It is possible to read the story of Noah, his ark, the animals two-by-two, and the flood as a narrative that springs entirely from a question (posed, I’d assume, by a child to her parent), “Papa, where do rainbows come from?” I am partial to this way of reading the story.
Remember what it was that prompted God to flood the whole earth in order to destroy it. “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth.” And God said to Noah, “‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth.’”
You could say that, in a sense, God is exercising justice here. His creation has become corrupt, (it was always an option) and God’s judgment is to scrap it all (or nearly all of it) and start over. As I say, you could call that God’s justice, and for the purposes of this sermon, I will do just that. Justice, in this sense, is whenever God acts in ways that seem to us to render judgment on our individual or corporate actions.
If God is good, and righteous, and holy, and just; then God’s way is good, and righteous, and holy, and just; and any departure from God’s way is not. Seeing that humankind had diverged from God’s intentions, God determined that, what was his to create was also his to destroy - and to try again.
The story of the flood, and Noah’s deliverance, does show us a particularly hard-edged image of the God of love - an image that is redeemed in the narrative by the sign of the rainbow. Because, who doesn’t love a rainbow? And if God can give us rainbows, who cares about all that rain, right?
The rainbow is a reminder that God’s justice is tempered by God’s mercy.
I could end the sermon right here, and hope for the best, with the gentle assurance that God’s judgment is tempered by God’s mercy. And I might have done that, had it not been for The New Yorker magazine, which last week included a cartoon in its pages that has gotten under my skin.*
The cartoon shows a man being made to “walk the plank.” He is at the far end of the board that juts out from the gunwale of a ship. The captain (who might be a pirate: he does have an eyepatch) has one foot on the plank and holds a sword in his right hand, and his right arm is extended in order to force the advance of the condemned toward the open sea. Comically, the man on the business-end of the plank is wearing around his waist an inflatable floatation device of the type that young children use in the backyard pool. This one looks like a smiling, friendly, polka-dotted sea monster.
So, there is the man, approaching the end of the plank (and the end of his life), about to plunge into the vast and dangerous sea, with a pool floatie around his waist. Two pirate/sailors are looking on, and in the caption, one pirate/sailor observes to the other, “The captain tempers justice with mercy.”
So exactly does this caption correspond to a common assertion of Christian thought, and so clearly hopeless is the plight of the man on the plank, that I couldn’t laugh. In fact, I nearly wept. So perfectly does this dubious assurance match assurances that I myself have made to those in dire straits, at moments of great distress and peril, that it sent a shiver down my spine. I am absolutely certain that more than once I have proffered this exact advice to someone who must have felt as thought they were walking to the end of a plank with nothing but an inflatable, smiling sea monster to help them survive in a sea of treachery and misery that promises only doom.
This counsel comes to hand because we so often assume that circumstances befall us as matters of God’s justice. This idea is most succinctly express in the idea that God is punishing you because _____. (Fill in the blank.). To which, the parish priest may counter: Of course, you know, God tempers his justice with mercy. (I can hear myself say it!) And, also, what a lovely rainbow!
Here we are in Lent, when we are asked to think about our accountability to God for the things we have done which we ought not to have done, as well as for those things we have left undone which we ought to have done. Such a reflection might very well put us in mind of God’s judgment, God’s justice. It spurs us to ask what reason God might have to be punishing us. And if it does, we are in danger of spending these forty days merely reassuring ourselves that God tempers his justice with mercy. And I suppose that I have often been prepared to allow myself precisely such a Lenten reflection.
But, I must confess to you that I now see that this tepid assurance of mercy in the face of harsh reality is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is a platitude. It’s not a lie; it’s just not the real truth, or the whole truth. It’s a platitude that we tell ourselves and others when we have nothing else helpful to say, but at least we can say this, which may not be un-true.
In fact, however, Jesus does have something to say to us, as we embark on the forty-day journey, in which judgment is always just outside our door. Jesus spent the same amount of time in the wilderness as Noah spent battened down under the hatches of the ark, with the rain beating down on him. All Noah got at the end of forty days was a rainbow. (Well, in fairness, he also got to return to dry ground.) But Jesus comes out of the wilderness with significantly more than a rainbow, significantly more than a sign of God’s mercy, having been temped by Satan. After all, there are no rainbows in the desert.
And Jesus has something more than a rainbow. He does not come out and tell people that forty days with the devil was tough, but that God’s judgment was tempered by God’s mercy. No, St. Mark tells us that Jesus came out of the wilderness with a proclamation of good news. And this is what he said: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
The kingdom of God has come near.
Most of us would settle for a rainbow, since our expectations of God tend to be extremely low these days. But that would be a little like settling for a smiling, polka-dotted sea monster floatie, in the face of almost certain doom, when you are about to be drowned in the sea and/or eaten by sharks.
So, Jesus comes out of the wilderness, and he has a gospel to proclaim: that God’s kingdom has come near, and that reconciliation (which means forgiveness and love, available on the outskirts of God’s kingdom) - reconciliation is at hand as the kingdom draws near.
Jesus doesn’t tell us that God gave him a sign that this old world is not in trouble; that God put a rainbow in the skies above the wilderness as a reminder that, bad as things are, at least the destruction of all creation is not just around the corner. Jesus tells us that God is already making a new kingdom: a whole new universe, in which God’s goodness, righteousness, holiness, and justice are the way of life. And that God does not need to or want to destroy us first, in order to make this new universe. In fact, God is making it for us!
Yes, God has seen our wickedness, and how the earth is filled with violence because of us. And so, God has decided not to destroy everything, including us; but to establish a new kingdom, a new world order, a whole new universe, for all we know. And through Jesus, with Jesus, by Jesus, and in Jesus, that kingdom comes near, without a single drop of rain, without any threat at all of destruction, and without the need to declare that God’s justice is tempered by God’s mercy.
(Even if, in fact, it’s true that God’s justice is tempered by mercy; if you’re not forced to walk the plank, you don’t really have to worry about it, you know!)
One literal meaning of the word Lent is “slow.” And while we generally take from that word an invitation for us to slow down, it’s also possible to hear in the word a reminder of how slowly God sometimes moves. It has often been painful for us to see how slowly God moves to accomplish his purposes. And it can be deeply frustrating to see how slowly God seems to be moving to establish his kingdom. Continental drift seems swift by comparison. It’s difficult for us to see that when Jesus said that the kingdom of God has come near, he must have been talking in the time-space frame-of-reference of God, in which nearness and soon-ness seem not-so-near to us and not-so-soon to us. Even in the scriptural record, it’s not until the very last book of the Bible, which foretells of things that remain, perhaps, in the far-distant future, that we hear the Son of God declare, “Behold, I make all things new.” Until then, we have Lent; we move slowly; since, by our reckoning, God moves slowly too.
Because we know that this slow pace makes it difficult to see what God is doing, it is the ministry of the church to tear open seams in the thin places of the fabric of this world so that we can catch glimpses of the nearness of the kingdom of God. We do this with things of beauty and acts of beauty. We do it with works of kindness and love - what once was called charity. We do it in prayer and reflection. We do it in the serious study of scripture. We do it when we seek reconciliation with God and with our neighbors. We do it when we determine that our steps will be a pilgrimage, because we know that God has someplace for us to go. We do it when we reach out to one another with true, neighborly affection and care.
And most especially, we do it whenever we follow Jesus’ command to “Do this in remembrance of me,” sharing his Body and his Blood (which is to say, sharing his Love), when the heavens are torn apart and the Spirit descends on us all, with the reminder that this is God’s beloved Son, right here, with us; and we are fed in preparation for that kingdom where all is light and all is love. All these are open seams in the fabric that separates this world from the slow-moving nearness of the kingdom of God.
It is jarring to think that it was Lent, a year ago, when this pandemic forced us all to take shelter. It’s almost like we’ve had to batten down the hatches of our own little arks, our own little bubbles: sheltering, not from forty days of rain, but from nearly a year of airborne droplets. What did we do to deserve this? we might ask.
Oh, don’t you know that God’s justice is tempered by God’s mercy? could come the response. As if a rainbow would do us any good, in the midst of all our troubles. (Well, it might make us feel better for a moment or two.)
I might have settled for a rainbow. But God is establishing his kingdom instead. And he means to make all things new - everything, including you and me, and all that we have lost, and all that we will lose - not by destruction, but by transformation.
Oh, how hard it is for us to move Lent-ly: to move so slowly. But when we do, perhaps we can peek out through the tear in the heavens, at an hour like this, and see that the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven has come near. And then, slowly, (Lent-ly), we can repent and believe in the good news.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
21 February 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
* the cartoon is by David Sipress and appeared in the Feb 15 & 22 2021 issue of The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a24537
“The captain tempers justice with mercy.”
Cartoon by David Sipress from The New Yorker, Feb 15 & 22, 2021