Community Church Sermons
March 5, 2006
Genesis 9:8-17
I could tell right away it was a religious tract. It was in the form of a little paper booklet with a title that screamed in large letters, “The End Is Near!” Now there’s nothing unusual about bumping into tracts of this type, but what was unusual was that this one was nestled in among the plumbing in a men’s restroom at the University of Tennessee Medical Center. You didn’t notice it until you were already standing there, going about your business. And then, THERE IT WAS, staring you right in the face.
“The End Is Near!”
Not the kind of message you want to see in a hospital!
I opened the tract and, sure enough, the message was that the world is headed to hell in a hand basket, and if you want to get out of that basket, you’d better act now because the time is short. Then the tract went on to list The Signs of the Times that proved the end is near – wars and rumors of war, earthquakes, pestilence, blasphemy, immorality. There was even a picture of New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina – and a statistical table proving that hurricanes are growing in both number and intensity in these last days just before God brings the world to an end.
That discussion was followed by an outline of the several steps I would have to take to avoid all this tribulation. I was promised that, if I repented and believed, I would be swept up into heaven in what was cleverly called “the Jesus Escape Pod” – or JEP for short. I guess that’s a fancy way of describing the “rapture” or something. The Jesus Escape Pod! I imagine that kind of language is used to attract trekkies and other science-fiction aficionados.
Well, when I finished reading, I decided to not return the tract to its resting place there among the plumbing against the wall in the men’s restroom at the University of Tennessee Medical Center. Instead, I tossed it away - and for two reasons. First, I happen to believe that there are some moments and places in life where you shouldn’t have to wrestle with questions of your eternal salvation, and going about your business in a restroom is one of them.
The second reason I tossed it away is because I – a former tract-passer-outer myself - have come to believe in the Good News of Jesus Christ as a message of hope - the true hope of humanity, and that there is no place in the life of a Christian for a gospel that offers only hopelessness for the world, and personal escape from its difficulties.
In many respects, one of the most basic elements of living as a Christian is deciding how we are going to deal with the presence of sin and evil – in the world, in our nation, in our community, in our families, and even in our own personal lives. Are we going to run from it, or conquer it?
Which brings us to that rainbow we just heard about in the scripture lesson. I love rainbows! Don’t you?
I am frequently amazed that when we tract-passer-outers pass out our tracts about all the signs of the times, we never list the rainbow among them. Have you ever noticed that? We list wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes, pestilence, blasphemy, the rise of immorality, etc., etc., etc. We jot down all the gloom and doom we can think of.
But you never see the rainbow in that list of signs. Ever notice that?
And yet, that’s exactly what the rainbow is! It is a SIGN, Genesis 9 tells us – a sign that God is not in the business of destroying the world. The rainbow is a sign of HOPE, not hopelessness! The colorful beauty of the rainbow is a sign that God raises up high above all the other frightening signs of the times in which we live. In the midst of hopelessness that would make us want to climb aboard the Jesus Escape Pod and get out of Dodge, the rainbow is a sign of HOPEFUL PROMISE!
I love rainbows! Don’t you?
And that rainbow tells us something really important about God, and how God deals with the reality of sin and evil.
You have heard me say before that one of the problems we have in reading the bible is that we read it through the filter of our childhood. When we were kids, many of us learned the stories of the bible, but mostly in child-appropriate and very simplistic ways. And if that’s where our study of the bible ended, we carry into adulthood many biblical understandings that are the religious equivalent of a Dr. Seuss book. Noah and the Rainbow. Green Eggs and Ham. The prophet Samuel. Sam-I-Am. Great stories for kids, but not much help to people like us who live in a world like this. Not much help to people who are trying to come to grips with terrorism, and living in this post 9/11 world. Not much help for men and women like us who have real-life personal situations that are punctuated by the reality of sin and evil.
We need to go DEEPER into the bible! And we need to go into the bible as GROWN-UPS, and not as little children. And when we do that, the bible comes alive with Truth-With-A-Capital-T that has the power to transform our lives instead of merely entertaining us with religious cartoon characters.
The rainbow.
And yet, not just a rainbow.
To the ancient Hebrew people, God was a Warrior. In their socio-cosmology, the world was inhabited by tribes of people, all of whom had their own tribal god or gods. The gods were thought to dwell in the mountains, and their stature was determined by how high their dwelling place. This is why the most common name for God in the Old Testament is El-Elohim, which means God of the gods, or God the Strong, or another variation is God…Most High. The ancient Hebrews believed their God was king of the hill, the One who owned the Penthouse suite on the highest mountain - bigger, better, stronger and mightier than all the other warrior gods put together. That’s why we read so many war stories in the scriptures about the exploits of this God and his people going into battle against other tribes and their deities, and wiping them out and rubbing their noses in it. To the ancient Hebrew people, God was a mighty Warrior who defeats other nations and other gods. And sometimes, when the Hebrews themselves prove faithless, God the Warrior turns against them! Listen to a line from a very sad song in the 2nd chapter of the book of Lamentations. The Hebrews have been faithless. As a result, El-Elohim, the Warrior God, has come against them with anger. He stops protecting them and allows a foreign king to attack. The city is destroyed. The temple is torn down. The people are carried off into captivity. And then the singer sadly sings this lamenting verse about God:
How does the Warrior God deal with the reality of sin and evil in the world and in our lives?
By inflicting his wrath upon us.
Like many of us, the ancient Hebrews believed God paid back sin with punishment, evil with execution, faithlessness with violent retaliation. Scattered throughout the bible are stories about what people THINK about how God responds to evil.
And isn’t it striking how the God who emerges out of these human stories in the bible looks so strangely like US (pause) - repaying sin with sin, evil with evil, faithlessness with violence, retaliation and retribution?
How do you respond to people when they hurt you? How do we humans respond to those who do us harm? Often, we react with sheer anger, and the need to exact punishment. Sometimes we respond by cutting off people from our lives – even people we used to love. Sometimes we ostracize them, pushing them out of our lives altogether. Sometimes, we toss and turn all night, figuring out ways to get back at them and exact some revenge. Sometimes, we and our nations use bullets, cruise missiles, suicide bomb belts, even jetliners flown into buildings as our way of judging those who sin against us. And often, we say we do these things “in the name of God.”
Isn’t it amazing that some of the stories we tell about God, and the tracts we leave behind in restrooms at the University of Tennessee Medical Center, make God look so much like WE look?
Maybe that’s why God, all through the bible, seems to work so hard to show us an alternative image - another picture – a picture of what God is really like.
You know, the time of Noah was not unlike our time. It too was a time of wars and rumors of war, earthquakes, pestilence, blasphemy, immorality. It was a time when the levees were breached and the world was flooded with darkness and evil.
So what will God do? What will this Warrior God do in the face of such terrible evil on earth?
Well, God the Warrior reaches to his shoulder, and takes his…BOW. That’s the original word, you know. Not “rainbow”. BOW. God takes his BOW…the same BOW in that sad song of Lamentations. The BOW that God the Warrior has aimed at the world, with the arrow drawn back and ready to shoot…
And then something totally unexpected happens!
God takes that BOW…and hangs
it up. God takes the Warrior’s bow and hangs it unstrung in the sky, never to
be used to destroy the world or its people again.
Do you REALIZE what you’re looking at when you see a rainbow??????
It is an instrument of war transformed into a SIGN of peace! Its many colors represent all of creation – the world and all its people – and its wondrous arch stretches from earth to heaven and back again to earth as if embracing everyONE and everyTHING!
How do Christians deal with the reality of sin and evil in our world and in our lives?
With the Warrior’s bow, or the rainbow?
Many generations after Noah saw God’s bow hung up in the clouds, a man named Jesus of Nazareth told his followers that the best way to conquer sin and evil is by repaying it not with sin and evil, but with good. The best way to conquer hate is to repay hate with love. And the best way to conquer violence is sometimes by absorbing it ourselves, forgiving those who inflict it, and trusting God to make it right, and to make us whole.
During this season of Lent, we are watching as Jesus journeys toward Jerusalem and the Cross. Along the way, he will be attacked, but will not retaliate; he will be mocked but will not respond in kind; he will be spat upon but will not spit back; and even when he is arrested and his followers draw their swords, he will tell them to put their swords away.
A beautiful song says of Jesus in the time of his dying, “He could have called ten thousand angels…” and put an end to those who killed him.
He could have drawn his bow, and sent the arrow flying into the heart of humanity.
But he didn’t.
Not in the days of Noah. Not in the day of the cross. Not today. Not ever.
If you are here today as a person punishing yourself for some sin you committed or mistake you made in the past, its time to hang your bow in the clouds. If you are harboring a grudge or resentment toward someone in your life, its time to hang your bow in the clouds. As our nation faces the ongoing threat of those who would do us harm, we must certainly do all we can to protect our children and our neighbors, but we must also find a way to hang our bow in the clouds and seek peace.
And most importantly, if you are a person who is hiding from God because you aren’t the person you think God wants you to be, or if you’re aware of some sin that stands in the way between you and God, lift your eyes and see God’s rainbow!
Jesus believed the rainbow is the most important sign of the times!
Do you believe in rainbows?