I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

On Wednesday night I spoke of the Lenten journey as one where we know the destination - the cross, the empty tomb and the power of the resurrection – but we don’t know the details of the journey.

Each year it is different and even within each year, each of us will experience the journey differently, depending upon our challenges, our disappointments, our joys in any given year.

But the common feature is that we make this journey, we live our ever-changing lives, in the hands of a God who never changes. Now, in the interest of honesty and fairness, I need to tell you that there are many good and bright and faithful Christians don’t believe that, some probably sitting in this room, right now.

There are those who believe that God changes in thought, in priorities and in nature, as our years of history go by and that which was true once may have changed along with God.

This has always been a popular theology among liberal Christians. In the 1800’s it was used to explain why slavery, which was clearly permitted in scripture should be understood as sinful in the eyes of God today. In the 1900’s it was used to explain why women, who were clearly understood as property of their fathers or their husbands in scripture, should be allowed the full rights of citizenship. And in this century it is being used to argue the place and rights of homosexuals in our culture and in our Churches, without struggling against and with some of the passages of scripture.

God’s view changed I have been told.

But I have never believed it.

There have been any number of times when I have wished that I could believe it and utilize it, to not just gain forgiveness for my sins, but to make my sins non-sinful! It would be useful to consider the words about Sabbath keeping and tithing and loving our enemies to be non-binding upon us, to be able to say: God doesn’t care if I worship, as long as I’m a good person or God doesn’t really mean that we should give the Church a minimum of 10% of what we have or God wasn’t including Muslims or Athiests or Racists in the category of “enemies we should love”

How wonderful life would be if, every time I came across something that God said that would cause me any level of discomfort, I could simply decide “God’s view must have changed on this!”

However, I’ve never been able to pull that off.

Because God’s view changing just doesn’t fit with God’s all-knowing, all-powerful nature as the God who was and is and will be. Now I suspect that there are wheels turning in some of your minds right now, because some of you suspect and some of you know that I probably lean toward what would be called the “liberal” side of the street on a number of issues, so you’re wondering where I’m going with this

No I don’t believe that God changes, but I do believe that we change and our perspective and understandings change. Or they should.

You and I are the ones who are supposed to change, that’s the point of this whole business, that’s what repentance and confession are for. You and I are the ones who are supposed to grow and mature and, dare I say the word, evolve into finer versions of who we are.

There is meant to be a difference in us with each passing day and year and decade, a better understanding of God with each passing sorrow and joy.

There is no difference in God, the difference is in all of us as the observers of God, as the children of God.

I’ve told the story many times about when I visited my hometown of Pompton Lakes, after a good decade or so away and I was immediately aware that someone shrank it. The houses were all smaller, the streets were shorter, the hills were flat and the football stands which seemed to hold masses of people on long ago Saturday afternoons, were just a couple of aluminum bleachers.

They shrunk my town.

But, of course, they didn’t.

It was I who changed, not the town.

And each year, as I visit Lent I see it and understand it and love it through changed eyes, for each year my life, my faith and my world has changed. I am able to smile at the little faith and the embryonic understanding of God that I once had; to celebrate the better, finer and clearer faith that is mine today; and to anticipate, with humility, the stonger, fuller and more mature vision of God that will be mine a year, a decade or more from now.

God doesn’t change, we do.

That’s what we find in scripture, an ongoing series of faithful insights that don’t negate each other but continue to add to and compliment and fulfill each other.

We have, in scripture, the best and clearest understanding of God that human language could develop at a particular moment in history. In an age without libraries and universities and the ability to Google anything, faithful story-tellers assembled the great understandings of the divine creation of the universe, they spoke of the separation by sin between the perfect creator and the imperfect creatures, they explained the development of different language and cultures and they reflected upon the ancient and world-wide stories of a great flood, a deluge.

In all of these stories they sought to explain, not the science nor the history, but the theology of these realities that they faced. I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

And so we begin this Lenten season, as a nation, as a people, as individuals, we are filled with so many fears and uncertainties, yet we have the promise of the rainbow.

It was not a promise given because a blundering God realized what had happened in the flood, it was a promise that people were ready for.

They had seen the great terror of the flood and they thought the world would be destroyed and the creator of the world said “I will never do that. Have faith in me. Trust me. And every time you see a rainbow in the sky, let it be a reminder of my protection in the greatest of storms and my love for this whole world.”

And graciously, God says that it will remind him. As if God is, like so many of us searching for our car keys each morning, incapable of remembering such an important thing.

No, God doesn’t forget and God doesn’t need reminding, the rainbow is there for the same reason God rested on the Sabbath, for our sake. The rainbow is there so that we would always know of God’s protection, the Sabbath is there so that we would remember to rest and to look after the sacred things of life.

I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

It is the first great covenant between God and the world. One writer suggests that this is a one-sided covenant because nothing is expected from Noah and his family, all of the obligation is on God’s side.

But I think that misses the point: faith is expected, from Noah and from us. Faith is what allows us to give up our fears of a destroying flood, of global warming, of a nuclear or biological holocaust, of a job loss, of a runaway tumor, of a betrayed relationship, of a lost retirement dream, of the slow encroachment of age.

Look to the rainbow and remember God’s protective love and realize that these things may well happen, but they will not destroy us. God’s protective love is as real today as it was for Noah, but you need to believe it in order to experience it. You need to let go of the fears that limit you and trust in the God that loves you.

That’s what happened to Jesus in Mark’s brief telling of the wilderness story. Mark never gives us the details of the temptations, and that’s good, especially today as we begin Lent. Most of us don’t struggle with whether or not to use miracles to save us or whether or not to accept great wealth or political power.

But most of us have spent time in the wilderness. Some of us are there right now.

Most of us have had a time of distance, apart from God and his Church, and if we haven’t we should.

We need our wilderness times in order to clarify and prioritize our values and our lives. The wilderness is not to be feared, it is part of our lives. I have always found it important to notice that it is the Holy Spirit, not Satan, who drove Christ into the wilderness. And the Spirit drives us into the same place with different names, it may be the wilderness of our jobs, our communities, our relationships, the places where things aren’t right, you know? The places were we are tempted to ignore our faith. The places where we know there are beasts who threaten us. The places where angels look after us.

The Wilderness experience of Christ comes at the beginning of his ministry, but for us it most properly occurs now, during these six weeks of Lent, during this journey toward the cross and the empty grave.

Whatever your fears are, as you begin this journey, whether they are fears of illness or rejection or failure or emptiness or, most commonly, just the fear that people will discover that you have fears, now is the time to let them go. Now is the time to look to the sky and, as you see the rainbow, to remember that you are traveling under the protection of the one who says “fear not, for I am with you always.”

A poet, whose work I have always admired, puts it this way:
Why are there so many songs about rainbows, and what's on the other side?
Rainbows are visions, but only illusions, ?And rainbows have nothing to hide.
So we've been told and some choose to believe it.
I know they're wrong, wait and see.

Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection, The lovers, the dreamers and me.

There is a rainbow for us to travel under, different colors, different dreams, different hopes, different loves, different roads to walk but all God’s children finding our way through the wilderness.

Put aside your fears, whatever they are today and throughout Lent and you will find, as Christ did, the good news in life, the ever-near presence of the Kingdom of God, the never-changing, always new, loving protection of our Creator who demands only faith in return.

I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.