Every Rainbow is Good News
Mark 1:9-15
Colleen Hartung
Today’s readings are connected by a thread that takes us from Genesis with its rainbow set by God in the heavens as a promise to never again destroy the earth by a flood to The First Letter of Peter where the author claims that the catastrophic flood of Genesis, which only 8 people survive, prefigures Christian baptism to the Gospel of Mark with its baptism of Jesus and the proclamation of good news. Collapsing this series of associations, rainbow to flood, flood to baptism, and baptism to good news would be a stretch in terms of a logical, air tight argument but the organization of the lectionary readings today suggests this possibility and I am going to take the bait. So, collapsing this series of associations, rainbow to flood, flood to baptism, and baptism to good news, we might say, that every rainbow is good news. Every rainbow is akin to the heavenly dove in Mark’s gospel and the voice from heaven proclaiming the good news; you are my Child, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.
The traditional Lenten point of these readings has to do with the focus in Genesis on the inclination of the human heart which the author of Genesis says is evil from youth. But as well, there is God’s mercy signified by a rainbow and fulfilled by the coming of Jesus, who, according to The First Letter of Peter, suffered for our sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous in order to bring us to God. This is a traditional, sort of overall framing, that is meant to remind us of our inherent sinfulness, and the horrific cost that will be paid for our salvation by Jesus on the cross. Here the rainbow, hanging in the heavens, is a reminder of our sin and God’s mercy. This rainbow connection seems straightforward enough, a little bit like a platitude, boring in its expectedness and mostly noncontroversial. But, like so many things these days, the rainbow has become a flashpoint, a source of conflict, something that separates us along a deep and violent socio-cultural chasm. What I am hoping for today, at least in the context of this homily, is a recognition and embrace of this controversial rainbow that might calls us to a deeper and different kind of reflection on sinfulness, mercy and the promise of baptism.
The lighting of the ark last summer at the new “Ark Encounter” theme park in Louisville, Kentucky, takes us to the heart of this sociocultural divide. On July 17, 2017, they flipped the switch for the first time on the rainbow light extravaganza displayed across the length and breathe of the park’s full-size ark, 510 ft. long, 85 ft. wide, 51 ft. high. The next day, Ken Ham, the head of the Creationist Network and park developer tweeted a picture of the ark illuminated with the colors of the rainbow, stripe after stripe across the enormous length of this huge boat. Imagine it!! A giant rainbow decked ark. The picture Ham tweeted of the rainbow ark included the following tag: “Christians need to take back the rainbow as we do @ArkEncounter. God owns it. He decreed it’s a sign of His covenant with man after the Flood.” The response to his tweet was fast and furious and a little funny. One person tweeted, “That is the most beautiful gay boat I have ever seen.” Another, “Love your LGBT support Ken. Well done mate.” And another, “#LoveWins,” with a long string of emoji’s including a rainbow, two men holding hands, a heart emoji, gay family emoji, another heart emoji, two men holding hands, and finally, another rainbow emoji”, and so on and so on. And then Ken Ham responded with a retweet of his rainbow lit ark, commenting, “The rainbow is a reminder God will never again judge the wickedness of man with a global Flood – next time the world will be judged by fire.
For Christians with Ham’s world view, it is pretty simple. The biblical narrative about Noah and the ark is a foundational story of God’s boundless mercy for the righteous few. The rainbow signifies an exclusive salvation where only the baptized who claim an alignment with a certain set of biblical standards, are saved. For Ham and his ilk, the rainbow flag, created by Gilbert Baker back in 1978, waved in parades across the decades and across the world by increasing numbers of people, displayed more and more openly on ties, socks, hats, tee shirts, on the cover of books, in school clubs across the United States and on the lapels and name tags of people in open and affirming churches like this one, this flag has muddied the waters. The stripes on the rainbow flag represent a varying set of values familiar to all religious traditions but it is the spectrum of colors that stands for the primary importance of inclusion. The rainbow flag stands for the inclusion of all people in the rights afforded to members of a civil community regardless of how you identify in terms of gender and regardless of who you love. Here the rainbow represents a commitment to inclusion and a promise of solidarity. The crux of the problem for Ken Ham and others, is that the rainbow flag displayed proudly by so many LGBTQI activists and their supporters presents a challenge to the exclusive character of a Christianity where baptism functions as a gateway the includes some while it excludes others from membership and from salvation.
In a religious community or system, where belonging and basic rights are based on your identification as a righteous believer, it does, eventually, become a personal question of who, specifically, is included and who, specifically, is excluded. And we in this room have all born witness to the suffering and carnage that continues to take place in relation to the exclusion of those who identify as LGBTQI+.
As a young mother, back in the 1980s, I watched my church going neighbors violently disown their child when he was outed as gay. And I listened helplessly as another neighbor struggled to figure out what to do when she discovered her husband was gay. Should she stay? Should she go? She wanted things back the way they were. She loved him. She said she had her children to think about. She stayed. I watched these dramas unfold in my little neighborhood in a small town in rural Iowa and I thought, my God, there has got to be a better way. I promised I would not do this to my children. I would not repeat this cycle of heartache and sin. This was a covenant of sorts, with my toddler and her brother and sister who would be born years later, that I fixed my life around, more and less successfully. And eventually, in pursuit of conditions that resonated with this promise, like so many of you, I found my way here, to a place where people wear rainbows on their name tags and the baptismal fount with free-flowing waters sits in the center of the gathering space.
At the Sunday Assembly we have an open table, so in practice baptism per se is not a requirement for membership. And like the open table, we all gather around the fount when someone in our community is formally baptized. Together, without knowing or caring who is baptized and who is not, we make proclamations and promises. We call each person who is baptized a child of God. And we all promise to be God’s presence in their lives. And then we clap and rejoice. An echo, or reverberation, perhaps of that voice from heaven proclaiming, “You are my Child, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased.” And then we hug and celebrate, we touch the water and, in that moment, we are all bathed in the mercy of baptism. I looked the word “mercy” up in the dictionary. It means, “compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm”. And there it is. Mercy. Compassion. Forgiveness. The message of the rainbow flag and the good news. Every act of compassion and forgiveness that includes the excluded and overcomes our tendencies toward harm and punishment is an act of mercy and a proclamation of good news. The message of inclusion displayed by the rainbow flag resonates with and is good news. Every rainbow on every lapel, on every t-shirt, on every button or hat or flag is good news. And so I’ll end where I started, collapsing a series of associations, rainbow to flood, flood to baptism, and baptism to good news so that we might say, with conviction, that every rainbow is good news.