The Rainbow Connection

Delivered February 26, 2012

Genesis 9:8-17

It is the most famous song ever sung by a frog. "The Rainbow Connection" was written for The Muppet Movie and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song in 1979. It was sung by Kermit the Frog as the movie's opening number of the film. Kermit is sitting on a log in a swamp playing a banjo; he sings:

Why are there so many
Songs about rainbows
And what's on the other side
Rainbow's are visions
They're only illusions
And rainbows have nothing to hide
So we've been told and some chose to believe it
But I know they're wrong wait and see
Someday we'll find it
The Rainbow Connection
The lovers, the dreamers and me.

What is it about rainbows that fascinate people? Whenever people see a rainbow, they stop what they are doing and contemplate it. They will point it out to other people. They will take photographs of it. When we see a double rainbow, then we feel we are doubly blessed. Why ARE there so many songs about rainbows and so many rainbow flags, decals and bumper stickers? The rainbow has become the symbol for many movements not only in this country, but around the world. The rainbow is most often used these days to represent diversity and inclusiveness, human rights and peace. But the rainbow has been used for centuries as a symbol. Today we are going to look at the earliest use of the rainbow as a symbol. It is at the end of the biblical story of the flood. In the Book of Genesis the rainbow is the sign of a covenant between God and his creation. Today we are going to look at the concept of covenant, and this rainbow covenant in particular and how it is fulfilled in the new covenant of Jesus Christ.

I. First we have to understand the concept of covenant. It is at the heart of biblical religion. Briefly a Covenant includes fourth aspects.

1. First in a covenant, there is a Relationship established. A covenant is another word for a contract, but the word contract sounds too formal and businesslike. A covenant is more personal than that. When I do weddings, I talk about the marriage covenant. There is a relationship between a husband and wife that is much more than just the legal contract of marriage. The relationship in a covenant is defined in terms what one party has done or will do for the other as the basis for the covenant. For example the Mosaic covenant established between God and Israel at Mount Sinai summed up on the famous Ten Commandments begins with God saying, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” God states that he has demonstrated his love for Israel is freeing them from bondage in Egypt and that is the basis of the covenant. There is a relationship established.

2. The second aspect of a covenant is that there are Promises made. A covenant always involves a commitment. One side or usually both sides pledge to do certain things. Again a marriage is a good example. The bride and groom make pledges and take vows promising that they will be there for each other until death. Promises are made. On second thought, maybe marriage is not such a good analogy these days.  On this last Valentines Day, USA Today ran a front page story about dating websites. But this is not the typical dating website; this is for married people looking to have extramarital affairs! It is growing phenomenon. The article said that the day after Valentines Day is one of the busiest days of the year, as people decide that their spouses are not romantic enough any more, and they could do better. For such people, marriage vows do not mean so much. But in the biblical concept of covenant, the promises made are very important.

3. Third, the covenant is sealed with an offering or sacrifice. We say now that the wedding ceremony is sealed with a kiss, but it used to be sealed with a dowry. In ancient times covenants were sealed with money or goods. Often a sacrifice was a part of the covenant ceremony. Animal sacrifices are not part of our religious experience these days, but sacrifices were a common part of biblical religion – and indeed all religion – in centuries past. They are still a part of Islam for example. Sacrifice signifies the seriousness of the agreement. Sacrifice involves death, and death is serious business. So it is a way of emphasizing the deadly seriousness of the covenant.

In Genesis 31 there is a story of a covenant made between Jacob and his father-in-law Laban at Mizpah. In it Laban says these well known words that are often used as a benediction on churches today, “May the Lord watch between Me and thee me when we are absent one from another.”  And we think “how wonderful! God is watching over us.” But when you read it in the context, Laban is really saying, “You better treat my daughters right or I will find you and kill you. You will be as dead as this sacrifice we are killing here today!”

4. Fourth, in a covenant a sign is given. In marriage the sign of the covenant is the wedding ring. The sign represents and symbolizes the agreement that has been made between the two parties.  These are four aspects of a covenant. The heart of biblical religion is the covenant - that humans can have a real relationship with God. Religion is not just a matter of believing in God. It is not even having an experience of God or a sense of the presence of God when you look at the starry heavens or a view from a mountaintop. These are real religious experiences, but they are not covenants. The idea of the covenant is that we can have a relationship with the Creator of the universe. God is not just an impersonal cosmic force or energy. God is not a distant Deity who started the universe going billions of years ago but has nothing to do with it anymore. The concept of the covenant is that we can have a relationship with this Creator.

II. With this background, let look now at the Rainbow Covenant in our OT passage for today. In our story the whole world was covered by a flood which destroyed all life on the earth except for that which fit into Noah’s Ark. God saved representatives of all living creatures including human beings through the ark. Not only has he saved them, he establishes a relationship – a covenant – with them. He says to Noah in our passage (v. 9-11): “And as for Me, behold, I establish My covenant with you and with your descendants after you, ¹⁰ and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth. ¹¹ Thus I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

This Flood story tells us that God has established a covenant relationship with human beings and all living creatures on earth. It hearkens back to an even earlier covenant in the Garden of Eden when Man is instructed to care for the earth. The rainbow covenant is interesting among the covenants of the Bible because it groups us and our descendants with all other living creatures. “I establish My covenant with you and with your descendants after you, ¹⁰ and with every living creature that is with you.” I am not saying that Man does not have a special role and responsibility; he does. But here Mankind is grouped with all other species. Here God is not only as Creator but also Preserver. God promises to preserve life on earth. That is the promise part of the covenant here. Notice that it is an unconditional promise. God does not ask anything of human beings. Other others covenants, like in Moses covenant established on Mount Sinai God asks a lot of Man in the form of laws. But here God asks nothing. This is an act of pure love from God to man.

The sign of that unconditional love of God is the rainbow. Every time we see a rainbow in the sky it should reminds us of the unconditional love of the Creator for his Creation, including us. It is a sign that God is not against us or at war with us. The bow is a weapon –as in bow and arrow, hanging on the wall of the sky. Weapons can be used for or against you. Here God is clearly saying that he is for us. This bow is a sign of protection. God cares for us and will protect us and his creation.

What should our response be to this sign? I think it is only natural for us to want to do something in return for what God has done for us. I think we should want to cooperate in God’s plan to protect his creation. That is what the Rainbow covenant means to me. It is a sign of caring for God’s Creation. It fits right into our Lenten Series that we are doing Wednesday nights: 50 Ways we can Help to Save the Earth. God cares for all the earth and for all living creatures on this earth. We as his church can be partners with God in this rainbow covenant to use every means at our disposal to protect his Creation. That is what the rainbow represents.

III. I want to move beyond the rainbow now – somewhere over the rainbow, if you will – but I am not going to break into the Judy Garland song. This is Lent, the season where we look to the Cross of Jesus. The Cross is the sign of another covenant, a New Covenant that is greater than the old covenants of the Old Testament. The Cross is like the rainbow covenant in some ways and different in some ways.

The Cross covenant is a relationship between God and Humankind. It is universal insofar as it is offered to all. But it is different in that this new covenant must be accepted by us to be effective for us. The cross restores a relationship between God and man which has been broken by sin. I don’t know how many of you are reading through the Bible this year with me. But you can’t get very far in the Bible before you realize that there is a lot of sin in it. The people in Genesis are sinners – from Adam and Eve to Cain to every one of their descendants. The Bible is filled with sinners. But we don’t need to Bible to tell us that. Just read the newspaper or watch the evening news, or look around town, or better yet, look in the mirror. Human beings do wrong on a large scale and a small scale. We have broken our relationship each other and with God through sin. God has restored that relationship by the Cross, and we have the opportunity to accept God’s remedy or not. We accept that by faith; that is the promise part of this new covenant.

The Cross is the solution to human sinfulness. The Cross takes sin seriously. It purports to be the cure for sin. The Cross reestablishes the relationship between God and humans that has been broken by human sin. There are all sorts of theories about how the cross accomplished that restoration. Some theories resonate more with 21^st century humans than others. Biblically speaking the cross is seen as the fulfillment of the OT sacrificial system. Covenants are sealed with a sacrifice.  The cross is understood in the Scriptures, as the seal of the New Covenant.

The problem is that people don’t understand sacrifices today. Sacrifices don’t make sense to most people. It sounds so primitive – so bloody and even pagan. The idea is offensive to people. People don’t understand why Christ had to die as part of God’s plan to establish a covenant with us. Why couldn’t God love us, accept us and forgive without a bloody death on a cross? Let me just say in this regard that God could have established this new covenant with us any way he wanted to. God is God, and he can do anything. But this is the way he did it. We don’t get to chose how God does it; we just get to accept it or not, and try to understand it.

As I said when I was defining covenants, sacrifices were used to seal covenants because death imparts a sense of seriousness to the relationship being established. Death is serious. The death of an animal is serious, as any pet owner knows. The death of a person is extremely serious. There is nothing more devastating in our lives than the death of one close to us. So when Jesus, the only begotten Son of God died, this is God’s way of communicating that he takes our relationship to him and our sin very seriously. There is no other act that could have communicated this level of seriousness then the death of God’s Son. The reason why so many people have such a hard time with the Cross is because we don’t take our relationship to God that seriously nor the problem of sin that seriously. We think sin is no big deal and therefore salvation from sin should be no big deal. We think nothing more is needed than an apology and the apology accepted – if even that. A lot of people think that even that is unnecessary with God. They think forgiveness should be granted automatically by God to everyone whether or not there is any repentance or faith. But sin is much more serious than that and the solution to the sin problem is more serious – so serious that it required the Cross.

I do not purport to understand the Cross of Jesus. I have studied the theology of it extensively; but the more I study it, the less I understand it. But one thing for sure, I will not trivialize it. I will not dismiss it. It is not a stumbling block or offensive to me. I love the old rugged old. I see it as a sign of the great love that God has for us. He wants a relationship with us, and he has made a way to have that relationship. And that way is through the Cross of  his Son Jesus. Through Christ God opens a way to him; in return we pledge our lives to him. By faith in Christ and what he has done for us, we have an eternal relationship with God. That is the Cross Connection. We are connected not just as a creature with a Creator in the rainbow covenant. We are connected as redeemed human beings by a Savior in the Cross. I could paraphrase Kermit’s song and ask, Why are there so many songs about Jesus? Why are there so many more songs about the Cross than about rainbows? It is because the cross is a so much greater sign, and it should invoke in us a greater love.