The Warrior God’s Reign Bow Hangs Forever in Peace
a sermon based on Genesis 9:8-17
given at Palm Bay, FL March 1, 2009
by Rev. Scott Elliott

I love the Internet. One of it’s benefits is it’s a researcher’s dream (and a punster’s treasure chest!).  Here’s just one of the puns I found on the Web
about Noah’s Ark: Humans were unable to play cards on the Ark because
the animals were on all the decks,You can find most anything on the Web. I not only found great word play,
but I found an anonymous note called “Everything I Need to Know, I
Learned From Noah’s Ark.” Listen to these ten bits  wisdom gleaned from
just the surface of the story.

1. Don’t miss the boat.
2. Remember that we are all in the same boat.
3. Plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark.
4. Stay fit. When you’re 60 years old, someone may ask you to
do something really big.
5. Don’t listen to critics; just get on with the job that needs to be
done.
6.  Build your future on high ground.
7. For safety’s sake, travel in pairs.
8. Speed isn’t always an advantage. The snails were on board
with the cheetahs.
9. Remember, the Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by
professionals.
10. No matter the storm, when you are with God, there’s always
a rainbow waiting.

That’s a nice bit of folk wisdom.

For those of you who were here last week I am so sorry, but the puns are over
for this sermon.

I know it was a real treat to hear all the word play during last week’s
sermon, but, today I have decided to back off a little (And it has nothing to
do with the fact that I was warned some of you brought in bags of fruit and
vegetables to throw).

Today I am going to talk about the evolution of God. Why? Well the
evolution of God is very cleverly symbolized by the rainbow in today’s
story.

Evolution generally means the process of changing from one form into a
better form.

It also has a particular meaning with respect to the theory of evolution, the
idea that biological life changes through natural selection– that is the most
favorable traits for survival are passed down over generations leading to
alterations in the species, and in some cases even new species.

So, if this sermon is about the evolution of God, has God evolved?

I cannot speak to the actual nature of God which is more Mystery than not,
but I can speak to how human perception of God appears to have evolved–
and evolution seems as apt a word as any to symbolize what’s going on with
God in the Bible.

People experienced God with differing traits in the Bible stories, and if we
listen we can hear an evolution occurring in the Ancient Near East cultures’
experiences and understandings of God.

As this evolution occurs we can even discern a symbolic natural selection of
sorts occurring, in that the most favorable traits of God are passed down
through the generations – and God, in a better form, is understood.

In short, the Bible suggests new understandings of God evolved from the
old.

Keep in mind that this is not about God actually evolving, but humans
perceptions of God.

We rely heavily on Bible stories to help us understand God and it is the
Hebrew people who give us the first stories. The early Hebrews seem to
have first experienced God as one among many gods. He was given the
name Yahweh and championed their causes.

Like many cultures in the Ancient Near East the god of the Hebrews was
understood to be a warrior who went to battle for them, defeating others and
their champions. You can hear this in this excerpt from Exodus 15

. . .Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the LORD: “I will
sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and
rider he has thrown into the sea.  2 . . . The LORD is a warrior;
the LORD is his name.  4 “Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he
cast into the sea; his picked officers were sunk in the Red Sea.  5
The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a
stone.  6 . . .   8 At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up,
the floods stood up in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of
the sea. . . . 10 You blew with your wind, the sea covered them;
they sank like lead in the mighty waters.  11 “Who is like you, O
LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness,
awesome in splendor, doing wonders?  12 You stretched out your
right hand, the earth swallowed them.  13 “In your steadfast love
you led the people whom you redeemed; you guided them by
your strength to your holy abode.  14

God goes to battle. He is the champion of the Hebrews on the battlefield. No
other god is like him. He punishes the enemies of the Hebrews with defeat
and, of course, he punishes them with plagues and plights before the Red
Sea drowns their army.

But did you hear how in the excerpt I just read the warrior and punishing
traits exists side-by-side with trait of steadfast love?

God has steadfast love for his people and it is that love that is proven by his
punishing might on the battlefield against the Egyptians. The traits of this
warrior, punishing God are woven like threads in the tapestry of many
stories that make up the Bible.

One of the consequences of understanding God as punishing is that he does
not just punish enemies, but punishes you too. In Psalm 7 (12-13) you can
hear God shooting arrows of the fiery shaft of lightening at those who do not
repent “If one does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and
strung his bow; he has prepared his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery
shafts.”

A prominent thread of theology in the Bible is that bad things happen to
people – and peoples–  as punishment: God’s shooting lightening bolts to
punish wickedness.

If God’s response to wickedness is destruction and harm, then destruction
and harm is seen as a response to wickedness.

It is this punishing God that brings about the flood and destroys virtually all
the world, every animal, every man, woman and child not on Noah’s Ark.

The warrior God is angry at all the awfulness of the world and so drowns
creation.

The story of the rainbow is believed to have been written in light of the
Hebrew’s experience of exile in Babylon. Israel is destroyed. Under the old
theology that destruction was understood with a view that God  drowned the
men, women, children and all creatures on land.

In light of awful destruction, probably symbolic of the Babylon experience,
what happens to God in our reading today? God makes a remarkable one-
sided promise, a vow to all of creation to never, ever, destroy the world
again. Nothing is needed in exchange for this forever promise. Nothing is
needed.

And this promise breaks off the connection of human guilt to punishment by
God; evil and destruction still exist but they do not occur by the hand of
God’s judgment.

World reknowned Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann puts it
like this:

The one-to-one connection of guilt and punishment is broken.
God is postured differently. From the perspective of this
narrative there may be death and destruction. Evil has not been
eradicated from creation. But we are assured that these are not
rooted in the anger or rejection of God. The relation of our
creator to creation is no longer a scheme of retribution.  Because
of a revolution in the heart of God, that relationship is now
based on unqualified grace.    1.

. . .Unqualified grace!

God the warrior who slays the wicked with the slings and arrows of calamity
and catastrophe has evolved, Yahweh has changed in the Lectionary text
from one form to a better form.

We can even claim there seems to have been a symbolic natural selection at
work, in that the most favorable traits for survival of God in the experience
of the Hebrews is passed down.

If the capture and enslavement of men, women and children by Babylon is
God’s doing how are the people to love such a God, and where is the
steadfast love of that God for the people of Israel?

That God of Love is virtually impossible to find if he is the one who caused
the enslavement and destruction of Israel. But in today’s story the God who
ruled over the Hebrews ends up being seen in a wholly a new way. God has
been re-imagined. 2.

Yahweh the warrior with a bow that shoots lightening bolts of tragedy from
his quiver of judgment is no more. That Yahweh has hung up his bow on
the wall of the sky.

When storms brew and spew destructive forces, when they bring dark clouds
and trouble the bow hanging on the wall reminds the God of old, that he is
no longer in the doing-bad-things-to-creation business.

God cannot knowingly violate a vow and the rainbow comforts humans with
the knowledge that it reminds God so he cannot forget that vow either.

More importantly it reminds us that God’s hung up his weapon of
destruction and will use it no more on creation. We no longer have to
imagine God as vengeful and punishing. We can forevermore imagine God
as loving and good.

This story can be heard to tell us that from the flood on God will not and
does not and has not destroyed anything in creation. Ever.

We can hear that God has evolved and the rainbow – that splendid bow of
God’s hanging on the wondrous wall of the sky– reminds us of that
evolution. God’s old traits of warrioring and violence and punishment are no
more. God’s made an unbreakable vow to all of creation, that no human
being, no living thing need worry again that awful things in life are God’s
doing.

Natural selection of the most favorable traits for God to survive in light of
the Babylonian exile (or in our day something like the holocaust) can be
seen as selecting steadfast love as the most favorable trait that is passed
down from generation to generation of understanding God. God had to
evolve for us to understand Love in light of horrors. God cannot both be the
source of terror and the source of steadfast Love.

So we have before us today the God of steadfast love who does not terrorize
with the chaos of deep waters and punish bolts of lightening.

The God of steadfast love sides with the oppressed, seeks justice and calls
us to righteousness in hope of shalom for all creation. This is the God of
Jesus, the God who’s old reign’s bow hangs on the wall as an everlasting
symbol that divine retribution and destruction does not exist.

Did God literally evolve? We can choose to see it that way.

Or we can choose to see that human understanding of God has evolved.
Either way we end up with the same understanding, or ought to anyway. The
God of vengeance, of fire and brimstone, of floods and famine and
destruction and war is no more. The rainbow is proof of this. Yahweh is now
and forever the God of steadfast love who calls us to justice, to
righteousness, to love, and to shalom from wherever we are.

Even when we choose to create storms in our lives or the lives of others
God is not going to respond in violence. Rather God will always, always
respond with Love. That is what steadfast love is all about.

The good news in today’s reading is that we can rest assured that God does
not create storms or trouble in our lives, because God loves us steadfastly.

That’s God’s unbreakable and beautiful promise reflected in every rainbow
that you will ever see.

AMEN

ENDNOTES

1. Brueggemann, Walter, Interpretation, a Bible Commentary, Atlanta, John Knox Press (1982),84.

COPYRIGHT   Scott Elliott © 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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