Friday of Week 6 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Mark 8:34—9:1
Having warned his disciples of the future that lies ahead for him, Jesus now calls the crowds and his disciples together, and lets them know in no uncertain terms what following him entails. To be a follower of Jesus is to be ready to go exactly the way that he went:
If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. Whoever wishes to save his life, will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the Gospel will save it.
Yet, this is the paradox. Self-preservation and self-centred aggrandisement leads to nothing, only to a kind of death. Surrendering one’s life totally through a commitment to Jesus and to his Way (as expressed in the Gospel) leads to an enrichment which nothing else can supply.
This is a clear challenge: that anyone who wants to follow Jesus must be ready both to suffer and give their lives in love for others. Those who make every effort to preserve their lives, and hang on to what they have with no regard for transcendent values or the needs of others, are destined to lose everything, not least their integrity, dignity and self-respect.
This was very practical teaching for people who were frequently being persecuted for their Christian faith. Those who betrayed that faith to save their lives or their property had lost something more valuable—their integrity, their wholeness, their consistency. Undoubtedly many could not live with themselves afterwards. There are certain things which are more important than human life or material possessions.
What gain, then, is it for a man to win the whole world and ruin [the true meaning of] his life? And indeed what can a man offer in exchange for his life?
We have a long list of martyrs (from the Greek, meaning ‘witnesses’) to the faith whose memories we cherish, and whose example we respect and admire. We have no list, and no desire, to remember those who avoided martyrdom and compromised their faith and their values, and who may have enjoyed wealth and position as a result. They lived on for a while and then disappeared; the martyrs are still very much alive.
There are overtones here of a Church in persecution. There must have been those who, when their faith was challenged, “were ashamed of Jesus and his words” and denied their faith to save their immediate lives. They will hear the terrible words cited in Matthew’s Gospel:
Truly I tell you, I do not know you. (Matt 25:12)
The final phrase is ambivalent:
There are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the Kingdom of God has come in power.
This can refer to the establishment of the Christian communities, as witnesses to the Kingdom’s being established in the world, which will be the result of the great experience at Pentecost. It can also refer, of course, to a belief among many in the early Church, that the Second Coming of Jesus, the Parousia, would take place in their lifetime.
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Friday of Week 6 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Genesis 11:1-9
We are now at the end of our selected readings from the story of Creation and our tragic fall from the life that God originally intended for us. Today’s story is based on the stepped or terraced temple towers called ziggurats in ancient Babylon, a city with few happy memories for the Israelites and, for them, the home of idolatry and religious corruption. The context is used by the writer to show humanity’s increasing wickedness, here shown by an arrogant desire to create an urban culture without God. A secondary theme is an explanation of the huge diversity of languages and dialects in people who, in most respects, seem so similar, and also an explanation for the meaning of the name ‘Babylon’.
Like the garden of Eden story, it is a folktale of human pride and folly and reflective of Israel’s strong anti-urban bias. We are told that originally, the whole of humanity had just one language and one vocabulary. Then the world’s people migrated from the east and settled in the plain of Shinar. This is ancient Sumer in southern Mesopotamia (today, southern Iraq), and also known as Babylonia.
Here they developed construction techniques, learning how to make bricks instead of using stone and bitumen as mortar. Bricks were so easy to make and so convenient, when compared to the tedious process of cutting stone. Buildings could be bigger and constructed so much more quickly. Stone and mortar were used as building materials in Canaan, rocky country where the Israelites lived. Stone was scarce in Mesopotamia, so mud brick and bitumen were used as determined by archaeological excavation.
The people in Shinar decided to build a whole city, including a tower that would reach upwards, penetrating the heavens. This is a direct reference to the chief ziggurat of Babylon, the E-sag-ila, signifying “the house that raises high its head”. Ziggurats were pyramidic temple structures intended to serve as staircases from earth to heaven. They were square at the base and had sloping, stepped sides that led to a small shrine at the top. They could be called the earliest ‘skyscrapers’.
These structures were intended to symbolise the holy mountain and resting-place of the deity, and the builders were apparently seeking a means of meeting their god. But the biblical writer sees their project as an act of arrogant pride. They built this tower because:
…otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
As so often is the case, the root of overweening ambition is often fear. The theme of the tower is combined with that of the whole city, as a condemnation of urban civilisation.
God was not at all pleased with what he saw. They were all one people, united by a common language, and this was only the beginning of what they could do. Nothing would seem impossible. There would be no limits to their unrestrained rebellion against God. The kingdom of Man would try to displace and exclude the kingdom of God (something often seen today).
In order to put a stop to such ambition, God says:
Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.
The result was that, divided by incomprehensible languages, they were scattered over the face of the earth, and the building of their city had to be abandoned. The very thing they feared ultimately took place.
Finally, the city was called Babel, because it was there that the Lord had thrown the language of the earth into confusion and scattered the earth’s peoples in all directions. Babel is the Hebrew form of the name ‘Babylon’, originally Bab-ili, meaning ‘Gate of the gods’. Apparently the name referred originally only to a certain part of the city, the district near the gate that led to the temple area. There is a play here on the similarly-sounding Hebrew word balil, which means “to be confused”.
For the biblical writer, the dream of building a tower reaching up to heaven is just another example of the sinfulness of the human family, this time of their arrogance and pride. It is a repetition of the sin of the man and the woman in the garden who thought they would gain infinite wisdom by eating the forbidden fruit.
There is also a theological explanation of why our single species, once thought to be living in one place and sharing one language, is now so divided by language, and why we are scattered and separated over such a wide area.
Arrogance can be found in many places today, and is a feeling that we are in total control of our lives and our destinies. But events that happen in all our lives constantly remind us just how fragile and contingent our existence really is.
However, the divisions of Babel and mutual incomprehensibility are reversed on the day of Pentecost. As Peter speaks to the crowds coming from so many different places, they are amazed that they can all understand the message. It is a message for everyone, and one which is in total harmony with the deepest needs and desires of every single person (Acts 2:5-12). There is a similar gathering of the whole of humanity in the presence of God described in the Book of Revelation (Rev 7:9-10).
It is our mission as followers of Christ to work for the establishment of the Kingdom where all are united in truth and love as brothers and sisters. There is still a lot of work to be done.
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Thursday of Week 6 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Mark 8:27-33
We now come to a high point in Mark’s Gospel which the texts of previous days have been leading up to. Since the beginning of this Gospel the question has been continually asked: “Who is Jesus?” Today we get the answer. The blind and deaf disciples show that they are beginning to see more clearly.
So Jesus himself puts the question that has been underlying all that has gone before:
Who do people say that I am?
The disciples give a number of answers reflecting the speculations of the people. These include:
- John the Baptist come to life again
- Elijah, who was expected to return to earth just before the arrival of the Messiah
- One of the other prophets
Then Jesus asks his disciples what they believe:
But who do you say that I am?
Peter speaks up in the name of all:
You are the Messiah.
This is indeed a dramatic moment. Jesus is not just an ordinary rabbi, not just a prophet. He is the long-awaited Christ, the Messiah, the anointed King of Israel. This is a tremendous breakthrough for the disciples. However, they are told to keep this to themselves for the time being. There were many expectations about the Messiah and Jesus did not want to be identified with them.
But it is not the end of the story. There is a sudden and unexpected twist for which they were not at all prepared. Jesus immediately begins to tell them what is going to happen to him in the days ahead: that he will suffer grievously, be rejected by the religious leaders of his own people, be put to death and—perhaps most surprising of all—after three days rise again. And there was no mistaking his meaning for:
He said all this quite openly.
The religious leaders mentioned here are part of the Sanhedrin, a 71-member ruling council of the Jews consisting of elders, the chief priests and the scribes. Under Roman rule, the Sanhedrin had authority in religious matters.
For the first time in this Gospel, Jesus refers to himself as the “Son of Man”. He will do this many more times. The title was first used in the book of Daniel (7:13-14) as a symbol of “the holy ones of the Most High” (Dan 7:27), referring to those faithful Israelites who receive the everlasting kingdom from the “Most High” (i.e. God).
In the apocryphal books of 1 Enoch and 4 Ezra, the title “Son of Man” does not refer to a group, but to a unique figure of extraordinary spiritual endowments—who will be revealed as the one through whom the everlasting kingdom decreed by God will be established. Of itself, this expression means simply “a human being”, or, indefinitely, “someone”, and there are instances of this use in pre-Christian times. Its use in the New Testament is probably due to Jesus’ speaking of himself in that way, “a human being”, and the later Church’s taking this in the sense of the Jewish apocrypha and applying it to him with that meaning.
It is not difficult to imagine how the disciples must have been profoundly shocked, and could not believe their ears at what Jesus was telling them. Peter, their impetuous leader, immediately begins to protest. They have just pronounced Jesus to be the long-awaited leader of the Jewish people, and now he says he is going to be rejected and executed by their very own leaders. It made absolutely no sense whatever. Jesus turns round, looks at his disciples and scolds Peter with the terrible words:
Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.
This is what the gradual opening of the eyes of the blind man in yesterday’s story indicated. They had reached the stage where they had made the exciting discovery that their Master was none other than the long-awaited Messiah. They had answered the first question of Mark’s Gospel: Who is Jesus? But they were still immersed in all the traditional expectations that had grown up around the coming of the Messiah as the victorious and triumphing king who would put all Israel’s enemies to flight.
But they would have to unlearn all this. The rest of Mark will answer the second question: What kind of Messiah is Jesus? or what does it mean for Jesus to be Messiah?
And a further question follows from that: What will all that mean for the disciples—and for us? We will see some answers to that tomorrow.
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Wednesday of Week 6 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Genesis 8:6-13,20-22
We read today of the end of the Flood, as the rain stops and the waters recede. In the meantime, every living thing on land was totally wiped out. Of course, the underwater creatures survived and perhaps even thrived in the flood conditions given there was likely so much dead carrion available! But in myth stories one does not quibble about such details. What matters is the central meaning of the story.
After the 40 days, God remembered Noah and his family, and all the living things that were with him in the ark. Then, a drying wind blew, the outlets for water in the earth and the “windows” in the vault of the heavens through which rain came were closed, and the waters began to recede. But it was not until 7 months and 17 days later that the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat, in present-day Turkey, and it was only in the 10th month that the tops of the mountains began to appear.
And it was not until 40 days after that (in other words, they were in the ark for the best part of a year) that Noah sent out a raven. It flew back and forth until, eventually, the waters had dried up from the earth. Then it never came back, possibly because it feasted on dead bodies it found everywhere. The raven could represent one of the unclean animals on board the ark.
Then a dove (probably regarded a clean animal—and a vegetarian!) was sent out, but when the dove could not find any place to land, it returned to the ark. After another seven days the dove was sent out again and this time it returned with a freshly plucked olive leaf in its beak—a clear sign that the waters had receded a good deal. Olive trees do not grow at high altitudes. The dove with the olive branch has ever since become the universal sign of peace and flourishing life.
After another seven days the dove was sent out again and this time it did not return—it had found a place to live. Noah knew that he, his family, and all the animals could now safely leave the ark. He opened the entrance hatch of the ark, looked out and saw that the face of the earth was drying up again. It was only when it was completely dry that he gave the order to leave the ark.
After they had all disembarked, Noah built an altar and offered burnt offerings (a holocaust) from each of the clean animals that had been in the ark (this could be done because seven pairs of each kind of clean animal had been taken into the ark). This offering was in thanksgiving to God for their being saved. God was pleased with the “pleasing odour” of this sacrifice, and pledged never to curse the earth again because of the sins of humanity, nor would he destroy all living creatures again, although individuals might be punished. This was because:
…the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth…
The “heart” is the centre of all religious awareness and morality—the source of both virtue and sin. And the tendency to sin did not lessen after the Flood.
The reading ends with a verse which seems to have been a popular proverb or saying:
As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night
shall not cease.
In other words, as long as our world endures, the rhythm of nature and of the seasons will never be disrupted in this way again.
In fact, over the centuries this pledge has been kept, although from time to time there have been massive calamities which have brought death and destruction and often changed the face of a particular region forever. Our main concern nowadays is not from natural calamities which, ironically, can sometimes also bring benefits in the long term. Rather, we should be concerned about the disasters which may arise from our misuse and abuse of the earth’s resources and the danger of irreversible damage to the delicate balance of nature. Each one of us can play a positive role in reversing this trend.
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Monday of Week 6 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Mark 8:11-13
The Pharisees, disturbed by what Jesus is saying and doing, demand a “sign from heaven” to indicate that his authority comes from God. He refuses to acquiesce to their request; they will not get a sign on their terms.
The irony, of course, is that Jesus’ whole life is a sign—a sign of God’s loving presence among us. In Mark, the ordinary people can see this clearly. Only the leaders and (in Mark) Jesus’ own disciples are slow to learn.
In the immediately foregoing passage, Jesus has just fed 4,000 people with seven loaves of bread and a few fish. The signs are there in abundance, but the Pharisees cannot see because they do not want to see. Their blindness is a central theme to this part of Mark, as we shall see. We too need to be aware of our own blindness and our failure to see the signs of God’s love operating in our everyday lives.
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Tuesday of Week 6 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Mark 8:14-21
Yesterday we saw the blindness of the Pharisees in asking Jesus to give some sign of his authority from God. Today we see the blindness of Jesus’ own disciples. This, of course, is pointing to our own blindness in not recognising the clear presence of God in our own lives.
The disciples are travelling across the lake in the boat. They had forgotten to bring food with them and there was only one loaf between them all. As they cross the lake, Jesus is talking to them saying:
Watch out—beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.
For the Jews, yeast was a corrupting agent because it caused fermentation. That was why at the Pasch they ate unleavened, incorrupt bread. And Paul tells the Corinthians:
Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch of dough, as you really are unleavened. (1 Cor 5:7)
Jesus is telling his disciples to avoid two opposing kinds of corruption: that of the Pharisees, which is based on narrow-minded and intolerant legalism, and that of Herod, which is based on amoral and hedonistic pleasure-seeking.
However, the disciples are not really listening to their Master. They latch on to the word “yeast” and link it with their present obsession—not enough bread. Their lunch is the only thing on their minds. Jesus, of course, knows what is going on in their minds.
He scolds them:
Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and fail to see? Do you have ears and fail to hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?
They answer, “Twelve”, and Jesus says:
And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?
And they responded, “Seven”.
Then Jesus said to them:
Do you not yet understand?
Five loaves for 5,000 with 12 baskets over, seven loaves for 4,000 with seven baskets over, and they, a mere dozen people, are worried about being short of food when Jesus is with them?
Mark tends to be very hard on the disciples. They cannot see, they cannot hear, and they fail to understand what is happening before their very eyes. But they are learning gradually, as we shall see.
Of course, Mark is firing his shots not just at the disciples, but at you and me. How much faith do we have in God’s care for us? Can we hear? Can we see? Are we also without understanding?
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Wednesday of Week 6 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Mark 8:22-26
We are approaching a high point in Mark’s Gospel. And it is preceded by today’s strategically placed story. At first glance it looks like a simple healing story of a blind man but, as in most of Mark’s miracles, there is a deeply symbolic meaning inside.
People bring a blind man to Jesus so that Jesus could apply his healing touch (how much of our touching is healing—or are we afraid of physical touch?). Jesus takes the man aside away from the crowds. He puts spittle on the man’s eyes and asks:
Can you see anything?
The man, who is beginning now to see, says he can see people:
…but they look like trees, walking.
Jesus lays his hands on the man’s eyes again and now:
…his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.
Jesus tells him to go directly home, not through the village. He wants no misplaced sensationalism about who he is. The truth of that is going to be revealed very soon.
The story is clearly linked with other events that have just been taking place. We have seen the blindness of the Pharisees unable to recognise the power of God in the words and works of Jesus. We can see the blindness of his own disciples when he asked them in the boat:
Do you still not perceive or understand? Do you have eyes and fail to see? Do you have ears and fail to hear?
(Mark 8:17-18)
This story, coming where it is, is a parable about the gradual opening of the disciples’ eyes as it begins to dawn on them just who Jesus is. We will see in tomorrow’s Gospel a giant step in their seeing and understanding, while at the same time being aware that they still have a long way to go.
Our understanding of Jesus is also a gradual process and it never ends. Many seem to settle into a complacent level of understanding beyond which they never go. As a result, their spiritual growth is blocked, and also their ability to have a growing faith enrich their lives.
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Tuesday of Week 6 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Genesis 6:5-8; 7:1-5,10
Today we have the story of the Great Flood. Is there some deep memory behind this story and then reading into it a religious meaning? What was the cause of the Flood? Or was it pure myth? Was it some overflowing of the rivers going through the region that is now Iraq? Was it the result of a tsunami caused by a mighty earthquake in the Mediterranean? In any case, it is another ‘Fall’ story.
The New American Bible introduces the story in this way:
The story of the great flood is a composite narrative based on two separate sources interwoven into an intricate patchwork. To the Yahwist source, with some later editorial additions, are usually assigned 6:5-8; 7:1-5, 7-10, 12, 16, 17, 22-23; 8:2-3, 6-12, 13, 20-22. The other sections come from the “Priestly document”. The combination of the two sources produced certain duplications; also certain inconsistencies, such as the number of the various animals taken into the ark and the timetable of the flood. Both biblical sources go back ultimately to an ancient Mesopotamian story of a great flood, preserved in the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic. The latter account, in some respects remarkably similar to the biblical account, is in others very different from it. (edited)
The New Jerusalem Bible also comments:
There are also several Babylonian stories of the Flood which show similarities to the biblical narrative. This last does not derive from them, but draws on the same source, namely, on the memory of one or more disastrous floods in the valley of the Euphrates and Tigris which tradition had enlarged to the dimensions of a worldwide catastrophe. But there is this fundamental difference: the author has used this tradition as a vehicle for teaching eternal truths—that God is just and merciful, that human beings are perverse, that God saves his faithful ones (see Heb 11:7). The Flood is a divine judgement which foreshadows that of the latter days (see Matt 24:37-39; Luke 17:26-28), just as Noah’s salvation prefigures the saving waters of baptism (1 Pet 3:20-21). (edited)
The setting is that mankind has become steeped in sin and immorality. As the reading opens, we are told that:
The Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.
There was moral corruption everywhere. (And, because human nature did not change after the Flood, the situation did not greatly improve.) At this time, too, there is as yet no distinction between Israel and everyone else.
God, described in very human terms, “is sorry” not only for the creation of human beings, but also for all the:
…animals and creeping things and birds of the air…
Though morally innocent, the animal world, as creatures under human corrupted rule, shared in being judged. The heavenly bodies and the plants were excluded (because they would not have been wiped out by a flood).
Saying that God “is sorry” is a human way of expressing the fact that tolerance of sin is totally incompatible with his sanctity (1 Sam 15:29 reminds us that God, unlike humanity, never has to repent). In a far greater number of passages the expression means that God’s anger has been appeased and his threat withdrawn as soon as his people change their ways (see Jer 26:3-6).
There is one human exception to the universal corruption. Noah was a good man, who “had found favour in the sight of the Lord”. The destruction to come will, through him, become a reconstruction. Noah and his family will become a righteous remnant which will survive and regenerate, paving the way for the appearance of God’s people in the person of Abraham.
Much of the full story is left out in our readings.
Before the rains come, Noah and all his family are to go aboard the ark. The actual building of the ark according to instructions given by God is omitted in our reading. The English word ‘ark’ comes from the Latin translation arca, meaning a ‘box’ or a ‘chest’. (Consider also the ‘Ark of the Covenant’—it was a kind of wooden chest.)
Noah is told to bring with him and his family, seven each (male and female) of “clean animals” and “a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and its mate” and seven “pairs of the birds of the air”. (For an explanation of the number ‘seven’, see the reading from Wednesday of Week 6 of Ordinary Time.) The ceremonially ‘unclean’ animals would only have to reproduce themselves after the Flood, but greater numbers of ceremonially clean animals would be needed also for the burnt offerings that Noah would sacrifice and for food. One might have thought that God would have got rid of all the ‘unclean’ animals altogether, but their continuing presence after the flood had to be accounted for.
We need to remember that we are not dealing here with a historical event, but with a myth. Myths play a very important role in human life and culture. A myth is basically a story which expresses a deep truth that cannot really be expressed in any other way. It is a way, too, of presenting deep truths to people who are uneducated and illiterate (but by no means unintelligent). Much of the Old Testament takes the form of myth, but we should not be concerned about this. In fact, it is this realisation that opens up to us the full meaning of passages. Fundamentalism and literalism have the opposite effect.
Seven days after they went aboard, God said he would send rain on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights and every living thing on the earth would be wiped out. This period of time is often used to indicate a significant period in salvation history (see Deut 9:11 and Matt 4:1-11—the temptation of Jesus in the desert). Noah did everything that God had told him to do and seven days later the rains began.
The message is clear: God protects the virtuous and punishes the wicked. However, we might modify our way of saying that now. Based on many other passages both in the Old and New Testaments, it is difficult for us to accept a God who takes vengeance on those who go against the way of life he proposes to us. It contradicts the teaching that Jesus, the Son of God, gave us, especially in his sacrificial death for us sinners. As Paul tells us, it is easy to understand a person’s dying for a good person, but not for a wicked one (see Rom 5:7). That is exactly what Jesus, with the full approval of his Father, did for us.
There is indeed punishment for sin but it flows out of the sinful acts themselves. Evil is destructive; good is nurturing and growth-inducing. Evil brings division; goodness brings peace and harmony.
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Thursday of Week 6 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Genesis 9:1-13
After the Flood, God extends his blessings over Noah and his family and over all the animals that have survived. Furthermore, the mandate given to the Man in the garden is repeated. The family of Noah, effectively the ancestors of all humanity, are to be fruitful and multiply. In addition, Noah and his descendants are given responsibility and lordship over every living thing—on the earth, in the air and in the water.
In the Garden, Man had been blessed and was consecrated lord of creation; he is now blessed and consecrated anew. All creatures are now at his disposal. Now, not only are plants given as food (as was the case in the Garden), but the other creatures, too, like animals, may be taken as food. They may also be used for doing heavy work (e.g. ploughing) or for their skins (e.g. to make tents and clothes). In the Garden, where answers to all needs were readily available, there was no need to work nor, in their innocence, to wear clothes. Humans and animals alike were plant-eaters only. Now the animal can become the victim of Man’s needs.
And, with the eating of animals, a new element is introduced with the prohibition to eat meat in which blood, the source of life, has not been already removed. Israelite law also forbade eating animal flesh torn in the field by other animals (here, there is a reading back into pre-history of regulations that only were legislated later on).
Furthermore, there is to be absolute respect for human life and no spilling of human blood, for every human person is made in the image of God. Animals, too, were to be punished if they caused the death of a human person. According to the Mosaic law, a domestic animal that had taken human life was to be stoned to death.
Because a living being dies when it loses most of its blood, the ancients regarded blood as the seat of life, and therefore as sacred. Although, in itself, the prohibition against eating meat with blood in it is comparable to the ritual laws of the Mosaic code, the Jews considered it binding on everyone. This was because it was given by God to Noah, the new ancestor of all mankind. And so the early Christian Church retained this restriction for a time (see Acts 15:20,29).
God himself is the great defender of human life, which is precious to him because Man was created in his image, and because Man is the earthly representative and focal point of God’s kingdom. God then makes his first covenant with mankind to last forever, a covenant which includes every living thing that was with Noah in the ark.
…never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.
The sign of that covenant is a rainbow crossing the skies. Rain and the rainbow doubtless existed long before the time of Noah’s flood, but after the flood the rainbow took on new meaning as the sign of the covenant with Noah. Every time it appeared, it was a reminder of the covenant. Rainbows, too, are the sign of sunshine after rain.
The covenant with Noah, which is represented by the rainbow, involves the whole of creation. Later covenants will be more specific. The covenant with Abraham, the sign of which is circumcision, was to be limited to his descendants only (Gen 17). The covenant with Moses was to be confined to Israel alone and entailed corresponding obligations: fidelity to the Law and to Sabbath observance in particular.*
For us, of course, the final covenant is the New Testament between God and the world, signed in the blood of Jesus on the Cross and celebrated in every Eucharist. But each one of us can and does dishonour this Covenant every time we violate the Way that Jesus has shown us. This New Covenant is renewed every time we celebrate the Eucharist together, but the keeping of this covenant depends on how we live our daily lives in relationship with God, with those around us and with ourselves.
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*For a list of covenants, see the section about this in the NIV Study Bible.