OT notes first sunday in lent Gen. 9:8-17

1) First, please consider if you find this an odd reading with which to start Lent. we used this for Illinois side pastors as an exercise in a preaching roundtable at a recent lunch. I will try to remember to cite individual contributions and apologize if I missed a contribution. Preaching Master Janet Riley observed that Lent’s end marks a “new covenant in Communion, so it is fully appropriate to notice this covenant to start what may be a series of them in the OT readings.
covenant comes in variety, but it is surely a pledge of loyalty.

2) Lent means spring, perhaps that will help one enter into the story.

3) Rainbows occupy different meanings in myth. The Norse saw it as the bridge to Asgard. We all know the story of the pot of gold at the end of it. Here it could be a buttress for the great chaotic expanse of water in what we would call outer space. It also seems to have a sense of the cosmic bow and arrow. In light of Baal, or Zeus, or Thor, maybe lightning was the arrow (Ps. 7) . Here its stands for an empty bow of peace. It may pick up the image of a broken bow of peace in the Psalms. Noted exegete Mark Strothmann noted that a rainbow is in part an optical issue of limitation. From the air, it takes on a look of a circle.

4) Julie Gvillo Wood River CRE told us about her participation at the CE conference in Grand Rapids. She recalled the story of Rabbi Sandy Sasso on how we engage Scripture through midrash, through stories to fill in holes or questions from the text. We told her story of Naamah, Noah’s wife, who was assigned the task of getting plants while Noah herded the animals.

5) Paul Frazier and Don Stribling pushed us on the story showing a change in God by making covenant in full knowledge of our human weakness. Don reminded us that when God relents it goes toward mercy, not punishment being increased or being arbitrary. jnaet Riley then reminded us tha twe must be careful to explore all dimensions of god’s persoanlity and character in Scripture. thsi was seconded by Pam Laing’s going to the Exodus definition of god’s character that she saw as stable but responding to creation.

6) Toward the end, we asserted the ecological import of the story as the covenant is made with all flesh, all living creatures, not humans alone. (See Fretheim’s God in Creation). Paul noted the anti creation aspects of the flood story and Genesis 1. Janet noted that the flood story had more echoes of the Tiamat conflict account than the orderly progression of Genesis 1 as a counter to that initial story of primal violence. Please note how broad this protective element toward creation is here.

7) It was noted that we pick up flood imagery in the baptismal vows and made some linkages then to the read from I Peter 318-22. So one could pick up different sorts of water imagery from the rainbow and water itself. Don noted that we see a rainbow only from a certain perspective.

8) We discussed the issue of remembering in light of the rainbow as a sign to God as well as humanity. In Hebrew parlance, to remember is to bring the past into the present. For the eternal One, we have a difficult time trying to imagine a being in whom time flows together.