First Sunday of Lent - February 21, 2021
Sermon- Rainbow People, Carolyn Smith. Feb 21, 2021
I haven’t given anything up for lent and I haven’t taken anything on either. Two years ago, I was lived towards a plastic-free Lent, and that sticks with me everyday. But for me, this year, Lent is on my mind all the time - how people experience it, how it impacts them, what their meaningful activities are, and who doesn’t bother. Like Jeff said in the announcements, it’s fascinating that this darker season of Lent still seems to carry weight in our secular world.
The choral music today is soothing, maybe like a rainbow rising after a storm. It’s not quite that though - this lenten piece by Mozart translates from Latin to “Hail true body”, and prays “be for us a foretaste in the test of death.” Welcome to the season of Lent, when we know what’s coming. When for all the good we do, all the hope we have, we must face the truth of the crucifixion. That’s where our Christian story is headed, and in small ways all the time, the world experiences little deaths of life and hope and dreams. But Easter - somehow - comes again. So we have different ways, and different needs in making meaning with death and trouble, and hope and trust.
This sounds dour and solemn and that’s too bad - I think it’s because we aren’t at all good at reflecting on difficult themes in a healthy way. Who is a fixer?- always trying to fix the problem and stop someones’ tears, or try to suck it up and move on, or make jokes or jolly each other? Because silence is hard, tears are harder, helpless times are painful. Let’s make an effort together this season to be better at it, to discover the strength of healthy reflection, and let it ripple out around us.
It’s about growing our relationship with God. With the sacred ground of your being, with the expansive spirit of life in our universe. We’re either tuning in, or what? Disconnected, going it alone, or I’d suggest, remaking the proverbial wheel.
Our whole biblical narrative for 3000 years tells about people discovering wherever they go, God is there. There’s a reason that ancient stories withstand generations, because they are true, in a legendary kind of way. So this lenten season our stories weave through the ages to make meaning of Covenant- God promising in covenant to be with us, an ever-present sense of something divine, maybe with an individual, or a community, and today, in all of creation.
And we start with the legend of Noah… If there is a story that covers personal hardship, communal hardship, environmental extinction at legendary levels, we found it.
It’s as if the original grandpa sitting around a fire 2700 years ago saying, “no really, when I said ‘a big Boat”, I meant a BIG boat. When I said “rain”, I mean IT RAINED.” The thing about an ancient legend is it’s about the biggest good and deepest evil all at once. Even today with Mars Rovers and cozy modern shelters, we get the truth of it. It outlasts wild details like how stinky that boat must have been, or if a kind old guy like Noah could really shut the door on his neighbours, or or to have polar bears and penguins in the same neck of the woods, and while we’re at it, we have a round earth, not a flat one, and where did all that extra water go?? Yes - it’s a story, with, of legendary proportions and legendary truth.
Before this story, and in many traditions ever after, gods are petty, selfish, violent, jealous. They make great action movies! The wonder of this legend was that the God in the story had a change of heart… For the first time there was a god who LOVED the world, that in this story, the people heard truth and hope instead of fear. We resonate with a world that flourishes with reverence for diverse life and connection; and withers under war. This old story holds water - we’re here as a community because of it. The covenant of the rainbow is ours, we are rainbow people.
Now, obviously, Noah stuck in the storm seems written with our pandemic in mind. We feel adrift, shut up in an ark of lockdowns, waiting for the dove to return with a vaccine, finally pouring out of our stuffy homes into the wide wide beautiful world. We trust that caring for one another means we wait longer, we put up with the hardship. The whole world needs us all working together and the ending will be one of joyful rainbows.
But frozen Texas is on my mind today too…. Reflecting the darker side of the Noah legend- A man died because he had no electricity for his oxygen tank. Whole hospitals are without water. an 11 year old boy died of hypothermia in his bed. Politicians tried taking vacations while people are lost in the storm. Our Noah Legend talks of wickedness, - we’re not sure what “wicked” means until we see what the promised dream looks like- kind, hope-filled Noah trusting in God through a storm, to a flourishing earth of family and creatures and diversity. Wicked seems to mean the opposite- hurtful, fearful, disconnected, self-interested. And the structures in Texas have allowed an energy system based on profit and low costs, that ignored warnings of inadequacy and climate change. And so today, a rare storm has wiped out their known world in a legendary way.
The Noah story ends with that rainbow, the Covenant of God alive inviting us to flourish. Our role is connectedness, it’s our reverence and joy in whole earth living, and it means toughing through, trusting through the messiness of such life. Because what is the option? As followers of the Way of the risen one, take just one quiet moment to ask - is there an option to trusting love and sharing life with one another? Is there an option to toughing out inconvenient change for a Flourishing vibrant world. Take that moment … allow, in this lenten moment the love to rise up within you, and answer: the only option is love.
Even in the hurting times - wow - if you thought it felt good to love God in sunny times, now you get to know how good it is to find hope in the storm. So we are in this together, in life and in our lenten journey. And God is in love with this world, love enough to splash rainbows across our skies.
There may be tears or discomfort or confession in your lenten time. But don’t be surprised when you discover joy!
Amen.