Control, Alt, Delete
The rainbow as God's Post-it Note.
It never fails…you’re on your laptop working on a document or even playing a game and then it stops working. The computer is frozen. It could be that what are you doing is more than the active memory on the computer. Or maybe it’s just some glitch of some kind. Whatever the cause, your laptop is frozen. So, what do you do?
Well, the solution is really not that technical. In fact, it is pretty simple- if you know computers. Whenever the computer is not working all I have to do is hit three keys on the keyboard, Control, Alt, Delete. In technical terms, this is called a soft reset. But every so often, Control, Alt, Delete isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to do what is called a hard reset, which means turning the computer off and on again. This means that shutting down all the open programs and maybe you lose that 80-page thesis. As it shuts down every program, the hard reset should clear whatever is causing the glitch. But no one likes to do the hard reset because it is so disruptive. The soft reset allows you to still do some things, but a hard reset is starting from square one.
When we look at this story of Noah and the Flood, it can look like God is doing a hard reset. God isn’t interested in just hitting control, alt, delete on all of creation. Nope. God wants to do the hard reset. Why? In Genesis 6:5-7 we see why God wants to send a flood to and it shows someone who has a broken heart. Here is verses 5-7 in the Message translation of the Bible:
God saw that human evil was out of control. People thought evil, imagined evil—evil, evil, evil from morning to night. God was sorry that he had made the human race in the first place; it broke his heart. God said, “I’ll get rid of my ruined creation, make a clean sweep: people, animals, snakes and bugs, birds—the works. I’m sorry I made them.”
In the creation story when God was done, God looked at all of creation and called it good. Now time has passed, and God wasn’t so happy these days. God looks at creation, especially humans were not living up to God’s expectation. Evil was out of control.
God was angry at what was going on, but this wasn’t simply turning red and lashing out. The anger that is talked about here is one borne of grief. God is heartbroken. Imagine how a parent feels when their child goes down the wrong path. When that child is born, parents have such hopes for their kid and if that child ends up addicted to drugs or alcohol or runs away, there is anger at how one is treated, but that anger comes from a broken heart.
When the flood waters cease, Noah and the animals come out of the ark and God tells them that God will never, ever flood the earth again. God makes a covenant with humanity, that God would never do something so destructive ever again.
The rainbow that appears at the end of the story is God’s post-it note, a reminder that God would never destroy all of creation again. God would try another way, a way that wasn’t good for God, since again - God would be heartbroken. But God would make a way to set things right. It starts with the ark, to the rainbow which is a promise that God would not wipe out all of creation, and leads all the way to Jesus. Over and over God was finding a way to redeem God’s creation. The cross is another sign of God’s love for a creation that always seems to define God.
We live in God’s world. In God’s world, God continues to love this messy world and through God’s soft reset, the world continues to be redeemed. We are free to celebrate God’s presence, seek justice and care for creation. No more hard resets. We know the rainbow gives a sign of hope, a sign of love.