Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
June 30, 2019
Scripture Reading: Genesis 1:1-2:4a
(Note: this is the first week of a Summer Sermon Series where we will be taking a second look at some beloved stories we remember from Sunday School. This week and next, we are beginning at the beginning with the two creation stories found in Genesis.)
Did you know that
there are two different and complete stories of God’s initial creation in
scripture? We read one of them this
morning, and we’ll be reading the other one next week.
Was there anything
that stood out for you in this morning’s reading? Any words or phrases that caught your eye or
your ear? Anything about the style of
the reading?
(Wait for answers)
Now some background to
this story. This story about creation
was written down when the Ancient Israelite people were living in exile in
Babylon. The Babylonian army had surrounded
the place where they were living, had ransacked the city of Jerusalem, and had
destroyed the temple, the home of God, literally the place where they believed
that God lived. Leaders, along with much
of the population were carried away from the devastated city, and they were
kept in Babylon for 70-some-odd years.
Can you imagine what
they must have been feeling? Cut off
from the land that they love; cut off from their families and their
communities; cut off from their religious structures and practices; abandoned
by God. And God had spoken to them
through the prophets, especially the prophet Jeremiah, telling them to get
comfortable in Babylon because they were going to be there for a while. Generations passed while they waited for the
time when they could return home.
And yes, there was
despair. Psalms of lament, like Psalm
137, were written:
“By the rivers of
Babylon –
there
we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our harps.
For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors
asked for mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How could we sing the
Lord’s song
in a foreign land?”
And yet, rising out of
the ashes of lament came a new direction, a new promise. There, when the whole world had seemed to
crumble around them, the Ancient Israelite people began to redefine themselves,
began to consider afresh who they were and how they related to God. A renewed sense of identity was developing.
The story of creation
that we read together this morning was developed partly in response to the
world around them. The style and
structure of mythical epics was retained, but where the Babylonian creation
story had the world arising out of violence and battle; the creation story of
the Ancient Israelites had God speaking creation in to being. Where the Babylonian creation story had a
multitude of gods working together to create; the creation story of the
Israelite people had a singular God, the God who had been with their ancestors,
responsible for creation. The Babylonian
creation story has humans created as slaves of the gods; the Israelite creation
story has humans created to act on God’s behalf within the rest of
creation. The Babylonian creation story
has all of creation arising out of the bloody corpse of one of the goddesses;
the Israelite creation story has God looking at creation and naming it as
“good.”
It is as if the people
in exile were trying to say, “This is who we are. This is the sort of God that we follow – a
God who doesn’t need to resort to violence but who can speak creation in to
being; a God who desires a creation that is intrinsically good.
Did you also catch on
to some of the rhythm or repetition in the reading? This was also intentional. It was likely written so that it could be
recited when the people gathered together to worship this Creator God. The repetition and rhythm give the reading
the possibility to be read as we did this morning, with responses and
participation. The repetition and rhythm
make the reading easier to learn by heart, to take in to your heart, and once
it is in your heart, it becomes part of your identity. This is who we are, and this is the sort of
God that we follow.
Finally, did you
notice the culmination, the pinnacle of God’s creation? Some people would say that it is the creation
of humans, since that was the last act of creation on the sixth day. But what about the seventh day? I would suggest that the seventh day, the day
when God rested, is actually the high point of creation. The practice of Sabbath might have been a
practice that those Ancient Israelite people used to define themselves against
their neighbours. We follow a God who
wants us to rest for one day out of seven.
We follow a God who is more focused on relationship and on being than on
productivity and doing. This is who we
are, and this is the sort of God that we follow.
So can you see how a
creation story like the one that we read this morning, might have evolved out
of this developing identity for a people in exile?
Which is all very well
if you are looking for a history lesson, but what good is the story to us
today, living millennia away from the Babylonian empire?
Last Tuesday at our
final Doctrine session, we were talking about the world that we live in, our
current context in New Brunswick in 2019, and what it was like to live as
followers of Jesus Christ in the world in which we find ourselves. We agreed that the world is changing quickly;
we agreed that as followers of Jesus Christ, we have a different way of being
in the world, a way that others might see as “strange”; we agreed that it is
sometimes difficult to figure out what to do, and that we needed each other for
support.
So maybe we do have a
bit in common with those ancient people.
Sometimes we need to define ourselves against the rest of the world –
this is who we are, and this is the sort of God that we follow. And maybe there are some lessons from this
ancient story that is part of our sacred text that apply today, 2700 years
later.
God looked at
everything that God had created, and saw that it was good. What might the world be like if we saw all of
creation as good – good because God created it, and good because God says so,
not because of what it can do for us humans?
It is easy to look at something like a tree and say that it is good
because it gives us shade in the summer, a beautiful display of colour in the
autumn, and we can burn it for fuel if we need to. That is a utilitarian definition of good –
the tree is good because of what it can do for us. But what if we were to look at a tree and say
that this tree is good because God created it and God said so.
It is easy to say that
creation is good when we are talking about something like a tree or a flower or
a bird or a friend. It is harder to say
that creation is good when we are talking about a mosquito or a skunk or a
groundhog or a dangerous bacterium. But
this story calls us to turn away from utilitarian thinking. The mosquito is good, not because it gives
food to the songbirds which we like; but the mosquito is good because God
created it, and because God said so.
It becomes even more ambiguous
if we take things and practices that are beneficial to humans but harmful to
the rest of creation. One example might
be mining – the things that we take out of the ground are beneficial to humans
and our way of living; but at what cost?
It is not beneficial to the trees that are ripped from the ground to
make way for the mine; it’s not beneficial to the bodies of water that are
poisoned by arsenic and other chemicals needed for the mining process; it’s not
even always beneficial for the miners who risk their health and their life to
work in the mines.
Taking a Genesis 1
view of the world calls us to pay attention to the rest of creation. When humans were created on the 6th
day, God gave us a responsibility to rule over the rest of creation on God’s
behalf. I think that this responsibility
includes the responsibility to view all of creation in the same way that God
views it – as good. When we abuse the responsibility,
and see humans, or some humans, as more important or “more good” than the rest
of creation, are we really living in to God’s vision of the world?
Like the Ancient
Israelite people, sometimes we struggle to define ourselves against the rest of
the world. As followers of Jesus Christ,
this is who we are, and this is the God that we follow. Even though we aren’t in literal exile,
sometimes it might feel that way when our values are at odds with the values of
the world around us. But we can be
confident when we say that the God whom we follow sees all of creation, and
calls all of creation “good.” Creation
is good, not because of what it can do for us, but because God says so.
And on the seventh
day, God rested, and God enjoyed all of the good creation.
May we do likewise!
Amen.
A part of creation that it is easy to name as "good."
Tall Trees, near Kilvert Lake (between Kenora and Sioux Narrows)
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