Redeeming Rainbows at Covid Easter

Someone made a suggestion, at the start of the Coronavirus, that families should get their kids to display paintings of rainbows in their windows, during the lead up to Easter. It was a way to sensitively demonstrate hope; and also, a delightful attempt to encourage children in getting creative with craft – actually I think there’s been a real, and welcome, revival in junk modelling during our enforced in-house lockdown. Still, during our daily exercise walks, we’ve had fun identifying the middle class households, in our area of gentrified Islington, by the cute rainbows in windowpanes en route.

But such cultural signs speak more widely, than in just one community. They are multi-vocal, not uni-vocal. Symbols are contested, and fought over. Think about rainbows. They, obviously (from the Christian viewpoint, and therefore western culture), derive from Genesis, as signs of hope, where God promises to never again destroy the world by a flood (Gen. 9.12-17). The rainbow thus has an important place in Christian iconography and symbolism.

However, there are at least two other uses of the rainbow, which have got Christians up-in-arms. Firstly, back in the 1980s, the New Age Movement used the rainbow as a symbol of its ecological concerns. Many believers became incensed at this ‘theft’. Though it didn’t stop me using it in our church logo, set over the housing estate where we ministered. More recently, the rainbow has become a symbol of the LGBTQ+ movement; its many colours expressing diversity within human sexuality. Now, more radical elements within their movement are constructing fresh rainbows, with different colours, representing groups who feel excluded even there: e.g. transgender people, people of colour. Needless to say, conservative Christians are again upset, by this misuse of their spiritual symbol, to justify what they see as ‘immoral’ lifestyles.

But these cultural appropriations of a traditional image at least maintain its status as a positive indicator of hope. It’s the hope that people are reaching out for. We may disagree with the object of that hope. Or, rather, we may think that it does go far enough, in identifying the true locus of expectation, which must lie in Christ, and the kingdom he inaugurated. Nevertheless, these moves are also a reaching out towards meaning, towards the transcendent; non-verbally, inarticulately, stretching out empty hands to an unseen loving God. Sometimes visual signs speak more loudly than mere words.

The rainbow is, after all, the sign of a God-given covenant, not only with Israel, but with the whole of humanity. It’s therefore something ‘given’ to us, not something we’ve dreamed up: a ‘natural’ symbol. It is also something non-material, immaterial, in the air; and hence, a valid sign of the ‘spiritual’ realm. It’s the common property of humanity, across cultures; like the mythology Paul exploited, building on the goodness of God in creation, to encourage openness to the true, even through misunderstandings and misreadings (Acts 14.8-18). We need, therefore, a redemptive approach to culture; a missional move from cultural critique, to (cooperative) cultural construction.