First Sunday in Lent 09 Gen. 9:8-17, I Peter 3:18-22

this is an example of a sermon that is image-driven

 

We all have a t least a vague memory of the story of Noah and the ark. The rainbow came after the cataclysmic event that unleashed the waters. When the waters have subsided, life begins again. God has the rainbow become a visual aid. The power of the bow is set aside, put away. It seems to be a sign for God to remember, never again. Destruction would not be such an instrument for change.

The rainbow is such a beautiful, startling thing, so people have gathered stories around it. For instance, the Norse saw it as a bridge between heaven and earth. The rainbow is a bow in Hebrew, where lightning would be the arrow. Think of Zeus and the thunderbolts. . It is a cosmic instrument of power. Here it is set to undergird the firmament as an instrument of peace. It is a sign of a new start. This time it will not all come undone. God will find another way to redeem a fallen creation.

Look at the ecological features for this story. God makes the covenant without any conditions for everything and everyone. Creation is for everything, no human alone. The rainbow is a reminder that we are not to be at war with the earth. If God would protect creation, we do well to consider what a calamity, what a sin it is for us to despoil, even threaten God’s creation. In that sense the Endangered Species Act respects the rainbow. We cannot be party to making rainbow’s end the end of God’s creation. In its way, the rainbow is a sign of ecological peace with the environment.

In the Apostles’ Creed we recite an odd phrase that is drawn from a letter, “he descended into hell.” It could be a conclusion to the phrase, crucified, dead, and buried. For Easter to have significance, Jesus truly died and went to the abyss of death we all share. We cannot be sure if it means the abode of the dead or a place of punishment. At any rate, Jesus preached to the spirits in prison. I like to think of it as seeing God’s love able to reach past the gates of death. Later, Christians spoke of the harrowing of hell, a military incursion where Jesus defeated the hold of death’s prison and released its victims into heaven. Recall Hercules going to the Hades. In the late 1880s people argued about a second chance for people to hear the gospel after death. During the Reformation, it was thought that the descent into hell began in the Garden. The descent into hell was the entire Good Friday experience that extended into the horror of God’s own in the grave.

In the days before video, CBS ran Wizard of Oz every year. Young Judy Garland sang Over the Rainbow. We don’t have to dream that closeness to God is somewhere over the rainbow. On this first Sunday of Lent, session decided to have us enter this time of spiritual discipline with Communion. The Irish imagined a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. This morning, the Communion table is at the end of the rainbow. This is the new covenant. This morning a diverse rainbow of languages, regions, and peoples gather around the table. In our time, the rainbow has become a symbol of diversity to be celebrated. We take up the fruit of the earth, work with it, and the elements bring us the reality of Jesus Christ. Now matter who we are, no matter where we are from, we are fed in the ark of salvation, the church. We are joined to each other; that’s why we call it communion. The Holy Spirit joins us to heaven itself; that’s why we call it Communion. For once, we are in communion with nature, with creation as well, as we all receive e Communion under the sign of the rainbow.