Natural Faith
I have set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. Genesis 9:13
Bow – We often complain that it is hard to understand faith. It seems to take inordinate effort to act on the basis of invisible realities. We are constantly looking for something “solid” to undergird our trust. One of Today’s Word readers, John Adam, a mathematician, gives us a look at God examples of faith in natural phenomena. Read on.
Has the verse in Hebrews 11 ever caused you difficulties? “Now faith is the substance of things not seen.” How can I have faith in something that is not substantial? With a little insight, we soon discover that God has given us plenty of faith models in the created world. One in particular teaches amazing lessons.
No one doubts the existence of a rainbow. Look up to the sky after a summer shower and there it is. But what exactly is a rainbow? Let the mathematician elucidate: ” The rainbow is at one and the same time one of the most beautiful visual displays in nature, and yet, like a shadow, is an intangible phenomenon. It is illusory in that it is not of course a solid arch; but like mirages, it is nonetheless real. It can be seen and photographed, and described in mathematical terms, but it cannot be located at a specific place (unlike the raindrops causing it), only in a particular direction. It is an image located at infinity, for no matter how near or far away you are from the drops producing it, the angular size remains the same: you cannot “back up” to get more of the rainbow in your camera viewfinder! . . . Interestingly, each observer sees his or her ‘unique’ rainbow, because a different set of raindrops refracts and reflects the light into the eyes of every person looking at the colored bow in the sky.”
“The substance of things not seen” – sounds like a rainbow, doesn’t it? I “see” it, but it’s not really “there”, in the place where I see it. And what I see is not what you see, although we both see the same thing. God’s sign of His covenant with the earth is unique to every observer.
Not even the most adamant atheist would deny the existence of a rainbow. Yet everyone admits that rainbows are real, but not really tangible. Perhaps God left us this sign not simply as a covenant marker but as a reminder that faith is often just like a rainbow. It is the evidence of something that lies beyond us.
If you’re interested in rainbows, shadows, mirages and a host of other patterns in nature, read John Adam’s article posted in the Guest Author section of At God’s Table.
A Tale of Two Covenants: Rainbow and Shmita (The Sabbatical Year)
The story of the flood in Bereishit (Genesis 9:12-17) describes the rainbow covenant as a covenant
with all living creatures, and with the aretz, the Earth or the land.
Something we may not have noticed, but which is so fundamentally important, is that the animals have a place in Rainbow covenant alongside human beings, and that the Earth, or land, is a partner equal to all of them.
As in the Rainbow Covenant, the land is a primary partner in the Sinai Covenant of the Sabbatical
year or Shmita, read on Shabbat Behar. (Leviticus 25) In Lev. 26:34, God declares that the people will
be exiled from the land if they don’t observe Shmita, so that the land can “enjoy her sabbaths.”
The wild animals are also mentioned in the Shmita covenant, and what grows from the land is for them as well as for the people. In this respect, the Shmita covenant is more like Eden, where animals and people share the food from the garden. (The rabbis took this very seriously: fields were not allowed to be completely enclose during Shmitah, and people could only eat and store the foods that were actually growing in the field at that time.) The wild animals, which are explicitly partners in the Rainbow covenant, have a privileged status in the Shmita covenant lest we forget due to self interest.
The following verse from Hoshea (2:18 ) promises a new covenant with all life:
I will make a covenant for them on that day, with the wild animal of the field and with the bird of the skies
and all crawling on the earth; and bow and sword and war I will break from the land, and they will lay down
in safety.
In the rainbow covenant after the flood, even though the animals and human beings were equal partners, humans were given permission to kill and eat meat, and God told them that “a fear and terror of you” will be upon all the animals. Like the rainbow covenant of the flood, Hoshea foresees a covenant which will include all the creatures of the Earth. Unlike the flood story, however, Hoshea imagines a time when the not only God, but also human beings, have laid down their bow, “so that all may safely rest”. The prophetic vision of Hoshea is also reflected in the Shmita rules about sharing our food with the animals.
This has me reflect on a teaching in Shabbat Behar-Bechukotai, .
Wen we read in Leviticus 25 about the rhythm of rest for the Earth and human Earthlings—for a year, every seventh year—a commitment that according to Torah came straight from Sinai. It is followed in the Jewish calendar this year by Rainbow Day, the 27th of Iyyar, on May 6- 7—the date when Noah’s family and the animals left the ark and received the Rainbow Covenant. Noah’s name means “Restful One,” and both these moments beckon us toward a sacred, restful relationship with Earth.
Shabbat Behar also beckons us toward the following week’s celebration of Shavuot (May 13-14), the festival with a double meaning: the fulfillment of both the spring’s wheat harvest and the fulfilling Covenant at Sinai with YHWH, the “Interbreathing” of all life, and the symbol of that covenant in the
celebration of Shabbat. Again, rest is the central recollection of the In-Breath/Out-Breath that intertwines all life.
On the other side, there is a foreboding contrast between the Rainbow Covenant, and the pollution of
Planet Earth with overburning fossil fuels. The tension between these dynamic relationships in many ways defines the predicament of our time.
“YHVH” Itself—the Holy Name that can experienced in one way by breathing—reminds us that we breathe in what the trees breathe out; the trees breathe in what we breathe out. What we call the “climate crisis”
is a dangerous imbalance in those breathings—carbon dioxide and oxygen—in our planetary atmosphere. The “climate crisis” is a crisis in the very [ SHEM ] Name of God.
The connection between the Sabbatical and Jubilee years and the covenant with Noah and the animals is no mere accident. How so? The covenant of Noah’s time—the first covenant recorded in the Torah—includes the land and the animals as covenant partners with God alongside the human family. This is also the case with the sabbatical/Jubilee covenant: the land is promised her Sabbaths as a condition for the Israelites to settle upon the land, while the people are required in the Sabbatical year, when the land is resting, to open their fences to allow the wild animals in to eat their fill.
The first condition—to let the land rest—is a fulfillment of the promise in the rainbow covenant that
God will no longer destroy the land because of humanity: here God promises to exile humanity in order to save the land from being destroyed. The second condition—allowing the wild animals into the fields—is a tikkun, a healing, for what happened after the rainbow covenant: even though the animals were partners in God’s covenantal promise not to destroy the earth, they afterwards became fodder for the humans (“like green plants I give you them all”).
Instead, here, in the Sabbatical year, the humans are required to allow their agriculture to go wild and to
invite the wild animals to share what grows. This is not only a tikkun for the permission granted to human beings to eat animals. It is also a return to the Garden of Eden, where animals and human beings shared the same food.
In the rainbow covenant God promised not to destroy the Earth because of us, but God did not promise
that we wouldn’t destroy the Earth. As the oil industry and our oil addiction threaten vast ecosystems, important food sources, and endangered species, we must realize that God’s covenant is not enough to save us. The iridescent colors reflected off an oil slick are like a twisted and distorted rainbow. They remind us that we have reached a point where we can undo God’s rainbow covenant at the expense or our own lives and the lives of other creatures.
As ancient rabbinic midrash warns and a Southern black spiritual sings: “God gave Noah the Rainbow Sign: No more water, the Fire next time.” Whether the Fire is nuclear holocaust or
global climate “scorching,” it is a shattered, twisted version of the Rainbow Sign that appears to us in our own inventions, de-creating God’s creation, shattering God’s promise.
These are the worst of times, because the threat is that close and that enormous. And these are the best of times, because we can wake up to our potential for love and righteousness and create a sustainable world, a world that reflects the rainbow covenant as it was meant to be: a promise to honor and cherish all beings, as God does, and so to act in God’s image.
How can we act with vigor to create a planetary Beloved Community? We must address the Pharaohs of
Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Gas, which are bringing these plagues upon the Earth, as did the ancient Pharaoh, who through arrogance and stubbornness brought locusts, hailstorms, and death upon his country.
Michael on this Shabbat I have been reading in and out of today’s word as I was searching the archives I came across your short essay I would like to read more and have a better understanding of these truths can you please help me ? Bandjodem at gmail dot com Shalom