GOOD THINGS

June 19, 2011
Pentecost 1
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Matthew 28:16-20

(prayer)

The word “genesis” has greek and latin roots: it means ‘birth’ or ‘origin’ or more simply ‘beginning’. The parallel word in hebrew is ‘resheet’. The first word in the original hebrew of the reading from Genesis today is ‘bəresheet’ (בְּרֵאשִׁית) [slide] which is well translated in most English editions of the bible as “in the beginning” – ‘at the birth’. The image being painted by these words is that there is NO story to tell prior to this point – this is the start, this is where it all begins. [slide]

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים

אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ

Beresheet bara elohim

et-ha’shamium ve’et-ha’artetz

In the beginning God created

the heavens and the earth

The text goes on to say...

The earth was a formless void [tohu ve’vohu] and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God [ru’ah] swept over the face of the waters.

Then God said, ‘Let there be light’.

//

This narrative probably found its written form during the time that the Hebrew people from Judah had been sent to live in exile during the reign of the Babylonian Empire (6th c. BCE). The Hebrews had suffered a crisis of faith. For centuries, since the time of Kings David and Solomon, life had been stable for the Judeans. Jerusalem had been built as a new capital city; a temple of stone replaced the wood and canvas tabernacle that had travelled with the people since the time of Moses. For four hundred years, Judah had enjoyed relative stability. For a dozen generations, people had grown to assume that God dwelled with them in Judah, because that is the only place they had ever lived – and when a formal, stone and mortar worship site is built, with an inner sanctuary room called the ‘holy of holies’ where it was assumed that the Spirit of God literally dwelt, how could they imagine things any other way?

That life, those beliefs, were brought to a dramatic close when the people were forced to live as refugee prisoners by the rivers of Babylon. “How can we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137:4)

Their captors might have taunted them with claims that ‘my gods are stronger than your God!’ For many of the Hebrew exiles, they may have been worried that this could even be true. Were the gods of the Babylonians really in control of the future?

It is into this context that the creation story we find in Genesis chapter one emerges.

What we heard this morning was an assertion of God’s primacy using the language of sixth century people and their view of what creation entailed.

I am (personally) absolutely baffled by that persistent, vocal minority that unrealistically insist that the creation accounts in the bible are to be taken literally: things really happened the way we read it. Baffling to me! We did not hear this morning how things came into being, but we heard a proclamation that the Hebrew God is the creator of all that was known to exist.

We can see that in this Genesis One story.

‘In the beginning’ (as this story goes) the pre-existing-nothingness is described (metaphorically, not literally) as a dark chaotic sea (AKA the deep...people of antiquity believed the oceans had no bottom) – in this pre-existing-nothingness, the only thing that is distinguishable was the Spirit of God, which (in keeping with the ocean metaphor) is like a wind over the waves: it’s there but it’s illusive.

As the days of this story progress, more of the world known to the 6th century Hebrews emerges. At that time all of the people of antiquity believed the world was flat; we see that expressed in Genesis One. The sky wasn’t an ever thinning atmosphere leading out to open space, but to the people of the 6th c. BCE, the sky was simply a physical roof over the world.

It wasn’t possible for the ancient Hebrews, but if you could fly up to the sky-roof, you could touch it.

As we read Genesis One, the sky-roof had water below it and water above it: ‘Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ (the waters above the roof were the source of rain that could fall down from the sky); the waters below were separated by plots of dry land.

The sky-roof also contained several lights (that were observable by the people of the 6th c. BCE): a great one (the sun) which was seen in the daytime; and stars and a light lesser than the sun (moon) which were on the sky-roof at night – they also could see five of the planets in our solar system (as ‘we’ can with the naked eye), but of course they had no idea they were planets – they saw them as ‘stars’ that moved a bit differently than the other stars across the sky.

It’s interesting that even in our modern world we still use ‘flat earth’ language – the sun rises and sets, the sun, moon, planets and stars move across the sky, when most of the movement we see is because “we” are the ones who are actually moving, as the earth rotates.

Just because we use metaphoric language, doesn’t mean it’s literally true.

The world of Genesis One is made up of three environments: the sky, the land and the water – as the story goes (as the 6th c. People experienced), each environment was made teaming with living creatures: birds, fish and land animals (including humans on the land).

The message of the story –

this is...all...good!

//

The content within the story made sense to people with a worldview from 2600 years ago. It is not a literal account of how things came into being. It is a theological proclamation that God is the source of the order we experience in the world and that this created-order is ‘good’. To me, that far more powerful than a news report of an event.

How ‘we’ tell the story of ‘The Beginning’ has changed as our understanding of the universe has grown, and yet there is still a divine mystery at the heart. How did the big bang, begin its bang? That’s a scientific (and I would add, theological) mystery!

//

I do not believe that the world was created in six rotations of the earth. I do not believe that the first human was made out of dirt to look exactly as we do today (in the same way that an artisan shapes clay on a potter wheel). Female humans were not created out of the rib of a previously created male human; The creations stories beginning at Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 2:5 should not to be taken literally!

But… just because we shouldn’t take them literally doesn’t mean that shouldn’t take them seriously: we should! They are powerful theological proclaimations. We simply must embrace them for what they are. They are faith-filled storied (drenched in rich metaphor) claiming that God is the source of what we know and experience; that God is the beginning of everything; and that we can come to an awareness that we are able to reflect the image of God within our lives.

// And so...

Allow yourself to be challenged to believe these things; don’t get lost in silly debates about whether people from 2600 years ago had any inkling about ‘how’ all this happened.

//

I believe that the discoveries of science (particularly the complexity of the building blocks of matter and life and the vastness of the universe as a whole) make the possibility of a source (a creator) even more compelling.

God does not need to held within human limitations. 2600 years ago, they believed that things must have always been they were and just appeared at some point (that worked for them). Our brightest modern idea about the origins of the universe involve an infinitesimally small, unbelievably heavy, speck-of-everything exploding in a Big Bang and expanding and collecting into all that we see and know today (works for us, right now). Who knows what the people 2600 years from now will believe about the origins of the universe?

But I believe that (from a spiritual perspective), regardless of the best theories of “how”, that behind it all...is ‘a source’ – behind it all...is God and ‘that’ can be an eternal truth for us.

If the pre-existing-nothingness is a dark chaotic sea, you might say God was the wind over the waters speaking the first words of order. If that pre-existing-nothingness is the speck-of-everything, you might say that God was spark that ignited a Big Bang.

Our stories of ‘how’ depend on what we have learned about our own existence based on what we have experienced and observed. Those stories cannot be considered true for all time.

I love the line from Denys Archand’s wonderfully thought-provoking 1989 film, ‘Jesus of Montréal’ where the director of a documentary on the origins of the universe is asked “it leaves a whole lot of questions without answers, huh?” and he responds: “Yes and when you consider that these facts may only be true for a while.” Knowledge and understanding are never complete. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? We wonder and we discover; and we do it all over again.

The ‘how’ questions don’t matter as we read Genesis. What does it tell us about God? That’s the question!

• I believe that the most basic nature of God is that God is the ‘order within the apparent chaos’;

• In the context of the wider scriptural tradition I believe that God is love and that it is the kind of love that transcends reason (to paraphrase Jesus, to love, even when nothing justifies that you should).

• I believe that God is the good that is natural and possible in everything and within everyone.

• I believed that God is an active force is our lives. As Genesis puts it, we bear the ‘image of God’ as live and move and have our being.

//

It’s all about the perspective we choose to take in the world. Perspective is the first theme of the Genesis story: Let there be light! With the addition of light, darkness is broken up and tempered with shadow and depth and meaning. With light...knowledge and understanding can begin; the process of wonder and discover start. Light allows for perspective. Light allows for us to try and understand who we are and ‘whose’ we are. // end //

My hope...is that we can perceive that ‘a purpose of our existence’ is to live as if we have been called to let the image of God shine.

I hope that we perceive the truth that we are part of something ‘steeped in goodness’.

Today, we all took part in the wonderful ritual of Baptism with three little boys and their parents. We proclaimed (in word and action) that God is active in all of us from the beginning to the end of the age.

We have to believe in inherent goodness to be able to baptize and mean what we say.

If we are to be people of hope, justice and love, ‘that’ has to be where we begin.

Good Stuff!! // Let us pray;

Embracing God;

Help us delight in the wonder of your love and in the goodness of your created order. May we reflect your image in all that we do. Amen.



#580VU “Faith of Our Fathers”