Pastor's Corner: Something about rainbows

There is just something about rainbows.

We tell stories about them, we sing songs about them, we imagine pots of gold at the end of them, dream of strange lands beyond them.

The Hebrews understood the rainbow to be God’s bow, as in bow and arrow.

The bow was the most advanced weapon of its day, and of course Jaweh’s bow would be most wonderful and beautiful.

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, and stretching over vast distances, the perfect bow for God.

But it is a bow that has been laid down, string side down.

God has declared peace and promises never to destroy the earth again.

He makes a covenant with creation.

No matter what humans do, God will not destroy all life.

This is a sign of his love.

It is a covenant that promises that God will never again destroy the earth because of the sinfulness of man, and as a sign of this covenant - this promise - God creates the rainbow so that whenever it is raining, God and all of us here who see it will remember that promise.

The beautiful thing about this covenant, this agreement that God made is that is has no conditions upon it.

It is a covenant without any "if" clauses, such as "if you love me" or "if you obey me" or "if you worship me" or if you brush your teeth or help old ladies across the street - then I will be good to you! No - the covenant God made Noah is an unconditional covenant.

It is a covenant of love wherein God promises to remember us, even if we forget Him.

That is what God's love is like.

He remembers us even when we forget Him.

The covenant of the rainbow is very like the covenant of Christ.

Nothing is required of us.

It is God who makes the promises and keeps them.

God wants to be in relationship with us. In the beginning he saw all creation as being good and declared it to be so. He gives us free will even knowing that we will often not choose Him. The flood shows what God could do should He choose to. The rainbow tells us that God will never make that choice.

When Jesus was baptized in the Jordan by John the Baptist, he experienced fully God’s love for humanity. He had a vision and was given the assurance that he is God’s son, and that God loves Him. In that moment He becomes the embodiment of God’s love, resists the temptations to not believe and then returns to preach the good news of God. Jesus becomes the rainbow. He is the promise that God loves the world so much that not only will he never destroy all life again, He sent His son to show us what love really is, to give us the opportunity to understand both how much God loved us and how we could show God our love in return.

There are signs of God’s love all around us everyday in our own lives. Some are as ordinary as dirt, while others are as extraordinary as angels appearing when we most need them. Every child born, every life well-lived, even a peaceful death at the end of a long life, shows us the presence of God’s love. We see God in the sunrise, the sunset, the storm, the mountains, the rolling hills of the Palouse. When we love the beauty of nature, the glory of human achievement, the sound of a child’s laughter, the stories of the past told by the elderly, we are returning God’s love.

We need to look for God’s love sometimes, not because it is not there, but because we are experiencing what St. John of the Cross, referred to as the Dark Night of the Soul.

Mother Teresa lived much of her life searching for God’s light and love, not being able to see it, but having faith that it was there.

During the season of Lent we are called to search inwardly, to be introspective, to search our hearts and minds and to ask God to create in us a new heart for service.

Look for signs of God’s love in yourself as well as in the world around you.

Look for signs of God’s peace in yourself and the world around you.

You may find it in the same way Noah did, in the rainbow after the storm.

You may also find that rainbow inside yourself and learn that you are a sign of God’s love to others.

Rev. Jeannette Solimine

United Church of Christ

Colfax, WA