Easter 4 - 21 April 2024: Genesis 7:1-5, 11-18, 8:6-18, 9:8-13; Acts 4: 5-12 and John 10:11-18
Eva Cassidy, Frank Sinatra, Pink and Rufus Wainwright are amongst those who’ve covered Judy Garlard’s Oscar winning song from The Wizard of Oz.
Somewhere over the rainbow
way up high
A song about wishing upon a star and dreaming of dreams coming true; of blue skies and trouble melting like lemon drops.
Somewhere over the rainbow…
there’s a land that I heard of
once in a lullaby.
In the film, Dorothy wonders out loud to her dog Toto if there’s ‘someplace where there isn’t any trouble’ and concludes that there must be; but that it’s far, far away. She wants to get away from Kansas and, as the lyricist Yip Harburg put it, ‘she had never seen anything colorful in her life except the rainbow’.
And so, the famous song was born: a song which, depending on who sings it, evokes hope or sadness:
If happy little bluebirds fly
beyond the rainbow
why, oh, why can’t I?
Our first reading today ends with a rainbow set in the clouds - as a sign for future generations of God’s covenant with the earth, humanity and all living creatures.
Until that point, Noah and his companions may have identified more with the words of a little known intro that Garland only sang once. In a 2009 cover, Jewel all but whispers it:
When all the world is a hopeless jumble
and the raindrops tumble all around
heaven opens a magic lane.
Raindrops tumbling, pouring and flooding. The hopeless jumble of a world destroyed by human greed, ambition and carelessness. The waters and the ark become an icon of that ‘magic lane’; a way of safety. There are no bluebirds beyond the rainbow; but a raven flying to and fro before it. And the dove - returning once, and then a second time with an olive leaf, before flying free.
There is a promise of a world beyond the rainbow - of restored relationship and renewed hearts; of hope, justice, mercy and righteousness; of love embodied and enacted - fully, faithfully.
It is no lullaby, designed to soothe us to sleep; the promise of a world that evaporates when we awake.
Instead it is a vision of the world as God intends it to be; a world that our hearts long for.
Yet, like the judges judging Peter and John, power and its misuse can create dividing lines. Lines that evaluate others based on their status as social or economic status: based on health, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, education, age.
No wonder that the rainbow has become a sign of liberation and equality! It is a sign of hope, forgiveness and life - it stands against the destruction of life, and for the commandment to love God and neighbour as ourselves.
The alternative is literally deathly. When human beings are evaluated as socially or economically useful, we see not only division and competition. At its extreme something life-limiting and life-denying is unleashed. As Matthew Parris wrote last month in a world of inputs and outputs, some lives - the vulnerable, frail or elderly - are worth less than the energy of the young or more nimbler.
His column on assisted dying was published on Good Friday.
An irony which highlights the radically alternative view which we hear running through our scriptures: a pulse of love that carries us through life and breaks the bonds of death; a pulse of love that speaks of communion, healing, compassion and peace.
God set that bow in the sky as a promise that the world would not be destroyed; that the response to our tendency to selfishness or harm would not be a deathly waterflood. When we see the colour of that bow, caught as sun hits rain clouds, we are reminded of an alternative view of humanity; and of God’s ways of loving.
In Jesus, God became one of us - flesh of our flesh. Jesus is love with us, laying down his life for us. In John’s Gospel, he describes himself as the good shepherd. It’s an image that evokes the shepherding of Moses and David before they responded to God’s call to be agents of freedom or leadership.
It reminds us that God is the true shepherd - gathering together and binding up, leading by still waters; taking us through the valley of death to a rich banquet.
Jesus, the good shepherd, knows us and we know him. However much we wrestle with doubts, fears, distractions - we are reminded that we belong to God and each other; that we are known and loved.
Jesus contrasts himself with the hirelings - who do not have our interests or wellbeing at heart: those who attention and love is thin and unsafe; who abandon others in the face of danger because they do not want to carry the cost of life together.
Instead Jesus lays down his life for us - rescuing us from death and inviting us to look after others in the flock. He calls us - and others we may not see as part of our flock, but who are known and beloved.
When Peter speaks to those judging him in Acts - his story is an improvisation on this narrative of love he has known and witnessed; the love that recalled him from denial to renewed faith; the love that invited him to feed the sheep.
That love was known in Jesus of Nazareth: crucified by human beings, raised by God.
In him, claims Peter, is the power to heal the broken. The one who was rejected is the cornerstone, the one on whom we can build life, together; the one who enacts a different social order.
His words create a moment of silence. A silence that is broken: the judges judge the judged - a tragedy that means they miss an opportunity to rebuild their own lives. They do not see the good news of the judgement made by God in Christ - the burden of sin condemned and released; life given over instead to the generous and peaceable movement of the Spirit.
We and every disciple come to this palace of sacrifice and abundance: receiving the gifts of God in bread and wine; remembering the story we are called to improvise on in our lives. Here, we are invited to connect our faith to the world's need - to echo the divine love for creation.
Here we are fed, rested and carried by the good shepherd who’s boundless love assures us that we belong and invites us to follow.
How will we share the love of a shepherd who is patient, bold, determined: long nights and dangerous days in the pastures and the mud? It is an invitation to share goodness in the valleys and wild places of the world, amongst the wolves and with the flock.
Somewhere over the rainbow is now.
That place that we’ve heard of is here.
© Julie Gittoes 2024
