Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come.  Take my lips and speak with them, take our minds and think with them, take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you.  In Christ’s name, we ask it.  Amen.

I feel certain most if not all of us have had a really cool moment with a rainbow.  Perhaps you discovered one when you least expected it.  Or perhaps you found a rainbow in the most unlikely of places.  Or perhaps you saw one just when you needed something colorful in your life.  I have.  It was the summer before my senior year at UT and I had just gone through a terrible break up with a girl I really, really cared for.  I was not handling the loss well, so my friends decided to take me on a trip to Colorado.  My buddies believed a little male bonding surrounded by the breathtaking beauty of the Rocky Mountains was just the cure my aching soul needed.  In many ways, they were so right.  We traveled to Telluride and while there we went on an overnight hiking and camping trip.

The trip took us straight up the side of a mountain, without a doubt it was the most difficult hiking trip I have ever been on.  Just as we approached the tree-line (that point were the trees stop growing because of the altitude) an afternoon shower blew in.  We waited it out patiently under the trees and then moved on up, beyond the tree line.  The view overlooking our ascent was now clear with the trees out of the way.  It was lovely.  After a moment, we continued on now walking horizontally along a path that would take us to the other side of the peak.  When we arrived on the other side of the mountain, it was there.  I suppose it was a result of the afternoon shower—the beginning of a rainbow.  It was coming out of the side of the mountain at our eye level and then it arched into the valley below.  I can honestly say I have been to the end of a rainbow and reached out and touched it, of course you feel nothing since it’s simply light.  Nonetheless, standing in a rainbow is an awe-inspiring experience, truly (FYI, there was no pot of gold present, I looked). 

I remember letting my friends move on so that I could have a moment alone.  I sat down with the rainbow now just above my head.  It unfolded before me cascading into the valley below much like a waterfall of color.  It was so beautiful.  It was so hopeful.  I knew only a God who is the definition of beauty could imagine and speak such a thing into being.  I felt close to God in that moment, so I prayed and gave God the pain I was suffering over my lost relationship, as the scripture says, “I cast my cares upon Him,” and my heart began to heal.  I realized that everything would be alright.  A new bright and colorful day had dawned in my life.  And the rainbow above my head was a sign that God would be with me in it and in all the days that followed.

In our Old Testament lesson, Noah and his companions the furry and feathered ones as well as his fellow human beings are greeted by a most welcome rainbow following nearly a year of floating in an ark to escape the devastation of a great flood.  Our lesson reads, “God said, ‘I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.  When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant…and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.’”  For Noah and his companions, the rainbow is a sign that a new bright and colorful day has dawned for all of creation.  The rainbow above the heads of Noah and his companions, human and creature a like, is a sign that God will be with them in that new day and in all the days that follow.     

Today is the first Sunday of Lent—a season in the life of our church when the people of God set aside forty days to prepare our hearts and minds for the coming celebration of our Lord’s glorious resurrection.  Traditionally, the process of preparation includes self-denial, self-examination and repentance.  The tradition of self-denial, giving something up for Lent, is not about losing weight or improving self-image, it’s symbolic of peeling back the lairs of self-centeredness and worldly desires that separate us from a life-giving relationship with God and others.  Self-examination is the process of intentionally looking inward, recognizing, and naming those things in our lives and lifestyles that are clearly not of God.  We are then moved to repentance—to turning our lives around.  We repent by, first, confessing those things we have identified in our lives that keep us from meaningful and healthy relationships with God and others.  And, second, we turn from our destructive ways, make amends with those we have hurt, and work diligently not to fall back into patterns of un-health and abuse. 

This “soul work”, if you will, is certainly important work for us to do.  Lent is the church’s way of holding us accountable to growing spiritually and making those necessary changes in our lives when we are living in patterns of un-health and abuse.  And certainly when we live into our Lenten challenge and with God’s help redeem parts of our lives, we are more prepared to enter into the joys of our Easter celebration.     

Again, ending unhealthy patterns in our lives, reconciling broken relationships, and, most importantly, growing closer to God in Christ is all good stuff.  I think we can all agree that this is important work.  However, when I reflect on the covenant that God makes with Noah and his companions, something in our Lenten discipline seems to be missing to me.  You see Lent as we understand it and live into it can lead us to focus perhaps too much on the self.  Of all our many sins and shortcomings worthy of contemplation during Lent, probably the sin of species pride, or specieism, is the one most rarely considered.  If anything, Lent probably has elevated the human-centeredness of the Christian faith, focusing almost single mindedly on our own self-improvement and the reconciliation of our broken human relationships.  

Today’s Old Testament lesson redirects our homo-centrism, and forces us to acknowledge the special relationship that exists between God and all of creation, not just humans.  Remember the covenant, signed by the rainbow, that God makes with Noah and his companions furry, feathered and human alike.  This covenant is not just between God and humans.  It is between God and all of creation.  The covenant includes plants, animals, and all the earth.  Perhaps you remember from the creation story in Genesis that God calls each part and every step of creation good, not just the sixth day when God created humans.  God’s love for and covenant with all the created order points out the arrogance of the human perspective that declares other orders of creation as “lower forms of life.”  Specieism is based on a skewed interpretation of dominion and it fails to recognize the interdependence of all created life.  Though God does give humanity dominion over the created order, dominion doesn’t suggest that creation is something to be used for our own pleasure; instead, dominion means that we have stewardship and responsibility for the creation’s well being.  Remember, for Jesus, being first or in a place of authority always…always means being foremost a servant.

Perhaps this year’s Lenten journey can begin for us by recognizing God’s unique commitment to all creation, which should redefine our own relationship to the earth and its inhabitants.  Nature is not our resource, our tool, our commodity, our machinery, or our stage.  It is our brother, our sister, and our ancestor.  The creation story in Genesis portrays God delightedly weaving together the various fabrics of God’s imagination into the complex network of a living, breathing planet.  Each and every phase of this creative activity bears the personal fingerprints of God and is good.  The human beings God creates on the sixth day of the Genesis story share the same relationship to God as does the rest of creation—complete and utter dependence upon God for our very existence, and continued dependence upon our fellow creatures for sustaining our existence.  

It is no coincidence that the somber period of Lent coincides with the coming of spring. As we move toward Easter, the cycle of life begins again: flowers begin to bud, grass begins to grow, hibernating animals awaken, and the entire earth rouses to its resurrection to new life.  The creation not only illustrates for us the redemption of life through Jesus’ death and resurrection; it also participates in that event as a full partner with humanity in the covenanted love of God the Creator.  In New Harmony, Indiana, inscribed on a stone marker along a winding pathway in a grove of evergreen trees, there is this quote: “Man and nature belong together in their created glory, in their tragedy, and in their salvation.”

Perhaps next time we see a rainbow it will remind us, not only that God is with us in each new day (which he is), but that God through Christ is with the whole world in each new day.  And, perhaps this Lent our spiritual disciplines might include walking a little more and driving a little less, or reading Dr. Suess’ Lorax to a child, or planting a seed, or beginning to recycle.   Finally and, perhaps most importantly, God’s covenant with all of creation might mean that our beloved pets, like my dog Leroy, will still be at our sides even beyond the end of time.  Amen.

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