Margie Quinn
In Floradale, Ontario, there is a woman named Irian Fast-Sittler who spends her days welding hot steel and metals. A few years ago, she took her grandfather’s shotgun and welded it into a work of art, featuring roses and vines made of copper and brass. In another town, a man named Shane Claiborne and other activists use blacksmithing equipment to melt down weapons like semi-automatic rifles and turn them into gardening tools. And in another town, an artist named Welling Hall, took a hundred pounds of bullet shells from the local police station and melted them into garden shears.
All three artists and activists were inspired by the passage in Isaiah, you know the one: “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war no more.”
“Neither shall they learn war no more.” These artists, among countless others, turn their grief at the world’s destruction and violence into art, reminding their fellow human beings or perhaps reminding God, of a covenant from long long ago, that hoped for peace.
In another story from a different time, the God of creation hangs up his bow of many colors, art in its own regard, in the sky, as a promise to end warfare and a reminder of his pact made with all of creation: to learn war no more.
Wait a minute, though. The rainbow in the sky that we’ve read about our whole lives, the rainbow that paints the sky after the flood, that’s actually a war bow? Let’s press pause there.
This week, we’re in the book of Genesis. God has created order out of chaos, a diversity of creatures and people, light and oceans and pear trees. Yet how quickly we warped what God called good. In chapter six, we learn that God was sorry already that she had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved her to her heart. Cain murdered Abel. Adam and Eve turned away from their Loving Parent–and God saw, chapter six says, “that the earth was filled with violence, was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth.”
And what do we do when we witness such careless evil in the world? God resolves to destroy the destroyers. Yes, God! A hard one to reckon with. God picks a 600 year old guy named Noah to go into an ark while God floods the earth. Noah and his family and some snakes and giraffes hop on the ark and wait around for seven days, twiddling their thumbs and raking up cow manure until finally, the flood of waters come on the earth. 40 days and 40 nights pass and we learn that God blots out every living thing on the earth except for Noah and his family. Why are they the righteous ones that God wants to save? What did Noah do to get a VIP spot on the ark? We don’t know and man I wish I did. The Bible can be so elusive like that.
Anyway, the flood wipes out every living thing before it subsides, but the waters don’t go down for another 150 days before Noah builds an altar to the Lord of burnt offerings. When God smells this pleasing odor of dead birds and other animals (I’m not making this up), God says, “I will never again curse the ground of humankind, nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.”
And here we arrive at our passage today…bringing with us a lot of confusion and questions about the theodicy of God, which basically means the question of how a loving God could commit or allow evil. Sidenote: We don’t have enough time today to get into how ancient cultures perceived floods and interpreted them as a warrior God committing violence rather than a natural disaster, so I’m going to chalk this one up to a story of how human beings perceive God rather than a story of how God really operates.
If we stick to the way in which these people perceive God, we see a sad but relatable interpretation that makes a lot of sense to me: God must have destroyed most of creation because we kept committing senseless acts of violence. God wanted to destroy the destroyers.
And yet: humanity is spinning toward a downward spiral of violence and in this passage today, God doesn’t join us in our chaos but makes a covenant with us instead. In a pretty wild turn of events, when many of us think that our God is unchanging, God changes her mind. Let me repeat that: God changes her mind.
“I’m not gonna curse y’all anymore,” God says, “but instead, I’m going to make a covenant to remind myself of the promise I made: to turn away from wrath and destruction and to protect humanity, even though your wickedness grieves me.”
Now we get back to the rainbow; which I learned this week is not some vapid, lovey-dovey visual for us to see, but the sign of a covenant that God makes with herself. This rainbow in the sky is actually a qeset, a “war bow” that God hangs up in the sky as a pact with all of creation to end the warfare. This bow in the clouds is a deal between God and…God. It serves to control God’s divine power, in case God wants to lash out once again.
Isn’t this wild? God changes her mind: she throws up a war bow so that when she peers at the sky, she recalls how her heart has been touched by creation’s suffering. She is willing to accept all of the hurt we cause and feel in order to keep hope alive.
Seven times in this passage, God references this “covenant.” It is as if God is staring in the mirror, repeating to himself (and I’m reading this word for word now): “When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.”
“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.”
“This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all the flesh that is on the earth.” It seems like God realllllly needs a lot of reminders to not be wrathful and stuff. I get that. And in this instance, by binding himself to the fate of humanity,” as David Lose writes, “ God becomes inherently invested in us and keenly vulnerable to being exposed. Not a distant oblivious God who sits back but one whose fortunes are now bound up in humanity. God is not simply committed but deeply invested in the fate of his creation.”
And as Joy J. Moore points out, “I want a God who can handle the horrors of this world…who addresses the oppressor, who doesn’t just say nice little warm fuzzy things…I want a God who says, ‘I made this commitment with humanity as I created humanity and I’m not giving up on that.’” This war bow, this sign of a covenant becomes a reminder to us that God is faithful enough to keep a covenant that God made.
In our first Sunday of Lent, you may be asking yourself what any of this has to do with Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. Well, Lent forces us into our wilderness temptations, to come face to face with our wild natures. Lent begs us to ask: “Will we repent, accept our finitude and stop grasping for control or will we continue the violence?” God herself repented and the next time the heavens opened, instead of grabbing her war bow, God used her compassionate voice to name Jesus as Beloved and to say that she was pleased with him.
Church, in this Lenten season, will we continue the violence that is all around us? Or will we be like Irian, Shane and Welling who transform weapons into gardening tools and art? Will we be like our God who hangs up her bow and calls us Beloved instead?
May it be so.