow, in other words, is a new and life-giving image of God.
The bow, God says, shall be the sign that I am not against you, or against any life I have created. Rather, I am for you. And as long as time is, I am on your side, working with you and for you for the good of all life together – for the good of all life within and under the rainbow of my loving care and delight.
This is my promise, God says. This is the covenant I make with you. And you can count on it, God says, from the days of your mythic past to the days of your current anxiety. For as long as time is, I reach out to you and to others under and through the rainbow of my love. And I invite you to work with me, be partners with me in making the new normal ahead of us to reflect my inclusive and healing love for all, now and always.
So yeah, the rainbow. It gives us hope of a good new normal – a new normal maybe better than the old.
The rainbow helps us see life in a hopeful way, reminding us of what we know from of experience, that storms pass and a new day always comes.
The rainbow helps us see ourselves in a hopeful way, marking the growing commitment of people to build a world inclusive of all people and all life.
And the rainbow helps us see God in a hopeful way as well, as a God who also turns away from judgement and punishment as the last word, and towards embrace, encouragement and the commitment to serve and preserve the well-being of all people and all life on Earth.
Thanks be to God.
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