Genesis 9:8-17
God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 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; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”
Mark 1:9-15
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
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So a few weeks ago during the children’s sermon, we talked about remembering. Specifically remembering the good news that we are God’s beloved, and remembering who we are in God’s sight, and remembering the power of God to heal our world and set us free. I implicated Adrian in that children’s sermon, and the way that, because of hanging out with him these last five years, I have adopted his habit of crossing my fingers to help me remember things. In the last couple weeks, it’s actually been pretty interesting to notice how often each of us on staff really do use that gesture in conversation. It’s both a symbol of memory and a signal to one another that we have something that we need to say when the moment is right.
In our life of faith, we have lots of symbols and gestures to help us remember God’s love and mercy for us.
Even a cursory glance around this space reveals some of these symbols. The image of Jesus our Good Shepherd, the cross, the bread and wine of communion, the font, the candles, the songs in our hymnal [and on the wall], the image of God we see in one another: all of these are things that help us remember God’s love and grace. The ashes that were marked on our forehead last Wednesday and the cross that is marked on our heads in oil at baptism: these symbols, too, help us remember our faith. And I’m grateful for all of these symbols, because I know that my own faith falters and I have doubts of I go out into the world and don’t act in ways that my faith would call me to act, and so these symbols help bring my heart back to God and back into alignment with God’s own heart.
Today, in our reading from Genesis, we have another symbol to work with: the symbol of the rainbow in the sky, a sign of God’s covenant with creation.
Noah’s story is one that we all learned at some point as we were children. It’s one of those Sunday School 101 stories. So I could stand up here and review the story for you, but I’ll bet that you can do a pretty good job of retelling it on your own:
So there’s this guy Noah, and God asks him to do what? (build an ark)
And why do they need an ark? (there’s going to be a flood)
And why is there going to be a flood? (human evil and corruption; God needs a resent button)
So Noah builds this ark, and what does he bring onto it? (pairs of animals, “every kind of food that is eaten,” his family)
And the waters start to rise, and how many days does it rain? (40 days and 40 nights)
Bonus trivia question: after the rain stopped, how long was the earth flooded? (150 days!)
So the waters are starting to recede, and Noah sends out a “scout” to check things out.
What does he send out first? (raven - and the raven just kind of flies around)
What does he send out next? (dove)
And so the first time he sends out the dove, what happens? (dove returns, because the waters still cover the earth and it has no place to land)
Noah sends out the dove a second time, and what happens? (returns with an olive leaf)
Noah sends out the dove a third time, and what happens? (does not return - a sign that the waters are gone)
So Noah and his family and the animals all get off the ark, and Noah builds an altar and makes some sacrifices to God, and then God makes a covenant.
What does God promise? (never to destroy the earth again)
And we’ve already mentioned it, but what is the sign of this covenant? (rainbow)
And in the Sunday School version of the story, this rainbow is for whose benefit? (ours - that we can see the rainbow and remember that God won’t destroy the earth)
WAIT A MINUTE, THOUGH! According to the text we read today, for whose benefit is the rainbow, really?
God’s! God says, “When the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature.” And again, God says, “When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant.”
I mean, let’s not think for a moment that God needs the rainbow to remind him not to destroy the earth, as if he were just wont one day to wake up and haphazardly destroy the earth without a rainbow up there in the sky to help him to remember. God isn’t the Hulk.
The reason for the rainbow is that it shows us a God who makes a point of remembering his people and his creation. A God who, in the storms of life, emerges from the clouds in a spectrum of light to tell us, in no uncertain terms, that God has not forgotten us nor abandoned us. We see the rainbow, and we see God looking at the rainbow, and we know that God remembers us.
Which is something that you might need to hear today.
There’s the question that comes up every time there is a tragedy, whether the tragedy of a car accident in this community or a school shooting across the nation: “Where is God?” people ask. Faced with unthinkable shock and grief and despair, our hearts begin to wonder if God has forgotten about us; abandoned us to the chaos of the world.
Noah watched as the entire world around him was destroyed - his community, his friends, unsuspecting animals, the beauty of creation (God’s and human). It was the most horrible thing he or many of us could ever witness. And there, floating on a wilderness of water for forty plus one-hundred-fifty days, don’t you think that he might have wondered, “Has God forgotten about us?”
And Jesus, out there in the wilderness, hungry, hot, tired, exhausted from forty days and forty nights of intense physical discomfort and intense spiritual warfare - do you think he might have wondered, “Has God forgotten about me?” or at least “Has God forgotten already this business about calling me beloved?”
This is why we need the rainbow. Because when we see it, we hear God’s voice, saying to himself “I remember my covenant,” and saying to us, “I remember you,” and saying “In all the wild spaces of suffering, I suffer there with you and walk with you and you are not alone.”
God might lament our unfaithfulness, God might grieve our acts of injustice, God might weep over brokenness, God might call us out for neglecting to love our neighbors as ourselves, but GOD DOES NOT FORGET US. God does not reject us, cast us out, or go sulk in a corner where God cannot be found.
In floods and in wilderness, in chaos and in suffering, in life and in death: God remembers us as beloved, and God returns to God’s covenants, or establishes new covenants, even when we don’t hold up our end of the bargain to be faithful and just. God just can’t help himself.
God is in the covenant-making business. Throughout this season of Lent, we will look at the covenants God has made with God’s people, each of them carrying some physical sign or symbol of remembrance: Noah and the rainbow, Abraham and the stars in the sky, Moses and the stone tablets, Jesus and the cross.
And the thing about these covenants is that, whether God says it out loud or now, they are all grounded in God’s act of remembering.
When we say, “God made a covenant with Noah that God would never again destroy the earth,” what we really mean is “God remembered God’s love for all creation, and so made a promise that God would never again destroy the earth.”
When we say, “God made a covenant with Abraham and Sarah to make them the father and mother of many nations,” what we really mean is, “God remembered Abraham and Sarah’s barrenness, and God remembered God’s love for a people yet unborn, and so made a promise to Abraham and Sarah that they would bear a child.”
When we say, “God made a covenant with Moses and the Israelites through the giving of the law,” what we really mean is, “God remembered the people he brought out of exile and God remembered the people in their wilderness wandering, and so made a promise to them that God would give them a law to establish a holy relationship between God and the people, between the people and one another.”
And when we say, “God established a new covenant through the death and resurrection of Jesus, that forgiveness of sins and eternal life be accomplished, once for all,” what we really mean is, “God remembered God’s love and grace, and so promised, by taking on all brokenness into God’s on body, to destroy all the powers of sin and death.”
The season of Lent is always a season of remembering.
But it is usually a season of our remembering. We are called to remember and reflect upon our sinfulness and our self-indulgence and our straying from God’s path, in order to reclaim the forgiveness and grace that have been won for us through Christ’s death and resurrection. We remember and renew our end of the covenant, as we recommit ourselves to faith disciplines and spiritual practices and the calling of our baptism.
But also, this Lent, as we hear stories of our covenant-making God and as we hear Jesus’s teachings about the covenant of the cross, let this be a season of assurance, knowing that in all and through all, God remembers you. And not just “remembers you” as a fleeting thought, but “remembers you” meaning that God holds you in God’s keeping, and you are eternally bound to God and God to you, and God and puts you back together as many times as you fall apart, and you are on God’s brain and heart the same way that you can’t get somebody off your mind once you figure out that you are totally, utterly, head-over-heels in love with them.
Hear today this good news: God remembers you. God is faithful. By the sign of the rainbow, by the sign of the cross, God makes his covenant, that God will not destroy you. God will not destroy the earth. God will remember your belovedness and not your sin.
God has a long memory.
And by this memory, you are blessed.
You are children of the covenant.
You are not forgotten.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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