Now that it is June, we’re seeing a lot of so-called rainbow flags.

In the City of New Orleans, this is nothing new. We have an entire section of Bourbon Street in which nearly all of the bars fly the so-called rainbow flag year-round. Harrah’s Casino always displays the various flags that flew over New Orleans in her 300-year history. Well, almost. One is missing. It represented the period of Southern independence. That flag has been replaced by, you guessed it, the so-called rainbow flag. Not to be accused of insufficient praise for the June honorees (and I don’t mean blushing brides), the City does put up some extra so-called rainbow banners (now even more inclusive!) on Rampart Street for the month of June. One of the area’s hospitals used to fly the so-called rainbow flag beneath the state flag of Louisiana for the entire month. Last year, if memory serves, it was only up for a day and then disappeared. I don’t know what the plan is for 2021. But I imagine there is a lot of pressure to put it back up. After all, it is 2021.

At any rate, I keep saying “so-called rainbow” because this “rainbow” is deficient. It is actually an ideal symbol for sexuality that deviates from the natural biological kind as reflected in natural law and the revealed will of God. And it is also a matter of science, that is, if you believe in such things as biology. The symbol that has come to stand for The Acronym: (LGBT, LGBTQ, LGBTQ+, LGBTQIAA, LGBTTQQIAAP, LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP, and LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM) is actually not the rainbow. For hopefully we all remember the mnemonic ROY G BIV: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Seven colors. But take a look at the so-called rainbow flag. It only has six colors.

Seven is the biblical number of completeness. It represents the fullness of the week of creation. It represents six days of work plus a sabbath rest. But six falls short. Six is the biblical number of incompleteness. The triple six is the mark of the beast, a parody of the Trinity.

And there could be no more appropriate symbol for the various sexualities that fall short of how God created mankind. For God created mankind in His image in a beautiful binary of male and female, with a mandate to “be fruitful and multiply.” What binds together all of the various letters in The Acronym is that all fall short of the glory of God, insofar as none of them can bring children into the world, and none of them reflects the divine complementarity between male and female. All of these deviations from His order of creation fly in the face of biological science and nature.

Another name for the so-called rainbow flag is the “pride flag.” Pride is the first of the traditional Seven Deadly Sins. It was Satan’s pride that preceded his fall. It was his appeal to pride that led Adam and Eve astray. But Satan’s temptation to pride failed to cause our Lord to stumble. And in fact, Jesus “emptied Himself” and took “the form of a servant,” and “He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” His ultimate act of love was the very opposite of pride.

As the kids say, “Love wins.”

The real rainbow, not the parody, is truly a symbol of inclusion. For “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” All is the most inclusive word of all. And the passage continues that this same all “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” The rainbow was given as a sign of God’s mercy after His judgment of mankind at the flood. So the rainbow, the true rainbow, the seven-colored rainbow that appears in the clouds - is a sign of inclusion and acceptance by God of all sinners who confess their sins and cry out to the Lord for His absolution. The waters of the flood remind us of the Law that calls us to repent, and the rainbow that appeared at the end of the ordeal is a reminder of the Gospel, the Good News that Jesus died for us - for all of us.

Don’t let pride get in the way of God’s grace. And don’t be fooled into thinking that there is no consequence for sin. Rather ask for God’s mercy that you may be forgiven and given the grace to resist the devil, even as our Lord did.

While the rainbow is not, strictly speaking, a sacrament, it is a physical manifestation of God’s grace, and thus it is sacramental. Luther wrote:

[I]t is an error to hold that the sacraments of the New Law differ from those of the Old Law in the effectiveness of their signs. For in this respect they are the same. The same God who now saves us by baptism and the bread, saved Abel by his sacrifice, Noah by the rainbow, Abraham by circumcision, and all the others by their respective signs. So far as signs are concerned, there is no difference between a sacrament of the Old Law and one of the New, provided that by the Old Law you mean that which God did among the patriarchs and other fathers in the days of the Law. ~ AE 36:65

So in the month of June, look upon the so-called rainbow flag as representing an incompleteness, but look to the heavens for a sign of the completeness of God’s mercy. And then look to the Church’s confession of the Word of God, and gather with your fellow “poor miserable sinners” where we are forgiven, and where the same water that was an instrument of God’s wrath is now a sacrament of His grace.

May the seven colors of the rainbow remind us of the completeness of God’s love and mercy, and may this sign ever be an encouragement for us to live lives of gratitude in His grace.