Promises, Promises: Never Again

Genesis records that God established the first covenant as Noah and his family ventured out of the ark. Now, normally, we like to focus on the first part of the story with a long line of every kind of animal marching onto the ark two by two…and then skip to the end with the ark sitting on a little knoll covered in fresh, bright green grass, a pretty little sapling with a dove perched in its branches, a few animals, Noah and wife, and a rainbow arcing overhead. My kids had a great children’s book that departed from that pattern. It was called “Don’t Rock the Ark.” All the animals got irritated with each other just for having the characteristics of their species…and I liked it because it made me think about life on that ark. It can’t have been easy.

You know when the ark finally ran aground and they exited, the earth was decimated. There was no grass. The landscape looked like the aftermath of any natural disaster, any flood, dead bodies and displaced belongings scattered across the landscape, homes barely recognizable, trees stripped of foliage, mud for as far as the eye could see. Everywhere they looked, they saw browns and greys, the colors of muck and death.

Noah built an altar to the Lord and made burnt offerings. As the scent wafted, Genesis tells us that the Lord knew in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of humanity, for the imagination of a person’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

And then Noah and his family saw the bright colors of a rainbow, arcing across the sky. And they were terrified. Yes, terrified. You see, they would have interpreted it very differently than we would. The ancients believed that the rainbow was God’s weapon for shooting lightening arrows. When they saw it placed in the sky after a storm, they saw it as a reminder of the threat of destruction. There was no word for rainbow – the Hebrew word was “bow” as in “bow and arrows.” And God says, “I will set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” 6 times, the holy set apart wholeness of 3 twice over, God makes it clear that this covenant isn’t just between God and Noah or between God and humanity. This covenant is between God and all creatures, not to ever again destroy the earth.

I have always wanted to be creative, to be able to draw and paint. My kids will tell you that I can’t draw a stick figure. They are being kind. I can’t even draw a smiley face. When I start to draw something, inevitably, it will end like this (tear our paper and wad).

When creation had gone awry, God saw the wickedness in humanity, that every imagination of the thoughts of a person’s heart were only evil continually, God wadded up the paper. Before God created, all was chaos, everything was a watery world. And God brought forth the sky and the dry land, by creating boundaries for the water. And as the earth began to be populated, God saw that what had been good was now corrupt. And he let go of the boundaries he had established and once again the earth was flooded, chaos.

Nic and Lizzie, my kids, love to draw and paint. And I’ve noticed that they don’t wad up their paper when they are creating, they just incorporate the parts that aren’t like they originally wanted them to be into the whole. Nic even has a Bob Ross shirt that says “We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents.” It hasn’t always been that way, though. They had to learn to incorporate what didn’t go the way they envisioned into the whole than rather than wad up the paper and start over.

That’s what Genesis is telling us in the flood narrative. Now, we could debate the theological paradox created when we say God is unchanging and yet God created a covenant and a reminder for God never again to destroy the earth. But, I think perhaps it is the deeper truth that gets us out of that paradox and is the important message to us now. God looked at the destruction, and said, “Never again” because God realized that even what deserved to be destroyed, even the wicked, God still loved. God decided that from that point forward, God would incorporate what doesn’t go the way God envisioned into the whole arc of God’s story, painted from the first stroke to the last, Alpha to Omega, Creation to Consummation.

We have a tendency to still wad up the paper, though. It’s easier to kick people out of community, out of our lives, out of our area of concern, than it is to continue to love them, to seek to shape and form them. Presbyterian pastor Rev. Melissa Bane Sevier, some of you may recognize her name, she wrote the Presbyterian Women’s Study on Hebrews a few years ago, “Cloud of Witnesses.” She tells the story of Evan. Evan is Tom and Betty’s son, and he had been the kind of kid growing up that caused long-time Sunday school teachers to take a year off when it was their turn to have him in class.

Evan had been a difficult child for Betty and Tom to manage, too. He and some friends had broken windows around town, including windows at the church, and his parents had paid to replace them. No charges had been pressed.
Just after he turned 18, Evan was driving some friends around one night. He pulled up and waited while they went into the liquor store to steal a bottle of whiskey. He didn’t know they had a gun. They emptied the cash drawer and shot and wounded the owner. Evan went to prison.

Eight years later when he got out, he tried to start a new life somewhere else, but he couldn’t get work. So, he came home to live with his parents. They were thrilled to have him again and tried to make life normal. Evan looked for work, and in the meantime helped his dad out on the farm. On Sundays, they came to church.

People talked. They worried about Betty and Tom taking Evan back after all he had done. Some didn’t like the idea of having an ex-con in worship.

Evan showed up one day at the door to the pastor’s office. He was beginning to think it would be better to stay home. His parents loved having him come to church, and he had actually found that worship was meaningful to him.
The pastor had seen the way Evan and his parents were being treated and heard the talk, noticed how Betty and Tom always sat on either side of Evan in the pew, shielding him from unfriendly stares.

The pastor knew the people of this church, though, knew that their concern was that Evan would take advantage of his parents again. But deep down, that they didn’t want to wad Evan up and throw him away. So, the pastor asked Evan’s permission to bring it up with Session. The silence was palpable as the pastor recounted the story. Nearly everyone in the room remembered when Evan went away. They had prayed and grieved with his parents, some had written to him. Now that he was back, they were conflicted.

Then one of the elders, John, spoke. “Did you know that as a teenager I went to a reform school?” No one there had had any idea. “I can offer Evan a job.”

Then Ms. Margaret told a story of Even in first grade Sunday school. Everyone had already heard this story. The story that day had been Noah and the ark, and they had made rainbows from construction paper. After class, Ms. Margaret realized she had left her lesson book and went back for it. There stood Evan, drawing with permanent marker and rainbow on the wall. “I didn’t have the energy to scrub it off,” she said, “so I just left it.”

Another elder said he’d been teaching in that classroom and tried to paint over it several times, but the rainbow still showed through. Everyone laughed.

And then they made a plan. The next Sunday, Evan was liturgist. The Scripture was from Genesis 9, the story of the flood.

After the sermon, during prayer requests, the pastor called on Evan. He thanked Session for asking him to be liturgist. He thanked John for giving him a job and his parents for sticking by him, even when it had been very difficult. He thanked the church for honoring the vows they had made when he was baptized. He thanked them for not pressing charges when he had broken the windows as a boy, and for loving his family.

Evan then shared that the story of Noah’s ark always reminded him of being in Ms. Margaret’s class in first grade. He knew most of them had heard how he had drawn a rainbow on that wall, but they might not have known that when Ms. Margaret had come back into the classroom and seen what he was doing, she didn’t fuss or scold him – she didn’t even tell him to stop. She just stood there for a minute and then said, “Well, neither of us will make it to church on time if I don’t help,” and picked up the purple marker.

Even said he’d gone back in the room just to look since he’d been home, and to his surprise, the rainbow was still there. Someone had tried to paint over it, but it still showed through. That morning, 20 years before with Ms. Margaret had been the most memorable moment in all of his years in church, because that day, while they drew on the wall together, she had talked to him about grace – how all of us – including grownups – make God sad sometimes, and she told him about rainbows of grace in her life: her family, her church, and his class, and even that time with him right then coloring on the wall.

Now, Evan said, he knew that his life had reflected that lesson. God grieved over some things Evan had done, yet God still showed grace. Evan had nearly covered over that grace by ignoring it, but the grace still shone through, just like the rainbow on that classroom wall. The grace of God for him, Evan said, was being able to come home again. He knew he didn’t deserve it, but he was grateful for it. Then he sat down, embarrassed that he had talked so long. No one else had noticed the time.

As we journey toward Easter this Lent, may we be mindful of the ways we have strayed, the times we have deserved to be wadded up and tossed away and remember God’s covenant, “Never again.” Pause and give thanks today for those people who have been rainbows of grace in your life. And, may we remember those individuals and groups we have wadded up and tossed away, and remember God’s covenant is also with them, “Never again.” May you and I be rainbows of grace. Amen.