Just last month I was pondering the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr (in the US they honour him with a national holiday January 15). He is known for many great speeches, marches, and quotes. The one quote I have found that speaks to me, my life, my ministry, the most is “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." If you google that quote almost always it is set with an image of a rainbow, thus leaning in on the story of Noah and the ark, a long and painful journey, ending in love and justice. As Christians, this is the story of Lent and Easter, the long and painful road of self-reflection, justice-making, costly discipleship, moves from Palm Sunday, to an upper room, to a Cross, to the resurrection. As MLK reminded us, the march to justice is never easy, there are setbacks, four steps forward, two back. But, in the end, there is love (the rainbow), there is justice (the kin-dom), there is new life.
Let’s dig in to this familiar story this morning, the story of Noah and the ark. You likely know it the way I do, when we came back from China with Lucy one offering we received from many parishioners were Noah and the ark toys, little plastic animals, two by two, a large arc for them, even a dove that would return to Noah. Of course, in reality, the story has a much darker message, the carnage of destruction caused by this flood would have been horrific. Sentimentalism can block out these things.
I will say, that I do not believe that this literally happened. It’s out of character for God, for one thing. It also reflects the point of view and the issues of people thousands of years ago when the story was first being told, retold, and passed down. There is also no archaeological evidence for a worldwide catastrophic flood five or six thousand years ago. But there is some evidence of flooding in the Mideast about that time. So this could very well be a story that began with flooding, perhaps numerous floods over a number of years, and the stories get passed down. If you’ve ever played the telephone game, you know that as stories get passed on, they get changed, embellished, mistakes creep in. These stories also come at a time when people were worshiping a god or gods that were believed to be in control of things. So when a flood happens, then they have to think, “Why is this?” Often, then, the logical conclusion that they make is that the gods must be causing it, and they are causing it because they are angry at us for something. We must have done something wrong, and we’re being punished. Unfortunately, that thinking continues into today. When we have natural disasters now, seems like there are always some Christian leaders who come out and say that the hurricane came because of someone’s sin (usually people these leaders do not like or approve of). But even without belief in the literal truth of Noah’s ark story, we still have it. It is in our text. It is in our scripture that we call holy. And we have to deal with it.
God to Noah, “When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh!” God’s commitment to remember the promise God makes is an act of amazing trust and grace and as we enter this period of Lent I want you to think deeply on the consequences of God’s promise. Lent is a time for repentance and owning the faults of our humanity – not simply our personal faults but our collective ones.
The story of Noah and the ark is also a story found within many ancient cultures – the story of a great flood sent as a punishment on human beings for their waywardness. Think about life in our world at the moment and how God’s heart must despair at our inhumanity. God must be looking at the rainbow! But as we travel through Lent God’s rainbow coloured viewing of the world – allowing us to go on in all our depravity - is matched by God’s own commitment to change our suffering. We travel towards the Cross where God rather than seek retribution shares the consequences of our depravity. In Jesus life and death God says that retribution and destruction are not the final answer. Jesus resurrection is the promise of new life. It is this fulfilment of the promise of the rainbow – God’s desire for the creation is a life and a future living in the peace and harmony that God desires for us.
And yet, and yet…we are especially prone, in the church, to concentrate on what we are doing or failing to do (right) in our relationship with God or, for that matter, what we are doing (or not doing) in the world. We don’t focus so much on the primary actor in the long story of faith: God. (Perhaps this is because we, deep down, think that everything really is up to us?) This one episode in that story is a dramatic example of God at the centre of things: God is the One who speaks, acts and, one might even say, feels. God is actually the one who “turns away” from a path (the thing we’re supposed to do during Lent when we “repent”) and makes a promise never again to destroy humankind and the earth with a flood.
According to David Lose, God’s promise never to repeat this kind of destruction is “an unheard-of surrendering of divine power,” and it introduces a new dimension of the ancient Hebrews’ understanding of God as “inherently self-giving, willing to enter into a relationship that puts limits on even God’s prerogatives.” Indeed, this week’s text is about remembering and reminding, and about relationship. It is about a covenant, a promise. Apparently, even God needs to be reminded, in this case by a beautiful bow (ironically, an ancient weapon) in the sky, of a promise God makes, out of tenderness and compassion for creation. God refuses to give up on us, Allen says, because “God’s heart is touched by creation’s suffering.
The rainbow, Nicole L. Johnson writes, symbolizes not only peace (no more destruction) but hope as well, and that is how the community of faith must live: in hope. “Hope, the expectation that things will get better, not only gets us through the difficult times but also gives us strength to work proactively in the interest of a just and peaceful world. Hope helps communities to rebuild after a deathly and devastating natural disaster…Hope encourages the faith community to seek justice for all now, while waiting expectantly for the reign of Christ that will usher in pure justice. In a world that sometimes seems so lacking in hope, the Christian community is called to live that hope for others”.
“Rainbows introduce us to reflections
of different beautiful possibilities
so we never forget that pain and grief
are not the final options in life.” Aberjhani
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." Know this. It’s always the right time, to do the right thing. But doing the right thing inevitably is costly, painful, involves some kind of death. But, in the end, there is God and in God is resurrection, new life, a rainbow, eternal love. As our creed reminds us, “In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God.” Amen.