Proper 12 B
The Rainbow – Not What You Think
Genesis 9:8-17
26 July 2015 – Redeemer
One of my favorite movie quotes of all time is from the movie Princess Bride in which Inigo Montoya says, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” There are many words that people use that do not mean what they think it means.
Take the simple word “God.” “God” is on our money, in our pledge of allegience, in the Declaration of Independence, and every President of the US says, “God Bless America.” Statistically, a majority of people in the United States still believe in “God,” but if they were asked, “What do you mean by God?” they would not answer with what God Himself tells us in His Word. The majority of Americans believe in a powerful God in the sky who likes everybody, wants you to have your best life now, and will bring everyone, no matter what they believe, to a better place some day. And to that, a Christian would have to say, “You keep using that word – God. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
And so today we come to a word about which I have to say, “I do not think it means what you think it means.” And that word is “rainbow.” I’m guessing we’ve all seen a few rainbows the last few months. Holy Scripture tells us God put the rainbow in the clouds. He created it and therefore as His children through faith in Christ, we must listen to His meaning of the bow in the clouds.
I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
The first thing to point out is that the word “rainbow” doesn’t appear in the Bible. In the Old Testament that word is “bow” – like bow and arrows. In the New Testament the word is “iris” like the circle of color in your eye. After the flood God put His bow in the sky – perhaps we ought to call it God’s Bow. God placed His bow in the clouds to calm a trembling and fearful Noah and his family. God has just destroyed the world because of sin. This was God’s assessment of the world before the flood, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” Then the Lord decided to blot out man from the face of the earth. However, there was one man who still believed in the Lord. Noah found favor in the Lord’s eyes and was given boat building plans to save his family and the animals.
In reading one of the “old Lutheran” commentaries this week the author made this comment, “Our fathers did well to teach their children to pray the Lord’s prayer whenever the rainbow appeared.” The bow in the clouds means that God hates sin and completely destroyed every living creature on earth, save a few because of their evil. I know that we are as fuzzy about sin as we are about God and the rainbow, but once again God has not left us in the dark about what is sin. He gave us the 10 commandments and Jesus explained them further in the sermon on the Mount. Lust is adultery. Hatred is murder. Not helping those in need is stealing. Coveting is well coveting. OMG is taking the Lord’s name in vain. Not one of us can hide our blemishes from the perfect mirror of God’s Law. His pronouncement upon the age of Noah is certainly still His pronouncement upon us, “Every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” At God’s bow in the clouds we ought to bow our heads and pray the Lord’s prayer, especially “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” The bow reminds us of God’s judgment against sin – our sin.
But this bow in the clouds is also a comforting promise – a covenant made with Noah and every living creature on earth for every generation. “The waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.” It is not hard to imagine how Noah and his boys trembled as they left the ark. They had witnessed the death of all their neighbors and friends. They had seen every living creature lose its life. For nearly a year (from Noah’s 600-601 year of life) they had lived in a tiny little ark as the world and all of life were judged under God’s wrath. They saw the wages of sins and smelled death all around them when the waters receded. It is good, right, and salutary, that Noah and his sons and we know the wages of sin – it’s death, judgment, being cast off from God.
For then, like Noah, God’s Holy Spirit can lead us to salvation – in Noah’s case, he built ark on dry ground, with no rain in sight and no trailer to get his boat to the lake. In our case, by trusting in the death of Jesus of Nazareth on a cross outside Jerusalem, a couple thousand years ago.
God saved Noah and in so doing kept afloat His promise to Adam and Eve – the promise of a Savior to undo sin. God promised never again to destroy the world with a flood – and He hung His bow in the sky to assure Noah of this promise. Every time the rain fell, Noah and his descendants rightly would fear the wrath of God, but when the rain stopped and God hung His bow in the clouds, they would remember His promise He would never again judge the world in that way.
God would judge the world for sin, but not through the destruction of the world. God judged the world by aiming all of His wrath at Jesus. The bow in the clouds tells us God saves in His way – He saved Noah through an ark. He saves us by heaping our sins upon His Son. At the cross Jesus endured the fiery arrows of His Father’s anger over the evil inclinations of our hearts and the evil deeds of our hands.
Water and salvation go together in God’s Word – Pharaoh’s army is drowned in the Red Sea and through those same waters Israel is saved. The wicked world destroyed in the flood, but Noah, his family, and the animals are saved by the ark. The proper saving work of Jesus also begins in water – when He is baptized with a whole mess (a messy mess) of sinners at the Jordan. There He was immersed in our sin and marked as our Savior. When He gave up His Spirit after enduring our hell at the cross, a Roman Soldier pierced His side to ensure His death. What came out? Water and Blood. The wages of our sin is death and Jesus paid the price for us, to deliver us from God’s judgment.
You certainly must know where this damning and saving water talk is going. It’s going to the Baptismal font – where according to Saint Paul, the Holy Spirit put you to death with Christ and drowned you in those waters. God’s Word together with that water made Christ’s death for sin your death. He is judged and so you are judged. He died and so you have died to sin. He suffered hell and your suffering of hell is finished. In Holy Baptism what is His becomes yours. Those killing waters of baptism become saving waters. You are buried with Christ and so you rise with Christ. He didn’t stay dead and neither do you. He didn’t stay in the tomb and neither will you. By faith in the Holy Word, in the Holy Flood of Baptism, you are saved.
So let’s add a new custom to that old Lutheran custom – when we see God’s bow in the sky – let us bow our heads, repent of our sins, and pray the Lord’s prayer. And then let us lift up our heads – make the sign of the cross and recall our baptisms. God’s bow in the clouds – I don’t think it means what you think it means. It means sin gets judged. It points towards God’s saving work from sin in Jesus. It preaches to you the joy and confidence of your baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection. That’s what God’s bow in the clouds means – in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Pr. Bruce Timm
25 July 2015