David Orendorff · Genesis 9:8-17

You know the story of Noah. Is it historical fact? That is, was there someone named Noah who saved his family, and his family alone, along with two of every kind of animal from a catastrophic flood that killed all other life on the entire planet? I am a skeptic and so I doubt it.

Is it historically true? That is, is there truth in the story of Noah that transcends the facts and gets at the heart of what it means to be human and in relation to God? I think it is very true. Every generation and each of us, has at sometime faced a seemingly endless storm, a flood that threatens to destroy our world and in which we attempt to gather all that we love around us and stay safe. If it is not the struggles of marriage and family, it is the devastation of disease, poverty, environmental destruction or war. On the clearest day, storms languish just over the horizon waiting to rain on our parade. It is to this storm of suffering and death that God speaks to us in Noah.

After the forty days and nights of rain, after two weeks of waiting for the water to subside, and after the Ark has come safely to rest on dry land, God speaks this promise: Genesis 9:8-17

This is the second Sunday of Lent. Lent is a stormy season. Before us is betrayal, humiliation, torture and a horrible dying. Before us is a storm time that frightens the wise. It is a storm we would quickly pass through if we could choose. It is the storm of our present weakness and our coming death.

When Vickie’s grandmother died one winter it was not unexpected. In fact, her suffering had been so long and so without hope that we were praying for her to die. Grandma was cremated. And in the summer, when the family could gather we took Grandma’s ashes to Paradise Valley, south of Livingston, Montana to a family cemetery.

Riley, Vickie’s nephew was three at the time and kept asking to look into the urn. It would have been OK with me, but Riley’s mother gave him a firm “No.” We found out later that Riley’s mother, in an attempt to protect him from the consequences of death and cremation, told him that Grandma had been reduced and that there was now a miniature Grandma in the urn and of course he wanted to see the miniature Grandma.

But Grandma was not reduced. Grandma was dead after two years of bed sores, hemorrhages, lost friends, family, voice and mind. Someday, Riley will encounter death, fight with his parents, fight with a loved one, lose hope, be confused, and die - storms come. Someday Riley will know that Grandma was reduced to suffering long before she was reduced to ash.

Notice that in today’s scripture God has not promised otherwise. God says not if but “When I bring clouds over the earth…” (Gen 9:14). There will be storms. In fact, the rainbow promise can only exist in the storm; it is the joining of sun and storm that makes a rainbow. No storm - no rainbow. No sun - no rainbow. No suffering - no promise. It sometimes takes a mighty rain to make us lift our eyes from earth to the colors of heaven.

I am convinced that Lent and suffering are an essential season to our lives and often are the very thing we need to grow more like Jesus. The deep changes in our lives need that we have ridden in the ark with all the filth of the animals, and all the uncertainty of tomorrow; have ridden in the ark until we are sick and tired of being sick and tired. As long as we can skip merrily along the road of happy destiny, we don’t mature. When Lent comes we see what we hold dear washed away, we sit for days and nights wondering if hope is the last great illusion. We surrender our survival to the mercy of God not because we have a sudden faith awakening, but because we are left with no other options and choose the uncertain irrational over certain death. In this desperate moment we have a chance for growing up in God’s mercy.

Once, when I had said something like this, a friend said to me, “You are too negative. Life does not have to have suffering. If you hold positive, loving thoughts, then there is no dark side of life.” There are those who tell us that it is we who make the storms. We make troubled children, divorce, cancer, tsunamis, destruction and war; that there really is no evil, no storm, only our bad attitudes, bad thoughts, bad souls.

To some degree my friend and others are right. Bad attitudes, bad thoughts, and bad habits can make good times bad. Sometimes we are the makers of our own pain. But sometimes it is simply raining on our side of life through no fault of our own and our only hope is in the promise of the “soon-to-come” sun offered by a rainbow.

When she was in High School Johanna would often introduce me to her friends by saying, “This is my father. The first thing out of his mouth is always a lie.” Sadly, she is about half right, it is usually the second thing out of my mouth. If I told you that I am so close with God that death and suffering don’t frighten me, I would be lying. Even Jesus prayed to avoid a suffering death at the end and only went to the cross in subservience to God and for us.

Getting married; having children; helplessly watching a loved ones illness; waiting up late on cold, slippery nights for that child to come home; avoiding doctors because it might be serious; wondering if I can ever really succeed or if my “all-to-weak life” will finally catch me, being ‘half minded’ in a nursing home are a few of the storms that frighten me.

The pretense of “fearing no storm” fuels much of our over-consumption, because in truth we are very afraid of the infinite possible storms. We spend billions on instant pain relievers, instant therapy, instant relief, instant beauty, and instant religion. Many of us avoid visiting hospitals, nursing and funeral homes. We buy exercise machines which sit like ancient idols in the corner of the room, smiling at our every new pound. From the day of our birth, we want to escape what is inevitable. Life has suffering, pain and death. And every year at this time, beginning on Ash Wednesday and continuing to Holy Saturday, we are confronted with that even Jesus’ life, the beloved child of God, has suffering, pain and death. It is not a pretty picture, but it is our picture.

In Lent God invites all creation to look fully into the face of the rising storm, and then beyond its terrible rage to see God’s bow, a bow of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. I know the scientists tell us that it is the refraction of light waves that makes the rainbow and they are right. But it is God who has mixed the colors of light so that when the storm bends its ray, we see the promise and we remember we are loved and that this storm, like every other storm, will reveal the beautiful mystery of our future and our salvation.

This promise was lived out by Gary, Hillary and Annie who were literally babies when they met in a Salt LakeHospital that specialized in the rare cancers of children. Over the years and through scores of treatments they got to know each other well. They learned to walk together, talk together, and share the wisdom of being 1 and 2 together. Theirs was a friendship born and nurtured in the wilderness. They didn’t know how sad their lives were. For them it was life.

Hillary was the first to die. She was only two. It upset Gary some, but Annie was very upset. It is hard when your best friend dies, even when you are three. Gary died next. He had just turned three. Because Hillary’s death had so upset Annie, and because Annie’s health was so fragile, Annie’s parents kept Gary’s death a secret.

One day Annie came in from playing and said to her mom, “Why didn’t you tell me that Gary is dead?”

“How do you know that Gary is dead,” her mother asked.

“Because,” said Annie, “I just saw Gary and Hillary sitting in God’s lap and God was reading a book to them.” Annie at three knows what it takes most of us a life time to learn. Annie lived until almost nine before she climbed into God’s lap with Hillary, Gary and a big book.

Though life has suffering and death, it is also has rainbows promising the coming sun. At the end of life is a great big God with a great big lap and lots of colorful books. Life is everywhere full of the God who loves us, who comes to us in the storm, and guides our weary ark to the dry land. So when your sky is dark and threatening, look to the heavens and watch for God’s rainbow promise of love forever.

Shalom and Amen.