(Genesis 1.1 – 2.3) – 6 September 2020
Neil Millar
There are at least three stories of creation in the bible, and this is the first. The second follows on from this – the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden, and a third is found in John’s gospel. Each story offers profound truths, each one different, and none of them qualify as a scientific explanation. Rather, these stories offer theological perspectives on the meaning of life.
Today marks the first Sunday in the Season of Creation, and this first creation narrative in Scripture sets out a particular vision of God’s relationship to the world and its creatures, and their relationship to each other. For me, it’s been an enduring source of inspiration and encouragement, shaping my own relationship to the life of the world and mission of the church.
One way of exploring its significance is to contrast it with other ANE accounts of creation. In Enuma Elish (a Babylonian creation story), for example,the world is said to come into being as a result of conflict among the gods. In this account, the cosmos is formed from the corpse of the primordial mother god Tiamat who is brutally killed by Marduk (the god of Babylon). And similarly, ‘from the blood of another murdered god human beings are created, to serve the gods’ (David Neville). Notice how different all this bloodletting is from the artistic, effervescent, generativity of the opening biblical account. In Genesis 1, there are no bragging heralds or messy battles for domination, no necessity for violence and death at the source of things. Instead, we have a more contemplative account – it begins with silence and God works with what is.
‘When God created the heavens and the earth (i.e. everything) the earth was a formless void (tohu wabohu) and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.’ Now this translation does make it sound kind of wild and rushed, but that’s not necessarily the sense of it. In Hebrew, the word for wind is the same as for breath and spirit (ruach), and the word translated as swept can also mean hovered. This verb is used elsewhere to describe an eagle fluttering over its young. Translated like this we get a much calmer picture of God lingering with this primordial mystery; it’s non-violent and non-anxious. God hovering, God brooding. And God attending, I imagine, given what unfolds – watching, listening, waiting, dreaming, discerning possibility.
And, I have to say, I find this a reassuring image, for it suggests that God (unlike me) is not threatened by this chaos but rather is interested, engaged, and curious to see what it can become. When our lives descend into darkness and chaos, we get easily overwhelmed and distressed. But if God works so creatively with primordial chaos, what might he yet do with our difficulty??
So, this story gives us an image of God hovering, lingering, attending … And then, and only then, of God speaking. The Attentive One declares, ‘Let there be light.’ And behold, there was light – glorious luminosity, light to reveal the drama and dance of creation. And God saw that the light was ‘good’, and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light ‘Day’, and the Darkness, ‘Night’. And the rhythm of Creation is underway with Day and Night alternating as the world’s metronome – evening, morning, evening, morning, evening, morning… And with the dawning of each new day the tohu waboho is lovingly, playfully separated, shaped and released – and ‘let there be…’, and ‘let there be…’, and ‘let there be…’ (I’ve called it a song of creation and it reminds me of a song – Let it be, let it beee, let it be, let it be… whisper words of wisdom, let beee). Do you hear music in this account of creation, as God the Lingering One, the Unhurried, Playful One, whispers words of wisdom and a world of wonder and delight emerges? On Day one God sings up light. ‘Day two is a Sky-making day; a sky given to separate water from water, above from below. ‘Day two then gives to Day Three the waters below the Sky, to be separated further into Land and Sea.’ ‘And God sees and God proclaims the goodness of these places – Light and Sky and Land and Sea.’ ‘But Day Three is still to be completed. God says to the Land, I’ve granted you your place. Now you can give of yourself, by bringing forth plants and trees, and they, in turn, can share of themselves, of their seed and fruit.’ Creativity spawns more creativity, giving spawns more giving, this is the way of God and of God’s world, an abundance of giving, of grace. God creates hospitable spaces and these in turn nurture life.
From Day Three on, the world shares in its own creation as the spaces God has shaped (Earth, Sea and Sky) are filled with life – ‘And let the earth grow grass, plants yielding seed of each kind, and trees bearing fruit…’ ‘And let the waters swarm with the swarm of living creatures and let fowl fly over the earth…’ ‘And let the earth bring forth living creatures of each kind, cattle and crawling things and wild beasts of each kind’. The Generative God releases creation to be itself to be generative. Here is evidence of divine freedom and, a profound way of imagining the way God is towards the world. ‘By granting such reproductive potential to the world, God, as pure love does not insist on getting God’s way’ (Anstey) notes – God gives freedom and exercises trust. And God blessed them; saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply’, (i.e. Go for it – flourish and fill your space with life! And I can almost imagine God excitedly anticipating what that life will look like – I wonder what they’ll do today!!).
And then, on Day six, in a majestic paradox the divine one with no image, gives his image to humankind, the last of the creatures listed, seemingly marking our special place in this order. Now – you could just hear this as human anthropocentrism. We’re the ones writing the story, so of course we’ve put ourselves at the centre, as if ultimately it’s all about us. In the story, humans are then blessed and given carte blanche to own the earth. And this too seems seriously problematic. This is the perspective that’s caused many to criticise the Christian tradition as unecological – anthropocentric in a way that indigenous traditions aren’t. And I have to say, reading these verses in the light of current threats, the language does sound discordant:
And God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and conquer it, and hold sway over the fish of the sea and the fowl of the heavens and every beast that crawls upon the earth.’
This morning we look out and we see signs of Spring – there’s a fragrance of blossom in the air and trees are leafing; it’s a beautiful day. And yet, we know that all is not well with the world. Ice caps are melting and species are disappearing at alarming rates; forests are shrinking, rivers are being choked, deserts are spreading; oceans are filling with plastic and sea levels are rising. The natural world is increasingly in travail and it’s mainly due to the way we are holding ‘sway’ over the world. Droughts, floods and fires are a natural part of the ecosystem, but their increasing frequency and intensity are also signs of an ecosystem losing balance. The pandemic is another sign. For years, epidemiologists have been warning something like this was inevitable. The more human activity disturbs the balance of natural systems, the more likely the emergence of new pathogens. Given all this, how we to receive these biblical words about humanity’s sovereign role in the life of the world?
Well, here’s a thought. In stories that unfold later in our bibles we read a lot about kings and their exercise of power. And in the biblical rendition, kings come in two kinds; those who ignore God and rule proudly, exploiting and abusing their people, and those who humble themselves before God and exercise dominion by seeking justice and wellbeing for people and the land. If we are to think of human beings exercising dominion over the earth, as this creation story does, then surely this must be the sense of it. As God’s image bearers, we are to act in and with Creation as God acts, which is by attending, discerning, shaping and releasing. We can enjoy the world and the fruits of the earth. But we’re not here to consume it heedlessly, to inhibit its divine mandate to keep generating, bringing forth, life. The story testifies to a God who is not anxious, insecure, grasping or violent – rather God delights in the flourishing of creation, the whole of it. It’s this delight that we too are created for and called to participate in.
Which brings us to the final notes of this creation song, which culminates with a verse about God resting on Day 7. A flourishing creation is to be enjoyed, rested into. The fullness of this rest seems a long way off at present, and we can fall into the trap of thinking that only once the world’s problems are solved, are we allowed to relax, to stop, to rest. But I wonder if actually it’s in learning regularly to entrust ourselves to a time of rest, to quit from working, striving, amassing, letting ourselves simply appreciate and trust what has been given, that we and the life-giving rhythm of creation can more fully be restored.
I said at the beginning that for me, this story has been an enduring source of inspiration. As I have entrusted myself to its wisdom, I have found that it offers true guidance for fruitful living –that new possibilities can be discerned as we attend and hover over chaos; that hospitable spaces generate their own kind of life; that our own fullest life comes from cultivating life’s flourishing. Far from being an out of date, unscientific rendering, this is wisdom of enduring and acute relevance for the world and the church, a song worthy to be sung.
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