[Sermon] The Bow, the Dove, and the Small Signs of Hope

Pastor Hector Garfias-Toledo

September 14, 2025 + Tales from the Holy Imagination, Week 2

When Noah released the dove, it returned carrying only a single olive leaf—yet that small sign was enough to remind him of God’s promise. Pastor Hector invites us to hear the flood story not as a tale of destruction, but as a love story in which God chooses covenant over judgment. The rainbow, once a weapon of war in ancient imagination, is transformed into a symbol of peace and enduring grace. Even when humanity falters again and again, God lays aside power to remain present with creation. This is a story of relentless hope, where love triumphs over wrath. In every small act of mercy, we see God’s promise renewed.

Sermon Transcript

From YouTube's automatic captions, lightly edited by AI for readability.

Grace to you and peace from Abba, Father, Mother, Creator, and the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Lord, the one who is the promise that is with us always. And we said, “Amen.” Amen.

So—I heard this quietness. I… I want to believe that you were listening carefully to the story that Megan just read for us. So, young worshippers, younger worshippers, and older worshippers, what do you hear? How does this story help you to hear the story of the flood that we read earlier maybe differently? You can just say a couple of questions—one or two. Or two of you: how did this change the story that you knew about the flood? What did you hear in that story?

I’m taking time. How long? Okay—40 nights and 40 days. Okay. Anyone? I mean, this is a real question. Remember that I ask real questions. Humanity. Humanity. Community. Community.

Wildlife. Say again? Wildlife.

And I invite you to keep thinking—how this story may help you shift and look at this story that you have known for many years from a different perspective, with a holy imagination, with the mind of a child who hears things beyond the words that are written, and helps us to shape who we are and whose we are.

This book that we are using, my siblings in Christ—I have shared this story with you—but this book was given to me the first year that I… I went to seminary in Austin, Texas. I… I learned English and, um, of course in a classroom: technical English for my profession. So when I went to seminary in Texas, and to try to understand English in Texas, and to try to understand theological English in Texas, and to try to understand theological English in Texas as a foreign-born person—it was not easy.

So, I don’t know if it was the reason, but one of my classmates gave me this book, and she said, “When you read it, maybe this will help you to see things in different ways.” And I started to read it and I said, “Well, that’s my level. I think I can read this—my level of English—reading stories.” But when I started reading it, it really opened my imagination and helped me to understand that the stories in the scripture that we read are more than just something that we are going to memorize word by word and believe literally.

These stories convey a truth—a spiritual truth—that is deeper and more powerful than the stories themselves, and more important, the stories that, as I said last Sunday, shape us as we grow up in our lives.

Many questions and assumptions came to me—and I believe come to you—when we read these stories, like the story that we read in the scripture today.

We come and we know about debates. We know about assumptions by theologians and scientists that sometimes like to put science and faith against each other, fighting over stories like this. But maybe the question is more about: what might the ark look like? Or maybe: what might the ark smell like?

When I was a child, in my family—to help financially, my family, our family—my mom and I, and all together, we raised chickens and rabbits in our house. And we raised them to sell them as food for others. But before we had the benefit of selling and obtaining some financial help for the family, we had to go through the whole process of living with chickens and rabbits. And for those of you who maybe have had them, or have lived on a farm, imagine an ark with all the animals for 40 days and 40 nights in the same place. What did it smell like?

Now you wonder why Noah had to open the window.

But this story—what was it intended for? What did it tell? And what does it tell us today? Especially when we know—and if you didn’t know, maybe this is some important and new information for you—this story of the flood that we read in scripture is one of many other stories in the world. There are at least four more stories of a universal flood that were written even before the one we read today in the Hebrew tradition. There is one that is Sumerian, one that is Babylonian, one that is Assyrian.

And some of them were—the Sumerian was written in the 1600s before the Christian era, the Babylonian in 1634 before the Christian era, and the Gilgamesh of Assyrian in the year 1200 before our era. These are all stories of people who have been trying to understand and find the meaning of who we are and what we are doing in this world.

So when I read this story, was it about… was this story about God changing God’s mind—when God sends the flood, wipes out everybody, and then suddenly has this promise for everyone with a big rainbow? Or was this a story telling us about a God who will do anything—anything—to get us back to Godself?

The story that I hear—that we hear—I hear it as a love story. And you know how love stories go. Who watches dramas? I mean good dramas. Yeah. Yeah. The other ones—don’t invite me. Okay? But the good dramas. Okay.

In every drama, and in the drama of our own lives, in our own relationships, we know that in relationships there are broken relationships, broken hearts, where there is, uh, treason, and there is also vengeance, and there are all these amounts of feelings and emotions that go through us. And I believe that this story conveys that—a relationship in which there is pain and joy, life and death—because it’s part of our lives as we walk together this journey.

This story that we read today is not just that little part we read today, but it covers from chapter 6 of Genesis to chapter 9 of Genesis. And not only that—those three chapters are part of chapters 1 through 11 in the whole book of Genesis. So I invite you, if you want to have a better grasp of everything that was going on with Noah and the ark, with the stinky animals and the birds, etc.—go and read chapters 1–11 to get a better grasp of what was going on.

God knew, as we read—and I like just how the story begins, when it says that in the beginning, when God created everything…

See if I can find it here. Oh. Oh, I… I should have marked it. I like how this starts. Oh God—where did the story go? I’m missing… I’m missing some pages here. No.

Okay—what page was that? Here. From the beginning, God knew that people would try to act like they were better than their neighbors. But honestly, God never expected to have the same problem with the animals.

God knew things may turn a little bit difficult. But did God think that it would get as difficult as they are today? You have feathers around you. As David says, “No angels among us,” but it’s about birds among us. And these are not the feathers of the Seahawks. Okay? These are the feathers of birds, okay? Just regular birds.

These feathers, that in the story tell us how we separate one another. Where are the parrots sitting here? If you’re a parrot, raise your hand. If you’re a flamingo, raise your heart—I mean, not heart, your hand. If you’re a… what was the other one? The Cardinals. The Blue Jays.

In the whole story of our life, that we can call the ark of the faith journey—how long is the beam where we set our places?

Where on the beam are we? Where on the beam am I? Where on the beam are you? Or maybe we need to ask: where on the beam have we pushed others to be this past week?

The last week was a difficult week in our nation. The last week—it was a clear example of how long the beam of our lives as a nation has gotten. And we have seen how far we have pushed each other from each other, or gathered together only with those we like—next to the window, or far away in the darkest part of the beam of this journey that we call life together.

What may have been going on during those days and nights, when despair and hopelessness started to creep in on the animals and on Noah’s family?

And if God had cleansed the earth from evil with the flood, why do we continue to experience the evil, the violence, the death, the divisions, and the hate that once again emerged last week in this country?

If we read this story as a simple cleanse of evil, it fails spectacularly—because even in scripture, immediately after Noah gets off the ark with the animals and they start a new life, Noah goes and plants a vineyard, gets drunk, and a new cycle of shame begins.

And unfortunately, it seems that has continued until today. Evil was not wiped away. So if the flood didn’t work, what is the point of this story? Why do we read this story and tell it and sing it and act it?

Nobody looks for Jesus, because we look for human solutions. Nobody looks for Jesus Christ. What if the story is about the assurance that, in the end, God wants creation back to God’s self—

and that God will do anything to get it back, including putting down God’s bow of might? “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

The Hebrew word—and we studied a little bit of this last Wednesday—the Hebrew word that is translated in many Bibles as rainbow actually means a war bow.

This is from an ancient Near Eastern culture where gods were often depicted with bows and arrows—shooting arrows of lightning, plague, or judgment. But this story, and the story we hear today with the dove back and forth in conversation with the raven, and the whole conversation about not trusting others or not liking each other—or liking each other only for specific reasons—reminds us that God was disheartened, that God was sad, that God wanted to judge the world. But not in the sense of punishing the world—instead, punishing the evil that the world had chosen.

This is a story of relentless grace, a shifting of focus from the wrath of God to the grief of God when God’s creation walks away. It’s a story that moves from destruction to salvation, from failure to covenant, and from divine power to the divine restraint of a God who loves creation so much that God puts down the bow of war, making it instead a sign of covenant—never pointing to the world again with arrows, or lightning, or plague, or judgment.

Have you seen that? When you hang a bow, you normally hang it down, like this—as a sign of peace, of never pointing again at others.

This is a story of self-giving love. A God who is committing to stay with creation and save it from within. A love that transforms, that changes us, that moves us to live with small acts that bring hope, transformation, and wholeness.

The dove went back and forth. She trusted small things that made the rest of the birds change—not by hating, or paying back with the same coin, but by doing what God has invited us to do: to love, to be open, to be merciful, to be an extension of God’s grace.

It’s not an easy thing. And that’s why it’s a challenge—because loving one another is not just feeling nice or being good. Loving means loving those who hurt us.

To conclude, let me use these words from Dr. Martin Luther King:

“You just keep loving people, and keep loving them—even though they are mistreating you. And by the power of your love, they will break down under the load. That’s love. You see, it is redemptive. And this is why Jesus says love. There is something about love that builds up, and it’s creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. Love your enemies.”

And with that we say, Amen.