Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
July 25^th Year of Our + Lord 2021
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer, SD
Rainbows

    Rainbows.  Let’s talk about rainbows.  Certainly, the image of the rainbow is something we can all get behind.  Right? 

   O.k., perhaps given our current cultural moment, the rainbow is something of a
conflicted image.  But it is truly wonderful; seeing a rainbow should bring Christian confidence and joy to your heart.  So let’s spend a few minutes to try to straighten out our understanding of rainbows.  For the image of the rainbow has, sad to say, been terribly distorted by folks with a variety of mistaken agendas. 

   The rainbow is not a frequent image in the Bible, but it is an important one.  Today from Genesis we heard its first use, when, after the Flood subsided, God set His bow in the cloud.  Did you notice that little pronoun, His bow?  God said: “I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.”  The rainbow belongs to God, and is set in the cloud by God as the sign of His covenant, His promise, to never again punish the sin of humanity with an earth destroying flood.  The rainbow is the sign of God’s Anti-Flood Covenant.  Notice, God doesn’t say He is now anti-punishment, or that His hatred of sin has subsided.  He simply says that never again will He destroy the whole earth by flood.  So, at first glance, the sign of the rainbow is good, but in a limited way.  One form of just and well-deserved destruction is off the table for us sinners.  But that is not yet the Gospel, is it?   

   Now, the rainbow has more to teach us, but first, there’s an important question:  Where did God’s bow come from?  What is the source of the Rainbow?  Did God at that moment He was speaking to Noah and his sons make an adjustment to physics?  Was the establishment of God’s new covenant the first time light refracted through water, thus revealing the various component colors of light that we see in rainbows?  Maybe.  I don’t know. 

But there is a Biblical answer to why God calls the rainbow His bow.  Rainbows are only mentioned a few times in all of the Bible, and aside from today’s Old Testament reading, the context is always the same.  The next time the rainbow appears in Scripture is in Ezekiel chapter 1.  The prophet Ezekiel starts his writing by describing the vision of heaven he received when the LORD called him to be a prophet. 

   First, he describes the four living creatures with their burning wheeled chariots, multiple sets of wings, and their four faces, each appearing as a man, an eagle, an ox and a lion.  Then, Ezekiel’s gaze is drawn upward:  Above the expanse over [the heads of the four living creatures] there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance.  ²⁷ And upward from what had the appearance of his waist, writes Ezekiel, I saw as it were gleaming metal, like the appearance of fire enclosed all around. And downward from what had the appearance of his waist I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and there was brightness around him. ²⁸ Like the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness all around.  Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, concludes the prophet, I fell on my face...

   The source of the rainbow is the heavenly throne of God.  The source rainbow for all other rainbows is the refracted glory of the Lord which shines from within His being as He sits on His celestial throne.  Which makes sense.  In the beginning, God’s first act of ordering and organizing the formless and void creation was to utter: Let there be light.  And there was light.  The LORD, the great I AM, is the source of all things, including light.  As John tells us in Revelation, in heaven there is no sun or moon, for the Lord on His throne and the Lamb are its light.  Light emanates from God on His throne, and it is apparently refracted through some water vapor around the throne, perhaps mists that rise up from the River of Life. 

   And so there is a rainbow around God, sitting on His throne, in heaven.  And that bow, God’s bow, was what He placed in the cloud as a reminder of His promise to never again destroy all life on earth with a flood.  God takes something precious and beautiful from heaven, the rainbow, and sets it within the creation as a sign of mercy, a sign of the removal of punishment.       

   With the rainbow, God is giving us clues about Himself and His heaven, clues that we can see in the Creation.  This is His way, starting way back in the beginning, when He made the man and the woman in His own image and likeness.  Before we fell into sin, humanity was the great sign of God in the Creation, created in the image of His loving care.  That didn’t last.  Temptation and sin overwhelmed our first parents, and from then on human wickedness grew, and grew.  And so eventually, to wash clean the earth, God sent the Flood. 

   But God rescued faithful Noah and his family, 8 souls in all, through the water, foreshadowing your Baptism, which now saves you.  The Lord punished evil with water, but provided a way of escape, and returned to His merciful ways after the Flood, setting His bow in the cloud.  The Lord takes a part of heaven and puts it into the Creation in order to reveal His mercy, and His will.  In this we see that the rainbow is a bit of a preview of Jesus, God’s eternal Son, who came down from heaven, and joined the Creation, becoming a man, born of the Virgin Mary, in order to bless us.   

   This makes me think of the halo.  Not the video game, but the shining ring of light artists used to put around holy heads.  Halos are a medieval artistic trope, a golden ring placed above the head in paintings and sculptures that depicted God, or angels, or saints.  Halos are visual signs to indicate the holiness of the artist’s subject, telling us that they carried a bit of heaven with them.  With our modern digital special effects, we expect depictions of heavenly glory to be more impressive. But in every case, our earthly attempts to portray the glory of heaven fall short, because the glory of heaven emanates from God, whom we do not see, yet.  Indeed, the best image we have of heavenly glory is, once you know about it, the sign of God’s covenant that comes after the storm, when God’s rainbow appears in the clouds.  And you should see God’s bow in the clouds as something more and better than simply the sign of God’s promise never again to destroy the earth with a flood.  Because the One Ezekiel saw, the One with the appearance of a man, seated on heaven’s throne, with the rainbow shining around Him, that One is Jesus Christ.  And Jesus, like the rainbow, has come into His creation.

   God’s eternal Son always had the light, along with His Father.  But during the first 33 years of His earthly life He almost always hid it.  The Jewish carpenter gave little glimpses of heavenly glory in His miracles, to be sure.  Like healing the sick, multiplying the loaves, or like today’s Gospel, where Jesus walks on top of the water and calms the wind and the waves. 

   Just once in the Gospels did Jesus let the light that is within Him shine forth, on the mount of Transfiguration.  There, while chatting with Moses and Elijah, Jesus shone with the glory of heaven, a revelation of God in the flesh witnessed by Peter, James and John, and confirmed by His Father, speaking from the cloud:  This is my beloved Son, listen to Him. 

   We should all listen to Jesus, just as the wind and the waves did.  His words to
the 12 terrified disciples are also for us, when the winds of life blow in our face, and we painfully can’t make any headway.  We may only see the storms and waves of life that threaten to sink us, but Jesus has bound Himself to you in your Baptism.  So He is always there for you.  He calls to you when you are afraid:  "Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid."

   You can and should think of Jesus when you see a rainbow, and take heart.  But not simply because Jesus walked on water, or fed the 5000 or healed the sick.  No, the ultimate reason you should rejoice daily, when you see a rainbow, and with every reminder of Jesus is this:  Before returning to sit down at the right hand of the Father in glory, before taking once again His rightful place within the heavenly rainbow, shining all around His heavenly throne, Jesus first fit Himself for another kind of halo.  A different circle around His head.  The sinless, perfect, love-incarnate Son of God chose to wear, for just one day, a crown of thorns.  He chose to suffer and die, in our place, dying our shameful death, that He might give you and me and every sinner His glorious life.  So every time you see a rainbow, you should look forward to the day when you will see the rainbow around God’s throne, and your Savior, seated there, welcoming you home with a smile. 

   The one who puts His bow in the cloud after the rain, and who walks on water, also prays.  He went up on the mountain to pray, after feeding the 5,000, and He went up into heaven to pray, for you.  Jesus is always interceding for you and me before the judgment seat of heaven, presenting His nail scarred body as proof of our innocence.  For the One who commands the sea and the waves and the wind finally submitted to the sinful hatred of mankind.  The One who is the source of life and light was swallowed up by death and darkness, or so it seemed.  But no.  Satan thought he was overwhelming God’s Son in a dark flood of death and suffering.  But in truth Jesus swallowed the darkness into His own death, in order to reveal the Light of Forgiveness and Eternal Life in His Resurrection.  This is God’s Gospel Covenant with you, His promise of grace and mercy and freedom from sin and death.  This is the full and glorious meaning of God’s rainbow, forever and ever, Amen.