GENESIS 1:1-2:3
PSALM 150
2 CORINTHIANS 13:11-14
MATTHEW 28:16-20
Sermon – May 22, 2005
The
Creation Story from Genesis 1 is profound, deeply meaningful and extremely
pertinent for Christians in the 21st century. It has also been one of the most abused
passages in the whole Bible by those with ideological axes to grind, the
“selective fundamentalists” who look for biblical “proof texts” to support
their ideologies – of one kind or another.
Aggressive
secularists see in this text a naive, simplistic account of the world’s
beginning by the word of an omnipotent Deity whose existence they dismiss
automatically. Some so-called “biblical
fundamentalists” see in this text a carte
blanche to dismiss and suppress all science in favor of a simplistic
interpretation of this text as meaning the whole world as it now exists was
created out of nothing in seven 24-hour days and there is no room for billions
of years of history, evolution and extinction.
Some political ideologies have seen in this text a blank check for a
particular generation – their generation – of human beings to do
anything they wanted to the earth, which usually has involved ruthlessly using
up resources, wiping out or endangering other species and oppressing
human beings who are different from them.
All
three of these uses of this sublime passage are abusive and deeply flawed.
So
let’s try to put aside the “heat” this passage has generated and shed some
“light” on it, or rather let the passage shed some light on us,
to guide our understanding and our actions, as the Bible is meant to do!
Christianity
and Judaism, which both hold this text to be sacred and to contain great truth,
are “revealed” religions; both declare that the truth about God and about the
world has been revealed by God to humans. Judaism’s formative period as a faith was
the experience of the Exodus from Egypt, the giving of the 10 commandments and
the rest of the religious law on Mount Sinai, and the wandering in the
wilderness period leading up to the invasion of the Promised Land by the Hebrew
people. Four of the first five books of
the Hebrew Scriptures focus on this period, which is two generations long.
The
Book of Genesis is a “prequel” to this formative period before the Exodus, and
Genesis itself has two parts. One part,
Chapters 12-50, tells the story of the ancestors of those who crossed the Red
Sea with Moses: the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Hebrew people starting
with Abraham and Sarah, and the covenant relationship God called them into
unilaterally when God first spoke to Abraham.
The
first eleven chapters, a “pre-prequel”, if you will, are not about the
Hebrew people specifically but about humanity. In contrast to the rest of the first five books of the Bible, which
are based on the historical experiences of a specific people and include the
written-down memories of eye-witness accounts, Genesis 1-11 tells about, if you
will, “the infancy of the human race and before”, stories God
told to the Hebrew people after they became God’s chosen people to answer three
fundamental questions.
First,
“What is God like?” Second, “What does
it mean to be human?” and third, “If God is both powerful and loving, why does
the world contain so much that is really, really messed up?”
The
short answer to the last question is, “Because God gave human beings free will
and we have often used our free will to rebel against God, to fight each other
and to abuse the creation.” That is the
meaning of the Garden of Eden story in Chapters 2 and 3, and the stories which
follow it: Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood, and the Tower of Babel.
What
we heard this morning, Genesis 1:1-2:3, is God’s revelation to God’s people of
the beginning of the answers to “What is God like?” and “What does it mean to
be human?” The full answer unfolds in
the rest of the Bible, in sacred history since, in our own lives today and
ultimately in Heaven and in the Kingdom of God.
Just in this
passage from Genesis 1:1-2:3, we learn that God is all-powerful. In sharp
contrast with other ancient creation stories, serenity, not warfare,
existed at the Beginning of Creation.
“God said, ‘Let there be...’ and it was so” is a poetic refrain which is
repeated as a magnificent symphonic theme as the story of creation unfolds. God has no competition.
God pre-existed the earth. There is no speculation about God’s origin:
“In the beginning, God” as some translations read.
God is above gender, in contrast to pagan
deities, who are described in very male and very female terms.
God does not need anything, but creates
simply because it is God’s nature to bring meaning out of chaos, creation out
of random molecules, life out of what was not living. God creates.
God is incredibly generous, and makes a
beautiful and bountiful creation and then creates human beings to be God’s
viceroys over it, giving them authority, freedom and responsibility.
God sanctifies time as well as space and
relationships. The climax of the
story is the creation, not of humanity, but of the Sabbath.
Second,
the Hebrew word used to describe those “lights” in the heavens is only used in
one other place in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible: to
describe the lights which were to be put into the Temple in Jerusalem. I see two meaning of this: one, that the
Temple was to represent God’s creation, and two, that the creation itself is
God’s Temple – and should be treated with the same respect one would give to a
house of worship.
You
can see how we are already getting into the answer to “What does it mean to be
human?” First of all, it means that
each of us and all human beings are
“created in the image of God” – “male and female he created them.” If
every Christian and Jew in the world memorized this one verse and took it truly
to heart, racism and sexism on the part of believers would be unthinkable! The person of the other gender or
ethnicity would be as equally made in the image of God as any other person.
Second,
if anyone wants to show respect and love to God, the concrete way to do it is
to show respect and love for “the images of God.” Pagan idol-worshippers would fuss over the statues of their
divinities and give them offerings of food; believers bring food for the
Food Banks so that hungry human beings may be fed. That’s just one example of how the Greatest Commandment – “Love
God with all your heart, mind and soul” inevitably leads to the second
commandment – “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Third,
to be human is to have authority over the creatures of the earth – and under
God. God does not give up ownership
of the earth, ownership which is God’s by right as earth’s creator! If human beings have “dominion” over the
earth, as the text says, it is lordship under the supreme lordship of
God. And a wise exerciser of dominion
cares for all those under his or her authority so that they may flourish in
accordance with the instructions of the owner.
“Dominion”
does not, in short, mean a “blank check” to exploit the earth for the sole
benefit of one species (ours) or one generation of one species (ours) or
according to made-up guidelines (by us). A conservation
ethic is inherent in the authority and
responsibility God gave human beings.
As
the story further unfolds after Genesis 1 and 2, we learn how God is willing to
take risks (giving human beings freedom means they can abuse freedom and reject
God), how God has persevering love as well as standards, not rejecting God’s
people utterly, and how God even became totally vulnerable on the cross in
order to give humanity a second chance – the most dramatic example of
risk-taking generosity of all.
All
that lies beyond Genesis 1 and 2, which itself tells a story which could indeed
cover billions of years. Billions of
years, and not a week, you ask? Well,
for one thing, according to Genesis 1 the sun was created on the “fourth
day” – so how do we measure the length of the previous three “days”? And in Psalm 90:4, the author addresses God
and says “For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is
past, like a watch in the night” (which is three hours long). God’s “days” were, and are, not like our
days. God’s majesty and the scope of
God’s activity cannot be fully comprehended – let alone limited – by our puny
brains.
“Respect
the dignity of every human being”, as The Book of Common Prayer puts it,
take good care of the Earth and all its creatures – that is what we are called
to do in response to this passage, but most of all to get down on our knees
before the Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier of the world and say, “How great
thou art!”
(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard
St. Barnabas Episcopal Church