“The Meaning of Our Origin Story”
Genesis 1:1-2:3
A little over three years ago, my wife Paula and I hiked up Mt. Grizzly, along with our dog, Angus. We had a great morning hiking up to the summit. We then sat up on some rocks overlooking the Rogue Valley and ate our lunch. Finally, after taking in the amazing view, we headed back down the mountain. After about an hour, we came into a grove of trees. The afternoon sun was shining through the branches and onto the ground. It was remarkably silent- no sound of birds or chipmunks, just silence and beauty. Then, all of the sudden, we heard a disembodied male voice begin to speak. It said, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep while a wind of God swept over the waters….” Paula and I froze in our tracks! Was this some sort of experience of the Divine? Had our dog learned to speak and the story of creation simultaneously? While we stood there, frozen and stunned, the voice continued, “Then God said, let there be light, and there was light….” We began to notice that the sound was coming from Paula’s backpack and tracked the voice eventually to her cell phone. Apparently, one of the Apps she had on her phone was a daily scripture, which also spoke the passage out loud if you wanted. We relaxed a little. But I have to say, initially, it was a profound moment - hearing the story of creation in this beautiful setting. The colors of the trees and surrounding flowers looked more vivid to me in that moment.
It is my hope that by experiencing the telling of God’s creation through singing and speaking, you may have experienced a more profound understanding and meaning of this familiar story. Hopefully, you did not also hear a disembodied voice as well…😊 What, then, is the meaning of this story for us today?
In a world driven by scientific explanation and exploration of our universe, we are learning more and more about creation. If we think of the created order purely from a scientific viewpoint, we then understand creation as evolving without any transcendent link to a divine Creator. We miss the depth, the awe and wonder and holiness of the world around us and see it as just some natural process or some lucky mistake that has brought us to this point in time. Theologian Edward G. Conklin wrote, “The probability of life originating by accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop.”
We miss much when we view the world and surrounding universe in such a way. That being said, we do not take this story of creation word for word as a literal way in exactly how creation came into being. Think of it rather as a way people long ago understood the world around them and how it came to be. The overall message is that creation is more than just some natural order and is a story worth telling. There is divine purpose and inspiration around us.
English poet and author Elizabeth Barret Browning (1806-61) wrote,
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God.
But only they who see, take off their shoes.
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware.
People of faith need a story of a Creator and creation so that we too might view the world around us as crammed with heaven and afire with God. We too can then see this world as holy and claim our sacred duty to be caretakers of this created order. This creation story anchors us, helps us to understand our sacred origin, and links us to the creation around us. What are the origins of this creation story in Genesis?
The bulk of this story of creation was written over many centuries, beginning with oral tradition, and finally written down around the beginning of David’s reign in the 900s B.C. It was one of many creation stories of how things were made and who made them at the time. Yet this account differs in one very important way - there is but one God who created a monotheistic order of things versus a polytheistic understanding of creation. The Assyrians had their God, Marduk, who was associated with creating water and vegetation. Marduk was in competition with Assur over the created order of things. Then there were the Egyptian gods of the time- Osiris, Seth, and Horus, who had their hand in the creation of all things. Theologian Roger Nam, Professor of Hebrew Bible Candler School of Theology at Emory University Atlanta, Ga., writes, “And these deities were fickle. According to the Babylonian myth, Enuma Elish, they created humans, or at least some of them did. But at the same time, the latter regretted the decisions and schemed to destroy the human race because we were too “noisy.” These deities would battle, kill, enslave and retaliate against each other, and humans were often caught in the midst of these disputes.”
By contrast, the story of creation in Genesis points to a single God of all things, who creates, who is sovereign and powerful. God speaks and breathes the created order into being. It is a very intimate understanding of the creation around us. I would say that this story of creation is most important because it reminds us of our sacred and divine origins.
Let me land on just a couple of highlights in this creation narrative, then end with human beings and our connection to the Divine as well as our role in the created order.
While the earth is formless and dark, the Ruach, that is, the Divine breath, word, wind, and spirit, breathed life into existence. The psalmist writes a similar understanding in psalm 33. “By a word of God, the heavens were made and by the breath of God’s mouth all their host.” (Psalm 33:8)
I have many memories of our son Sam playing with Legos for hours at a time, creating all kinds of things, concentrating on each building, tower, street, or castle, his fingers working to bring something into being. Each creation of Legos was very personal for Sam. When someone took apart the Hogwarts castle he spent days creating, I don’t think he ever got over it.
God cares so much about the created order! God spoke it into being, breathed God’s essence into all of it used holy fingers to fashion in ways we cannot comprehend. It is sacred and a reflection of the Creator of all things. I would imagine that God feels similarly as our son did when a Lego creation was destroyed when God sees plastic in our oceans, pollution in our skies, and warming temperatures.
There is this section in the creation story that we modern-day believers aren’t exactly sure what to do with. It has to do with verse 6 and then verse 14. Verse six begins, “Let there be a dome or firmament in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the waters.” Then in verse 14, “And God said, ‘ let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years.” What is the meaning of a dome in the sky? First, a disclaimer, as it says in our church vision statement, “We take the Bible seriously, not literally.” We know now, of course, that there is no dome that separates the day from the night. The belief at the time was this: There was a huge dome in the form of a clear, glass-like turtle shell that separated the water above (because the sky was blue, so full of water) from the water on the earth. The stars that shone at night were holes in the turtle shell, and when the sun finished its day and set, it then took a route over the waters in heaven and over the shell. Hence those holes glowed. In addition, when it rained, large gates in the shell were opened by God as the waters in the heavens came down to the waters on the earth. It was one way of understanding the complexities of the sky back in the day, that is all.
Next, I’d like to spend some time on what I consider perhaps to be the most important part of our origin story, verses 26 and 27, where God wants to make human beings in our image (that is, in the image of God and angels), and that God created humankind in the image of God, then gave us the mission of dominion (that is caretaking, not dominance) over creation. The first reflection is that YOU and I are made in the image of God, and so is everyone else! What a great thing this would be if we believed and lived it out. Look at the person next to you sitting in the pew right now, or if you have someone watching online with you, the person sitting right next to you. THAT is an image of God. Or spend some time looking in the mirror this afternoon. There is an image of God. Celebrate that understanding!
Finally, just a bit on the part of our origin story that was not in the reading for today, the story of Adam and Eve found in Genesis 2:7-20. We are more connected than we think. Was there a real Adam and real Eve? Science seems to think so. Watch this video from National Geographic to learn more. Scientific Adam and Eve | National Geographic - Bing video
We are so connected! There was an Adam and an Eve, perhaps not as described in scripture, but they did exist, and we all come from them and are 99.9% similar! We humans keep looking for differences and put up walls of separation over race, origin, and creed. Our origin story from Genesis reminds us we are one human family, descended from two human beings from long ago. What did they look like? Who knows, and who cares? They are our great “Times at least 10,000” ancestors-the ancestors of us all. We are even more connected than we think!
In closing, I’ll share a thought from a pastor I got to know while in seminary, Rev. Dave Steele, who wrote in his poem, “In the Beginning,” the following words. “All is for you, God tells the human beings. The world is set up to be a nurturing environment, for you, for everyone. Listen to the story. The world is your home. It has the resources to feed, to nourish ALL my creatures. That is what the story says.” May God be with us as we tell our story of origin, remembering the creative God who made us all, remembering that the creation around us is crammed with heaven, and remembering that All of us are reflections of the God who made us and are more connected than we can ever imagine and that there is enough, enough for us all. That is a story worth telling! Alleluia! Amen.
