“The Colors Through Which we Look at Life”

Fourth in a Series on the Sanctuary Stained Glass Windows

March 14, 2010 Des Moines

Genesis 8:6-12

“The Dove & Olive Branch”

“Reboot.” That one simple exercise has become the primary tool in my computer workbench. If you have any experience with computers at all you already know that “rebooting” is just a fancy word for turning it off and turning it back on again. I don't really understand what that accomplishes; I only know that every now and then it is as though the computer's brain gets rattled -- it suddenly loses its way and gets paralyzed. Programs won't open correctly; windows won't move around like they are supposed to; everything just gets stuck. And the only solution seems to be this absolutely simple one: “reboot.” Shut it down. Turn it back on.

Which is rather like what God did with the flood: having breathed creation into life, installed all kinds of people and programs on it, and operated it for some generations, it all seemed to freeze up, like Microsoft at its worst, into a discombobulated, dysfunctional mess. And so God shut it down, and then turned it back on. There are no doubt more sophisticated ways of talking about the flood, but I think that's the gist of it. After trying this and trying that, there seemed to be nothing left for God to do but “reboot.”

But as horrific as it has always sounded to me, this is not finally a story about vindictive destruction, but rather one about grace; about redemption; about God’s determination to love.

There is something picturesque about this gentle account of the dove. After all this time sequestered in the Ark, Noah first sends out a raven to see if the waters had receded. It was an old mariner's trick, and when the raven shortly returned it told the Captain what he needed to know: hang tight. He later sent out a dove – once, then again, and still again. That final time the dove didn’t return, signaling to Noah that the coast was clear. But it is that second flight – when the dove returned with an olive branch – that has stuck in our imaginations ever since as a moving sign of reconciliation; of, to put it another way, “peace.”

And indeed it was precisely that. By closing up the rain clouds and draining off the floods, God was once again bringing order out of chaos. Here, with a twiggy sign of new life, God was making peace. “We will start this relationship over,” was the implied divine word. And so it happened.

I don't know if you have carefully read the rest of the story, but as it turned out the only thing changed by the flood was God. Humankind proved itself to be just as corruptible after the flood as before. Saintly old Noah had hardly stepped foot off the boat when he promptly got himself drunk and started playing Peter Rabbit, hopping into one bedroom after another. And it all started slipping downhill from there.

But if the reboot hadn't had the desired effect on creation, it turned out to be a clarifying experience for God. “I am not going to do that again,” God resolved, and determined to spend the rest of time seeking no longer to replace or recreate but to heal what was broken.

That, it seems to me, is the message of the dove with the olive branch in its beak captured in glass in the window on the south side of this room: this holy commitment and determination to step over the brokenness between us and heal this land, and to call that healing “peace.”

Other endeavors have borrowed that word, to be sure. When the Roman Empire began to extend its reach around the world as they knew it, they called their influence the Pax Romana – the “peace of Rome.” But what they had in mind – as have empires ever since – was public order and quiet; and how they proposed to create and maintain that “peace” was through victory and submission.

People of faith have always understood peace to describe a very different end, achieved through very different means. Olive branches, for example, rather than swords.

Once upon a time, Jesus told a story about a certain family. It’s a family that could live in any of our neighborhoods. The particulars could vary from house to house, but in this specific family there was a father – a single parent apparently -- doing his best to raise two boys.

Chances are you know the general outline of the story – the younger of the sons asks for and receives his share of the inheritance and leaves home. But it goes badly for him out in the cold, cruel world, and he returns home humbled and chastened, willingly foregoing his family status to work as one of the servants.

Meanwhile, all the time the younger brother has been doing everything wrong, the older brother has been doing everything right – straight “A's”, always home by curfew; belting his trousers up around his waist instead of sagging them below his hips; “yes, sir”, “please,” and “thank-you.” So when Dad throws a party to celebrate the renegade's return, the “good” son pops his top instead of a cork.

“It just isn't right,” he whines. “Shouldn’t there be some kind of hell for him to pay? He shouldn't just get to come back and everything be all hunky-dory. And wait a minute; he isn't getting any more of the inheritance! Everything left is mine!”

Inheritance. Doesn't it often boil down to that? How many families have blown apart over which sibling was going to get this painting or that piece of furniture or this set of dishes or the washing machine – or the table saw, to say nothing of the money. Or the land. Or the jewelry. Or the silver. Sometimes, I suppose, the conflict is over memories and sentimentalities, but oftentimes the issue is simple greed – putting stuff ahead of people.

That's particularly dramatic in Jesus' story of this family. Have you ever wondered, with me, why the younger son confessed, upon returning home, that he had “sinned against” his father? The answer, in part, turns out to be that in asking for his inheritance, he was implicitly jumping over his father's life; effectively counting his father as already dead. As if to say, “I’m more interested in the money than you.”

And isn't that at least some part of the older brother's disapproval of the party thrown for his errant brother's return – that part of what he was supposed to get was being blown on this misguided and misplaced celebration?

Meanwhile, the father – who certainly could have stood steadfast on his principles; who understandably might have exacted an “ounce of flesh,” or demanded groveling while dishing out humiliation – simply placed an olive branch in his hands, overjoyed at his son's return; as though – and here is the really unnerving part – people were more important than anything else.

Is it too simplistic to suggest that the world is the way it is because of our persistent determination to act like one or the other of these sons instead of the father, who, after all, seems to be the point of the story? Is this the kind of world we get when we elevate possessions and principles over people?

Little wonder that scripture is so interested in repentance – a word which doesn't really mean feeling sorry about something, or resolving to “clean up the way I'm living,” but rather means “changing directions.” To repent simply means to choose a different path that leads in a different direction.

Let’s face it: it doesn't really take a rocket scientist to recognize that the “way we are going” – the direction we are headed – isn't likely to get us where we want to go. Which brings me back to the notion of peace. If empires argue that there will be peace on earth when all is quiet and orderly, Jesus counters that there will be peace on earth when all have what they need to flourish. If empires argue that the path to peace is power and victory, Jesus counters that peace will only come when we begin to see ourselves as God already does: as not only uniquely precious, but collectively so; one and whole, and in each other's keeping and care.

When we repent, in other words; when we choose to take a different path; when we begin to carry olive branches, and welcome one another home. Then it will be that we, too, feel the flutter of the wings of a dove, and God will heal our land.