The Significance of God's Rainbow

Dear Friends,

On national news shows this winter, we have seen footage about rampaging storms and devastating floods. Noah and his family knew the uncontrollable power of such floods as we hear in today’s first reading from Genesis.

When calm returned to the scene of the biblical flood, God said to a weary Noah and his family: “I will make a covenant with you. Never again will all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood. This is the sign that I am giving, for all ages to come, of the covenant between me and you and every living creature I will set a rainbow in the clouds. When you see the rainbow in the sky, recall the covenant I made with you and all creation.”

Here on the first Sunday of Lent, the rainbow is given to us as a reminder, a rich symbol of God’s faithfulness, God’s promise, God’s covenant with us.

If we have been to Hawaii or Ireland or the Finger Lakes, we have probably seen rainbows, whole or in part after a summer storm. Sometimes even double rainbows.

Rainbows are a gift from God for us today, even as they were in Genesis:

Rainbows can’t be predicted, even by our best meteorologists.

The potential for a rainbow is always present, but certain conditions activate it.

Rainbows appear where they will. I’ve seen one from an airplane flying at 36,000 feet.

A rainbow extends its reach over the earth, even as God’s embrace is universal.

Perhaps these are reasons why groups that want to be inclusive choose the rainbow as their symbol – Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition and Gay Pride, to mention a few. If only we would put aside our smallness and hostilities!

Today’s Gospel proclaims the Kingdom of God has come. It’s time to change our attitudes, our very lives – to think and act out of a rainbow spirit and frame of mind. Let no one walk alone. We move together into the future God calls us to embrace.

The story is told that the first settlers coming to Boston wanted to build a city on a hill, in the way the Scriptures imagined such a city – a place for all people, a city where the Kingdom of God would reign.

Before they landed, John Winthrop, first Governor of the colony, charged them in these words to work for their ideals:

“For this end, we must be knit together as one. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities for the supply of others’ necessities. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Boston has not quite reached that ideal yet. Neither have we, nor does our world even reflect the kingdom of God and its values.

But we are on our way.

Under the arc of the rainbow.

This is what Lent can mean for us. God has made a covenant with us. It is embodied in the Body of Christ moving as one toward the completion of the reign of God. Let us act as though we believe it.

~ Sister Joan Sobala