The Hope of the Covenant
Our God is a God of hope. Our God is a God of Hope… and it is to that hope that we cling… through all the wretched and awful days of our lives. Hope always seems to be such a beautiful and uplifting word. And yet, hope has a dark side. George Frederick Watts was a British painter who lived from 1817 to 1904. In one of the most famous paintings that he ever painted, Watts depicts Hope as a bruised and battered victim of disaster. As shown on the cover of your bulletin today, she languishes on a dark and empty world… her head bowed… her eyes bound and sightless. In her arms, she cradles a battered and useless lyre. “This is hope?” we ask. But look closer. See in the scene before you the figure of one who is not dead, but living… a survivor… a survivor who bends her ear to catch the music that she plays on the last remaining string of her almost totally shattered lyre… a survivor who hears the music of a new day… a new birth… a new beginning… in one, single strand of hope. Of this painting, G.K. Chesterton, an influential writer of the time, wrote, “Hope is a string which is always stretched to snapping and yet never snaps… the most delicate, the most fragile [thing]… yet, in truth, the backbone and indestructible.” Hope.
There have been many stories of the Holocaust… of its victims… and of those who survived. One of the more memorable was a novel written by Nobel Prize winning author, Elie Wiesel. In 1956, while living in Paris, Elie Wiesel wrote an eight hundred page memoir in Yiddish about his experiences during the Holocaust entitled Un di Velt Hot Geshvign (And the World Remained Silent). His fictionalized account of his own one-year experience spent in a concentration camp has, appropriately, become a classic in the genre of finding meaning in a seeming meaningless life. Dr. Bob Kelleman reviewed the book. In his review, he said, “Don't read this [book] if you have a queasy stomach or the need to think that this life is a bed of roses. Read it if you are going through your own "dark night of the soul" and want to find an answer to the perennial question, "Where is God?"” As Wiesel explains it, "God is there… in the suffering." Wiesel’s explanation is not simplistic… nor does it offer any pat answers. Instead, his story wrestles candidly with all the confusion that life can bring… and does bring… to our souls. Fortunately, Wiesel's candor leads to hope… to the confidence that behind the evil in this life there lives a God who is good… a God who is working out his own plans in mysterious… and yet glorious… ways.”
Can you even begin to imagine what it must have been like for Noah and his family to watch the devastation of the earth from the deck of the great ark? There were eight of them on the ark… all family. Everyone else they knew was drowned in the rising waters. Noah and his family must have heard them drowning. They must have heard their pleas for help. They must have watched their homes being washed away in the turbulent waters. Their livestock… their belongings… their dearest friends… their memories… everything they knew disappeared before their eyes.
Now, the flood was over. But was it really over? Yes, they were back on dry ground again, but anyone who has worked with victims who have been traumatized by major disasters will tell you that the memories remain long after the event has passed. How many times did Noah’s family run for their boats at the sound of rain on the roof of their new homes? How many nights did they lie awake… afraid to sleep? How many hours did they spend crying over all they had lost… and wondering why they survived? How many times, like the victims of the tsunami in South Asia, did they wonder if… or whether… they should rebuild… and whether… or when… it might happen again? Is it any wonder that Noah sought relief in a bottle of alcohol? Many victims of natural disasters do.
But God spoke to Noah and said, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendents after you.” But not just with Noah and his descendents… for God goes on to add… “and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.” Not just with Noah, but with every living creature that was on the ark with Noah. And God says, “I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again … and, in the Hebrew, God is emphatic about this… never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” Never again.
There are three things that you should notice about what God has just done. First of all, God acknowledges that there has been a terrible tragedy… a disaster of incredible proportions. The people whom God loved… whom God created for his own glory and praise… the people with whom God desired a relationship… have been destroyed. It is difficult for us to understand the size of this disaster, but even God understood the magnitude of the tragedy… both to those humans who remained and to God himself.
The second thing you should notice is that God establishes this covenant without any demand for mutuality on the part of Noah. In ancient times, covenants… especially covenants between kings and their subjects… and even those between equal parties… always demanded a mutual exchange of promises. When such a covenant was entered into, the phrase that was used was that the parties would “cut” a covenant… referring to the sacrifice that marked the signing of the covenant. But, in this case, there is no “cutting” of a covenant… no mutual exchange of promises… all the promises come from God… and are given to Noah… to his descendents… and to all living things… without any expectation of reciprocity. It is an unconditional covenant…unheard of in those times.
Yet it is not a lukewarm agreement. You can read the passion in God’s promise. “Never again,” God says… and then again, he says, “Never again.” And, God goes even further than that. “I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” “I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.”
Now, just as an aside: Some of you wonder why I am so particular about the English translation that I use when I preach. This verse is one example of why I use the New Revised Standard Version. The bow that God put into the clouds was not an insipid little rainbow! The bow that God is referring to here is not a beautiful… colorful arc of sunlight dancing through the rain drops. It is not a rainbow… which is the word that the New International Version uses. The bow that God was referring to was a weapon of war… the tool of an archer… a bow and arrow. There is absolutely no evidence to support the rainbow theory in the ancient Hebrew text. The word that is used is the word that most commonly referred to a weapon of war… of death… of destruction. This is bow that God places in the clouds… as a gesture of disarmament… a peace offering… as a sign that there would be no more destruction of this magnitude ever again. My apologies to those of you who teach Sunday School, but the beautiful rainbow thing just doesn’t work… unless you point out that it was formerly a weapon of war.
The power of this image is simply this: God put the bow into the clouds… not so that we would see it… but so that God would see it… and be reminded of the covenant that God himself had made. Look at verse 16 again. “When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” The bow in the clouds is God’s equivalent of tying a string around God’s own finger… it is a reminder to God to remember this covenant.
Why would God do that? Why would God… first of all… make a covenant without any reciprocal demands? Why would God give to Noah… and to all his descendents… and to every living creature… an unconditional covenant? That’s the first question. The second question is… why would God hang up his bow and arrow… effectively disarming himself before us? And the third question is… why would God put his bow in the clouds to remind himself… in perpetuity… to honor this covenant… what God himself called an everlasting covenant? Do you know? Shall I tell you again? Or shall I read to you again the words of Isaiah 43, verse 4, where God says, “Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.”
God has made an everlasting covenant with us… to protect us… even from his own wrath. That is our hope… the last string of the lyre. God has made a covenant with us. God has put down his weapons… and comes to us bare-handed… as a friend. God has put his bow in the clouds… as a constant reminder to himself to honor this covenant. In a few moments, God will issue yet another invitation… an invitation to come to the Table… to come… to sit… to break bread with our Lord Jesus Christ… to come and renew our covenant with God. What will you do? Will you stop today and consider all that God has done for you? Will you pause a moment in the rush of life and ask yourself what that means to you? Will you come you’re your Savior invites you to come? And will you… once again… approach the throne of grace and be joined with God through the mystery of this holy feast? Will you come into the joy of the new covenant with our Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer?
You see, once again, God gives us a gift… the gift of his covenant… and God renews that gift each time we come to the Table. The gift comes with no strings attached. It comes filled with love… and surrounded by grace… unmerited grace… for those unworthy to receive it. It is a gift… just as that first covenant was a gift to Noah… to his descendents… and to every other living thing. You see, God is here… among us… and his bow is in the clouds. Amen.
Genesis 9:8-17; Mark 1:9-15