Jack Coe was a popular evangelist in the first half of the twentieth century. Like many popular evangelists of the time, Coe held his services in a tent. Coe’s tent was a massive structure which would hold ten thousand people.
One day Coe had a dream in which he saw a flood. The dream troubled him so much that he told his wife about it. Later, when he was conducting a crusade in Kansas City, he dreamed once again about a flood. Together these two dreams seemed so real that he felt that perhaps God was sending him a message.
A short while later, while in the midst of a crusade, Coe felt God speaking clearly to his heart, telling him directly to move his tent. He started packing up. The last hours of the removal of the giant tent were sheer panic. Many people mocked Coe as he and his helpers fled in their loaded trucks. However, they were just in time. We’re told that the river rose twenty-two feet over the next few days, and the ensuing flood brought the worst disaster of its kind in North American history. (1)
In the book of Genesis a man named Noah has the same kind of experience, except God doesn’t tell Noah to move his revival tent. God tells Noah to build a large boat. Noah built that boat and Noah was spared. His family was also spared, as were all the animals which he had gathered on his boat. It is a magical story that even our children know quite well.
The important part of the story, however, occurs when the waters begin to recede.
God comes to Noah and his sons and makes a promise to them: “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you every living creature on earth. I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.”
This is an important story. It tells us that every time we see a rainbow it is more than sunlight refracting through water vapor. It is a reminder of God’s covenant. It is a reminder of God’s love. It is a reminder that no matter how disappointed God may become with humanity, never again will the story of the great flood be repeated.
My guess is that, in our materialistic culture, most people who see a rainbow think of the pot of gold that supposedly is at the end of the rainbow rather than God’s promise. And that is a shame. God’s promise is worth far more than a pot of gold.
Besides, according to one popular legend, this pot of gold is guarded by a mischievous mythical creature, the leprechaun. If the treasure is ever in danger of being discovered by a mortal, legend has it, the leprechaun is to trick the human out of his prize!
There is an amusing story of a man who once tricked a leprechaun into revealing the whereabouts of his valuables. The treasure was located beneath a bush in a large field surrounded by other similar shrubbery. The man needed to go off and get a shovel with which to dig up the treasure, so he tied a red ribbon to the bush so he could identify it on his return. He made the leprechaun promise not to remove the ribbon. Convinced he was more clever than the leprechaun and had secured his gold, the man made off to get his shovel. On his return however, much to his dismay, he found that the little creature had tied a red ribbon on every bush in the field! (2)
That is why you never run into anyone who has ever found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. A leprechaun has tricked him out of it. I guess we better not include finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in our retirement planning—though it does make as much sense as betting on the lottery. Nevertheless, in our planning for life, looking for rainbows makes a great deal of sense.
God has made a covenant with us. If you could remind yourself of that truth every time you see a rainbow, it will help you deal with every aspect of your life. God has made a covenant with us. The rainbow is but one symbol of that covenant. The cross is an even more important symbol of it.
On May 12, 1993 two slivers of an olive tree, said to have come from the cross on which Jesus was crucified, were sold for more than $18,000 in an auction in Paris. Accompanying the two slivers of wood were two certificates from the Vatican issued way back in 1855 that apparently authenticated those slivers of wood. (3)
Who knows what this woman’s motive might have been in buying those two relics? Maybe she has more money than she knows what to do with, and bought them on a whim. Perhaps, on the other hand, she will reverently mount them in her home and display them in the same way we might display a precious stone. Or maybe, just maybe, if she really believes them to be authentic, she might forever carry those slivers with her, and each day touch them and remember what Christ has done in her behalf.
If so, she would not be the first to do that. Do you know where the expression “knock on wood” comes from? Maybe you have knocked on wood for luck at some time in your life. I read recently that the “knock on wood” superstition originated from an ancient practice that has nothing to do with luck at all. According to this ancient practice a person would touch wood whenever he or she experienced an act of good fortune. The reason he or she would touch wood was in gratitude to Christ who died on a wooden cross. (4)
Actually, this ancient practice sounds like a good idea. Don’t “knock on wood” to change your luck. It won’t work anyway. It’s a mere superstition. However, when something good happens to you, knock on wood or simply touch a piece of wood and say thank you for all that Christ has given you including his own life.
This is the first Sunday of Lent. We are preparing ourselves for the celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection. Truly what happened in those three days in Jerusalem more than 2,000 years ago dwarfs even the rainbow that Noah saw in the sky. And yet, they are part and parcel of the same story God’s love for fallen humanity. Both declare this mighty truth: God is not interested in punishing humanity for its sin, but in saving humanity from that sin. You and I need to hold on to that promise. It’s spelled out in John 3:17: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” That has been God’s intent since the beginning of time. That’s what a rainbow in the sky means. Every time you see it give thanks. Knock on wood, if you will. God has made a covenant with humanity.
That’s particularly good to know when the storm clouds are rising and you think there might be a flood.
The past few years have been devastating for many families—and I’m not just thinking of those who have been affected by actual floods like those that hit New England, or droughts and wildfires like those that hit Texas, or tornados like those that hit the South and the Midwest this year. I’m thinking about events like the flood of foreclosures and the flood of lost jobs. Studies show that children have been affected by the economic downturn more than any other segment of our population. It’s been a slow recovery for most of us. It’s been an outright depression for many families with kids.
But even when economic times are good, there are other calamities that come like the flood did on Noah’s neighbors sickness, death, divorce. Sooner or later the flood waters begin to rise for all of us. Some of us make it through life with relatively few storm clouds, but no one escapes altogether.
There is a Jewish legend. It is called the “Sorrow Tree.” According to this legend, on the Day of Judgment everyone will be allowed to hang all of their unhappiness on a branch of a great tree. Each person then will walk around the tree and examine all of the troubles hanging in the branches. Anyone may freely choose someone else’s unhappiness as their own. But, the legend concludes, no one will choose someone else’s sorrows: everyone will reclaim their own over those of others.
This is a way of saying that sooner or later all of us will experience the flood waters of adversity. I dare say that some of you have already waded through those waters. Others will someday soon. We need to acknowledge that truth. TV evangelists sometimes give the impression that, if you trust Christ, your life will be one long stream of blessings. That’s a lie. Your heart, your soul, your mind will be blessed but the flood waters will still rise.
Pastor Jerome Cooper of Baltimore tells about a woman named Lynn. Lynn was a woman seeking for truth. Even though she had been a member of a Christian church, she began her intense search for truth in Buddhism. The reason she chose Buddhism is that Lynn was impacted by the suffering of the world and Buddhism deals a lot with suffering. She began that path toward Buddhism, seeking an answer on how to deal with the suffering of the world. However, it was through her seeking an answer in Buddhism, that she was led back to Jesus Christ.
As she thought more and more about suffering, she eventually looked back at Jesus in a new way, and saw that Jesus had also suffered. He had suffered pain of the heart, as well as pain of the body. She saw Jesus answering in a new way the questions she had been asking about suffering.
She could have come to this understanding of the suffering Christ much sooner, but the church as she had known it had painted an entirely different Christ a Christ who was always happy, always positive. She realized that what had been presented to her was only a half truth. It was only the victorious Christ, without the suffering Messiah, and she didn’t relate to that Jesus. (5)
We need to be honest about it lest anyone misunderstand. Sometimes some of the best people that God ever created suffer horribly. People who sing in the choir, people who teach Sunday School, people who serve for years on church boards no one escapes completely. And the vexing part is that we do not know why.
A young minister was in his office when a lady a stranger to him came into the church and into his office.
“Are you the minister here?” she asked.
“Yes, I am,” he replied.
“Come with me,” she said curtly.
They went out to the front of the church where she had her car parked on the street. Stretched out in the back seat, the minister saw a twisted figure of a man. She waved her hand referring to that man, and said, “This is my brother. Paralyzed by an accident caused by a drunk driver. If you are a man of God, do one of two things: (1) heal him, or (2) explain this tragedy.” He could do neither. (6)
Neither can I. I can’t tell you why suffering comes. I can only point you to a rainbow and a cross and say to you: God has not forgotten us. God has promised that He will not forsake us when the flood waters of sorrow and suffering threaten. Hold on to that promise.
I read a story sometime back about Dr. Wayne Oates. You probably will not recognize that name. Wayne Oates was a psychologist and religious educator who coined the word ‘workaholic.’ Oats wrote fifty-seven books, many of them dealing with pastoral psychology. He was a great man who influenced many people, particularly thousands of pastors over his lifetime.
In his autobiography, which is titled The Struggle to be Free, Oates described his growing up years. Wayne Oates knew what it was to struggle. Born to a poor family in Greenville, South Carolina in June 1917, Oates was abandoned by his father in infancy and was brought up by his grandmother and his sister while his mother supported them by working in a cotton mill. His mother made $30 a week. They survived, says one source, on pinto beans, turnip greens, cornbread and molasses.
In his early school years, Oates discovered he had the ability to excel academically. And if he was ever going to get out of the mill town, out of poverty, that might be his way.
“The trouble was,” says this source, “at age 14 everybody had to go to work in the mill and that meant you never graduated from high school. He was tempted to quit studying, but his grandmother told him to keep trying and to remember that life was like a funnel, and that if you started on the small end, the difficult end, the tough end [of the funnel] that then life began to broaden out. But if you started at the easy end, the broad end, life became more narrow all the time.”
What an interesting philosophy!
Wayne Oates worked hard and he had an amazing break at the tender age of fourteen. He was one of a small number of impoverished but bright boys selected by a congressman to serve as a page in the United States House of Representatives. This was a life-changing experience, but it didn’t keep Oates out of the mill forever. Sixteen is the highest age you can be a page and so he had to go back to Greenville and his work at the mill. But he had tasted something more in Washington and so he insisted on finishing high school. He worked his way through Wake Forest University then went on to Southern Seminary, the first of his family to get a higher education.
He writes in his book how difficult it was to leave that mill town and how much the peer pressure was to stay, not to leave. People were saying, “So you think you’re too good to work in the mill, huh? Think you’re better than we are, do you? Just don’t want to have anything to do with hard working folks like us, is that it? I never thought you, Wayne, of all people would ever desert your family.” (7)
But it wasn’t that Wayne Oates felt better than his peers, nor that he wanted to desert his family and friends. It was simply that Wayne Oates was sustained by a promise, the promise of his grandmother that if he kept trying, he would eventually end up at the broad end of the funnel. He was also sustained by God’s promise that whatever came, he would never be alone.
That promise has sustained millions of people through the centuries. Christians do not look at life through rose-colored glasses. We know there will be storms. We know the flood waters will rise, but God has promised us that they will never overwhelm us, and so, in the storm we look for the sign of a rainbow. And it’s there . . . and it will always be there. Even more important, we can see that promise in the cross upon which Christ died. God has made a covenant with us and that covenant will not fail.
1. The Practice of Pentecost. Cited by David Pytches, Does God Speak Today? (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers).
2. http://www.colours-of-the-rainbow.com/legends.html.
3. Moody, April 1993, p. 13. Cited by Raymond McHenry, Something to Think About (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 1998).
4. Vergilius Ferm, Lightning Never Strikes Twice (New York: Gramercy Publishing Company, 1987), p. 131.
5. http://www.centralpc.org/sermons/2001/s011223.htm.
6. David Keller, http://www.gbgm-umc.org/southavenueumc/sermons/God’s%20Blessing %20of%20Health%20and %20Wholeness%202005%20November%2013b.htm.
7. Dr. Peter James Flamming, http://www.fbcrichmond.org/sermons/11-28-99sermon.htm.