Sep 10 | Resistance Lectionary Part 11: From Weapon to Wonder

Citation: Genesis 9:8-17

This is the kind of the passage that makes a lot of folks think of Sunday School and Noah’s “arky-arky.” When passages become so familiar, they can lose a lot of their “oomph.”

Most of us who know the story of Noah learned as children that the “bow” referenced here is the rainbow – and here is where we learn its mythic origin! We’re not going to explore this scientifically because for a passage like this facts matter less than meaning. To quibble over such things is to completely miss the point.

Nowadays, of course, the rainbow has taken on a whole new added meaning, as a symbol of pride for the LGBTQ2S+ community.

But the story doesn’t lose any of its power when we weave in this new meaning. Quite the opposite.

The English word “bow” used here is not a shortcut to “rainbow,” or a reference to a ribbon or a sign of respect. This thing that God is referring to is a weapon.

And God is laying it down.

God is making a covenant, a promise, to stick with all of us through thick and thin.

The rainbow is therefore no longer a weapon – a tool of fear, subjugation, and violence – but a symbol of the beautiful bond of love that exists between mortals and the divine. It represents God’s commitment to us no matter what happens.

It is therefore a most appropriate symbol for the queer community, many of whom struggle daily to reconcile their faith with their sexuality. In the rainbow, in our beauty and our strength and our frailty and our lovely messy sexy lives shining through the rain of uncertainty and fear and pain, God rejoices in the love that she promised to each of us.