The Grace of a Rainbow

Genesis 8:14-21; 9:7-17

Presbyterian pastor Melissa Bane Sevier several years wrote about a family whose son had been the church “handful” since his preschool days. Of course, she didn’t use real names, but she called him Sam and his parents Betty and Tom. It could have happened in any church because the story of Noah’s ark is always in the children’s curriculum, and I hope that it would happen in our church because the story of Noah’s ark is not just a children’s story that has lots of animals and a pretty coloring sheet with the opportunity use lots of colors.
Like I said, Sam had been the child who Sunday school teachers hoped would be absent. When he was a preteen, he and some of his buddies went up to the church and broke some windows. The church didn’t press charges, and Tom and Betty paid for them to be replaced. Then, just after he turned 18, he had some friends in his car and they decided to steal a bottle of whiskey from a liquor store. Sam stayed in the car and waited. What he didn’t know was that one of the friends had a gun. While they were inside, they made the owner empty the cash register and shot and wounded him. Sam went to prison for 8 years.

When he got out, at first, he tried to start over in a new place, but he couldn’t get a job. So, he moved back in with his parents. They were thrilled to have him home again. On weekdays, he looked for work and helped his dad on their farm. On Sundays, they came to church.

And there were some side-eye glances, and some people who did not like having an ex-con in worship, and some wondered aloud how Tom and Betty could want Sam back after everything he’d done.
One day, Sam came to the church office. He was conflicted. He told the pastor that he knew his parents loved having him with them in church and that he actually enjoyed worship. But every time he walked into church, people turned away. He was starting to think it might be better if he stayed home. So, he was there for the pastor’s advice.

The pastor had seen how Sam and his parents were being treated and had heard the talk. She had noticed how Tom and Betty had always placed Sam between them in the pew, as if to protect him from unfriendly stares. She also knew the good people of her church. She knew they didn’t want to see Tom and Betty be taken advantage of again by Sam. They didn’t want to see them grieved again – they had already been through so much. So, she asked Sam if it would be ok for her to talk with Session about it.

You could literally hear a pen drop after she shared her conversation with Sam. They had prayed and grieved with Tom and Betty, some of them had written to him over the years.
John Hughes was the first to break the silence, “Did any of you know that I went to reform school when I was a teenager?” Nobody had had any idea. “I can give Sam a job.”
Then, Ms. Margaret shared, yet again, her story of teaching Noah’s ark in Sunday School when Sam when he was in first grade. They cut rainbows out of construction paper. After class, she realized she had forgotten her book, so she went back and found Sam drawing a rainbow in permanent markers on the wall. “I didn’t have the energy to remove it, so I just left it.”
Another elder said he’d tried to paint over it several times, but it still showed through. Everyone laughed.

“So, what do we do now?” Asked the pastor. They made a plan.

The next Sunday, Sam served as liturgist, and the Scripture he read was the story of Noah’s ark. At prayer request time, the pastor invited Sam to speak. He thanked Session for allowing him to be liturgist, John for giving him a job, his parents for sticking by him even when it had been hard. He thanked the church for honoring the promises they made when he was baptized. He thanked them for the love they had shown his family when they hadn’t pressed charges when he broke the church windows. Then, he shared that the Scripture had always been meaningful to him. He knew most of them knew the story of him drawing a rainbow on the Sunday School classroom wall when he was in first grade, but they probably didn’t know the whole story. When Ms. Margaret came back into the room that day and saw what he was doing, she didn’t fuss or even tell him to stop. She stood there for a minute and then said, “Well, neither one of us will make it to church on time if I don’t help” and picked up the purple marker. And as they stood there drawing on the wall together, she talked about how sad God was about the way people behaved, and how the rainbow was God’s promise of grace. She talked about how everybody- even grownups – make God sad sometimes. She talked about the rainbows of grace in her life. Sam said that just a few Sundays before he had gone back to the classroom just to look around and remember that day 20 years before. To his surprise the rainbow was still there. Someone had tried to paint over it, but it still showed through. Sam said, “I know that I have grieved God with some of the things I’ve done, but God still showed grace. I got to come home again. I don’t deserve it, but I am grateful for it.” And he sat down.

That’s why we start teaching the story of Noah’s ark when children are little – and why we need to hear it over and over again as adults. The point of this story is that you and I have grieved God with some of the things we have done, but God still shows us grace. We get to come home again, we get to return to God. We don’t deserve it, but we are grateful for it. So, let’s back up in the story. Why did Noah need to build an ark? Why did God flood the earth, anyway?

This is what happened:

It had all gone horribly, terribly wrong. In 10 generations, humanity had gone from “Very Good” in God’s eyes to ….well, this is what Genesis 6 tells us: The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the LORD said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”

Except for Noah, who walked faithfully with God. As disappointed as God was, the dream of creation, the possibility of relationship with human beings who were free to choose whether or not to be in relationship with God…God just couldn’t and wouldn’t give up yet.

I don’t know about you, but I have heard this story told as God was angry at the world and the flood was God’s punishment. Then, God regretted getting so angry and killing everybody and made the promise of a rainbow to remind God not to do it again. But, that’s not what Genesis says. God saw how violent people had become, and regretted making human beings. Life on earth was not at all how God intended. The translation I just read from Genesis 6 said “his heart was deeply troubled.” The Hebrew literally translated says “it grieved him to his heart.” The other times it is used in Scripture it refers to grieving someone who has died.

The flood story is the story of God’s grief, not God’s anger. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. God isn’t acting like a preschooler who is frustrated with what he is building and knocks it all down and stomps away. God is a troubled parent, who grieves for 40 days and 40 nights, regretting that it all went wrong and unwilling to give up hope that maybe, just maybe, it could be still be different, that a second chance might be what human beings need – to start fresh and to have the advantage of knowing that when they turn away from God everything becomes an evil, violent, chaotic world. So, still with free will, but with awareness of the outcome of our choices.

So, when Noah and his family came out of the ark and the first thing they did was remember God? It was like that rare, spontaneous bear hug from your teenager who has been disagreeing with you about every single thing you say just to disagree, who has been rebelling with all the rebellion, who has been seething with all that teenage fermentation… Oh, what good it did God’s heart. “Never again. Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood.” God just loves us too much to do that again.
So God speaks to Noah and his sons, who were with him and makes the first covenant between God and humans. It is a one-sided covenant. There is nothing expected or asked of humans. God promises never again. Never again will there be a flood that destroys all the earth. My heart may grieve but my response will always be grace. I not only will let you come back home, back to living in relationship with me, no matter what, I will always want you to come back home. And as a reminder of my promise, I will place a bow – the word is the word for bow as in bow and arrow, a weapon – I will lay down my weapon, says God, as a reminder of my promise in the clouds when it rains.