Genesis 1:1-31 & 2:1-3
Revelation 22:13
I Love to Tell the Story: In the Beginning, God…
This summer we have embarked upon a series of sermons telling- and re-telling – the great stories of the Bible. Remembering the wisdom of the German Theologian, Karl Barth, we seek to read the ancient truths through the lens of today’s world. “We should always hold the Bible in one hand,” said Barth, “and the newspaper in the other.”
We know that the Bible stories- stories like Jonah and the whale or Noah and the ark – are not literally true. They represent humankinds’ attempt to understand their wars and famines and floods through the lens of either God’s judgment and wrath, or His approval and affirmation. The Bible is not literally “the word of God,” but it is, rather, a great body of literature that chronicles humankinds attempt to make sense of the history unfolding around and about them. The value in examining these stories is that they hold truths about human nature: the jealousies and insecurities and arrogance that still bedevil humankind to this day. We find ourselves, more than God, in the ancient texts.
And so this morning we turn to the great poetic first chapter of the Book of Genesis. “In the beginning, God……” Stop right here for just a minute. The ancient writers of the Book of Genesis (and we know there were many) believed that God preceded everything. “In the beginning, God…..” Creation is not about us or for us– it’s an emanation of God.
Way back in the year 1989 a group of 8 church members travelled to South Africa to study the severe human rights violations of the apartheid state. It was hard to find beauty in that country back during the state of emergency, when the entire nation was a cauldron of pain for all people, regardless of their race or color. But South Africa is, physically, a beautiful country. And there was something in the beauty of the natural world in that place that worked its way into my heart and mind, and redeemed me from some of the existential pain of the human tragedy that wrecked havoc upon my soul.
The Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean meet off the Cape of Good Hope in whirlpools of abundant life. Whales breach in the distance, migrating north from the frigid waters of the Antarctic, to glory in the banquet of sea life found where the two oceans converge. Penguins scurry along the shoreline, feasting on schools of small fish. In the interior of the country the Drakensburg Mountains rise majestically from the flatlands. The great wild beasts that draw tourists to southern Africa roam freely on the broad plains of the national parks.
I have one cherished memory of that trip that comes alive for me every time I read the first chapter of the Book of Genesis.
Very early one morning, about an hour before sunrise, we gathered together our little group of travelers and hiked up the rise of a small mountain near the hotel in which we were staying. The village where we lodged was within the Drakensburg Mountain Range, and was called “Little Switzerland” which might help you begin to create a picture in your mind.
Before the sun broke over the horizon, we read aloud…
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was a vast waste, and darkness covered the deep.” (We waited in silence for the first intimations of the dawn). Then we read on….“Darkness hovered over the surface of the water and God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And so God separated light from darkness.” (from Genesis 1)
Over the dark and seemingly void wasteland of the grassy plains below, dawn broke, slowly. And, gradually – so gradually – light filled the giant basin. It was a kind of stage production of the creation text. And the magic of that mountain range, bathed in light and rising up out of the barren darkness below, enabled me to imagine the origin of this creation text.
I could picture that many thousands of years ago our ancestors tried to understand the mystery of the rising sun in much the same way that we witnessed it in that early dawn. “Light came and expelled darkness. And God saw that light was good.” Our ancient forebears, standing on some mountainside, perhaps not far from the sea, held the hands of their children and continued to tell the story…
“God created the dry land and separated it from the sea; so that plants and trees bearing fruit could be there for our nourishment. God gave us the sun and the stars and the moon to govern the day and the night. God made the seas to be teeming with living creatures and created the birds to fly above it. And God made there to be cattle and wild animals and, finally, God created human beings, and blessed them, and set them in the midst of all this beauty. God saw everything thing that he had made, and it was very good. And on the seventh day he rested and blessed all that he had done. Because in the beginning….. God…..”
I re-tell this Bible story today, with the newspaper in one hand, because I believe we are in desperate need of re-claiming the sacred in creation. We need to re-imagine creation by borrowing from the poetic imagination of Genesis. We need to see the mystery of God in every star-lit sky, in every delicate spider web, in every ear of corn bursting with the sweetness of summer, in the call of the mourning dove as day breaks, and in the breeze that comes in off Long Island Sound with its blessings as the sand warms and the temperature differential works its wonders.
If we could imagine that creation began as an emanation from God, as told in the poetry of Genesis, then perhaps we could begin to show the kind of reverence for creation that is desperately needed right now, if we are to slow the tide of accelerating climate change. Think about the implications of what we are told in the sacred creation myth: Everything we tread upon, everything we consume, everything we abuse or take for granted is an emanation of God, because God is in everything and God is the precedent of all that is.
In theological terms, I consider myself to be a Panentheist. Panentheism is a theology, embraced by the likes of Paul Tillich and John Robinson, that maintains that God is present within all of creation; and is, at one and the same time, also transcendent. God is all that we can see and touch. And more than all we can see and touch. Panentheism affirms both the unknowable, incomprehensively expansive mystery of God and the indwelling, substantive reality that makes every thing in all creation divine.
This morning, as you hold the newspaper together with the Bible in one of your hands, you might well be holding a small fan in the other. Because we are right in the middle of several days of an extreme heat advisory. And we are right in the middle of the hottest year on record – world-wide- in the more than 130 years of meteorological record-keeping.
We know what is happening, and we know why. Ice sheets in the Arctic are melting, and sea levels are rising. Drought and devastation throughout the Midwest beleaguer our farmers. New Orleans reels once again from days of heavy rain, because storms get “stuck in place” as the earth’s temperatures rise. In California, lack of rain and the threat of raging fires leaves residents terrorized. Just a few years ago, San Juan practically blew away; and salt water crept into the subways of New York City.
Meanwhile, deceptive propaganda is unleashed by fossil-fuel companies. And many of the major news networks strategically avoid covering climate disasters as “climate change.” The biggest obstacle to solving global warming, according to the experts, is the role of money in politics, and the undue sway of special interest groups. (Hansen, James 2009: p 10 of the Preface)
But do we want to sell our future to special interests? Or do we want to preserve that which is of the Divine for the sake of the generations to come?
I am here to say that there is good news. Leadership on the global climate issues among young people has cohesive and powerful momentum . Public opinion is really beginning to come into focus. David Wallace-Wells, in a sobering new book entitled The Uninhabitable Earth says “We have all the tools we need to aggressively phase out dirty energy… cut global emissions… and scrub carbon from the atmosphere. There are obvious and available, if costly, solutions. What we need most,” Wallace-Wells says, “is to accept responsibility.” (from Bill Moyers in The Nation July 15/22 2019)
An incredible group of young “technology-wizards” based mostly in Denver Colorado, working together under the auspices of The Nature Conservancy, have consolidated their efforts to accelerate the development of new technologies designed to expedite improvements in a broad range of conservation issues. Wind and solar farms are growing exponentially in number. Giant wind turbines provide almost all the electricity Block Island requires, most of the time. Solar energy is becoming more and more affordable and more and more efficient.
Each one of us has a role in taking responsibility for the growing threat of climate change. We can do small things in our homes and we must. You might remember that in the Fellowship Hall to which we’ll adjourn for refreshments has gone from requiring 6,420 Watts to power it’s lights back in the days of incandescent bulbs to 567 Watts now – with LED’s. We’ve cut our electricity needs in that one room by 90%.
So try to be not dismayed or disempowered by the enormity of the climate change issues. Just work tirelessly and consistently to use less, consume less and dispose of less; for the sake of our sacred creation.
As much as you possibly can, do away with the use of plastics of any kind. They do not bio-degrade so as they break down in tiny pieces over the years, they appear in our water sources, and in the belly of the whale as well. And ultimately, of course, in your belly and mine.
And it’s important to talk about the realities of climate change with your friends. Talk about how you invest your money, and how you make decisions about what to buy and where to buy it. Encourage your family and friends to work toward eating more plants and less meat in their daily diet; stockyards take a huge toll on our environment. Talk about why we cannot afford to let ourselves be blindsided by the giants of denial – politicians and news networks and the giant corporations whose profits depend upon the destruction of this sacred creation.
It’s frighteningly easy to assume that as individuals we can’t really make a difference in such a seemingly immense problem like climate change. But that is exactly the ruse to which we cannot give way.
Creation is sacred. From its soil to its skies, from the whale to the hummingbird, from the glaciers to the granite cliffs, from the tiniest grain of sand to the towering Sequoia – creation is sacred. Stand with your children or grandchildren on a mountain top and read the first chapter of the Book of Genesis aloud. And open their imaginations to a powerful understanding of just how precious, how magically wonderful, is the creation unfolding around and about them. Time is short. Courage and determination is what we need. And the truth is what will save us all. Amen.
Carleen R. Gerber
The First Congregational Church of Old Lyme
