Sermon 19 June 2011

"The Meaning of Creation"
Genesis 1:1-2:4

To the ears of its intended audience, Jews who had just escaped from Egypt, the words of the first chapter of Genesis would have been both radical and reassuring.  In the prevailing Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Roman and Greek creation myths of the time, the principal god worshipped was the winner of some titanic struggle among the gods for dominion over the heavens and the earth.  Sometimes the protagonists were rival gods representing good and evil, or man-like and beast-like creatures, or representatives of order and chaos.  Whatever the form, the victor became the chief deity whom lesser powers and ordinary mortals worshipped with respect and admiration.  (Actually, little may have changed since 14 centuries before Christ, witness the way we deify winning sports figures and politicians today.)

Now listen again to Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  Bam, the old myths are shattered, their very foundations wiped away.  This God was there before the beginning.  This God didn’t win control over creation, this God made it all in the first place.  This God is assumed, not explained.  The word the original Hebrew uses for God is Elohim, a plural form, similar to the royal ‘we’, signifying intensification.  “I am the Lord and there is no other,” says Isaiah.  So this is the one true God we are talking about here.  Thus, the very first verse of the Bible destroyed in one stroke the basis of all the pagan creation myths that had come before. 

Then to further disembowel the myths, Genesis 1, verses 3-24, go on to enumerate how this one, true God took control of darkness and light, brought order from chaos, made the earth, the oceans and the heavens, created good and evil, made the fish, the birds, and the beasts.  Finally, on the sixth day, either as an afterthought, or perhaps craftily saving the best for last, God made mankind, people like you and meI.   And here we are three millenia later still wondering at it all. 

Since this is Trinity Sunday, I’ll just mention here that God, the Creator, is the first person of the Trinity.

Now lets take a little detour into glassblowing.  Here is a hand blown vase.  Is this vase’s creator in the vase?  You might say, “Yes”. She is reflected in the design, the choice of materials, the color selection, the melding together of the forms of the base and the top.  Is the breath of the glassblower evident in the shape of the vase?  “Yes,” it is her breath that formed this upper section.  Clearly the artist left her mark on this vase, so we could say she is immanent in the vase.  But is the artist in the vase?  No, the vase is empty and the artist is actually in Naples, NY.  Therefore, the artist is also transcendent, that is, before, after and beyond the vase.

Here’s how Genesis describes immanence (Gen 1:2) … and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. The word for ‘spirit’ in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Sanskrit is the same as the word for ‘breath.’  God’s breath is in creation just as the glassblower’s is in the vase; God is immanent in all of creation.  And, since God preceded creation, God is also transcendent or beyond creation.

Lest there be any doubt about God’s immanence in us, no fewer than four times in Genesis 1:25-26 we humans are described as being created in God’s image.  This is an exalted status, similar to rulers in the ancient Near East.  We are the pinnacles of creation, or put another way, we are God’s agents in creation.  Psalm 8 says we are just a little lower than God.  A word of caution here – our godliness refers to our created nature, God’s immanance, not our behavior, which the whole rest of the Bible tries to straighten out.  And the very next chapter of Genesis takes humans down several notches, but for the moment, let’s enjoy the God within.

Take a look now at your fellow worshipers; each is not only made in God’s likeness, but God is immanent in them.  What you are seeing in them, they are seeing in you.  Because God is in them, they are to be loved and respected.  God is also immanent in that tree in your back yard and in the insects that live on it and in the green hills beyond.  God’s immanence is not just here in this sanctuary, but everywhere in creation.  In that sense, we are always in a sacred space.

Pressing on to verse 3, “And God said, let there be light, and there was light.”  In fact, every day of creation in Genesis begins with “And God said…”  God spoke creation into existence.  John repeats this theme in the beginning of his gospel,

  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” 

Word is capitalized to indicate that it includes the divine principle of reason that gives order to the universe.  God is the Word, here referring to Jesus, the second person of the Trinity.   God speaks the Word, and we hear the Word.  The Word, both in the Bible and in Jesus, becomes the link between the mind of God and the mind of mankind.

Christians sometimes call themselves people of the word because we owe our very existence to the Word.  These words are our connection with God.  It behooves us to study and follow them carefully, for they tell us who we are and who God is.  Another bit of caution here – we have an expansive God and our God has supplied expansive words to us.  The closer we get to God’s words, the more we will appreciate them.  Therefore it is better to read the Bible yourself than to listen to anyone’s interpretation of the Bible.  From God’s mind to your mind 

Back to the word, in the first three days of creation, God formed the bases of life - light, the ground, water and vegetation.  During the next three days, God populated the earth with ongoing life – seasons, birds, animals, fish, food and us.   And then, on the seventh day he did nothing.  Nothing.  I see a certain symmetry here.  In the beginning, before God acted, there was nothing going on.  Now God has acted and God ends the action by ceasing to act.  Rest is built into the creation.

When Susan plays a note on the organ, we can only hear it against a background of silence.  The sound arises from silence and when its reverberation dies out, it returns to silence.  Similarly all action arises from stillness and when completed returns to stillness.

God built the creation on silence, otherwise God’s speaking it into being would not have been heard.  Now on the seventh day, God is reminding us that all activity, even the activity of creation, begins and ends in stillness. 

We humans, those marvelous beings created in the image of God on the sixth day, need to remember how God acted on the seventh day.  It is usually called a day of rest, but there must be something more to it, because at the end of this morning’s reading it says God “blessed the seventh day and hallowed it.”  And notice that there is no evening on the seventh day, stillness endures.  Stillness is a behavior God is telling us to emulate and retain.  We cannot see the immanent God within ourselves reflected in moving water, but only mirrored in still water.  This is another way to hear the familiar words of the 23^rd Psalm, “he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul.”  The Sabbath is the time to experience God in the dimension that is behind action, thought and feeling. 

I am suggesting that a vital part of being a Christian is just that, being.  Not doing, being.  We become peace, by being peaceful within.  We become loving, by connecting with the love within our being.  We hear the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, only against a background of inner silence.

The continuing breath of God, the Holy Spirit, is with us, always and everywhere in creation.  Tuning into the Spirit is about non-doing.  It is like sitting quietly at home with the lights on inviting the Spirit to come calling.  This requires being open, receptive, expectant, and trusting.  The Spirit is always willing, but are we?  When our minds and emotions are agitated, the presence of the Spirit cannot penetrate.  When we are still, the Spirit can be experienced.

People today have a longing for answers to the big questions, Who am I?  Why am I here?  What is my destiny?  Psychologist James Hillman has concluded that,

“People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix.  Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country?  Why do all these selves need help?  They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture.  They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world.” 

In other words, people are looking for the meaning in their creation.  Here in the first chapter of Genesis we have the answer.  God is immanent in us.  We have the Word in Jesus Christ.    The Holy Spirit is ever-present.  The experience of the Trinity is the meaning of creation for me.  Thanks be to God.

Amen