Creation, cont'd

Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Psalm 8
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20

Many people I know tend to struggle with self-image—some people feel unworthy and nothing they do or say means anything and some continually strive for praise, seeming to boast about themselves. Most of us tend to one or the other. Either we don’t receive praise for our accomplishments well because we don’t want to seem arrogant or we seek out praise and approval because we need to build ourselves up. I have always had the feeling that even those who seem arrogant and overly confident in themselves were trying to make up for some kind of emptiness inside. I could be wrong. And I know that there are people who seem to have a good, solid awareness of their worth—not perfect—but aware of their inherent worth to their families, friends, employers and to God. They can say, along with the psalmist, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”[1] They can balance their lives as they hear the psalmist witness again,
3When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; 4what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals* that you care for them?[2]

It’s healthy and whole to recognize the wondrous ways that God has created us—each one of us. It’s freeing to realize that God creates wonders and we are among them—perhaps not the most impressive, but we are among them. Though we may recognize God’s influence and genius in the complex accomplishments of humanity; we can also recognize God in the ways we respond to weakness and the ways that mercy brings us together. The recent trend to recognize disabilities as different abilities may seem only about political correctness, but people who cannot see, hear or live that way that the healthiest among us may reveal understandings that those of us with sight and hearing would never recognize on our own.

On Star Trek: The Next Generation, Jordy was blind. The technology of the future had provided him with the ability to see—and to see in an unusual way. He could make out objects for practical purposes, but his visor provided him with the ability to see physical features unseen by the normal human eye. He could see molecular makeup of the objects around him because his visor was made to do that. One storyline revealed that it was possible for him to have sight if he received a particular treatment but he was hesitant because he would lose his particular perspective and he had been blind from birth. He worried that it would change his identity in basic, important ways. But technological advancement isn’t what I mean when I say that those with different abilities reveal gifts most of us can’t imagine.

God created us in great diversity, blessing us through our genes to produce a fantastic variety of people, not to mention, plants, animals, fungi and microscopic life. Our differing abilities are revelations of the variety that comes out when we adapt to our circumstances, when some of us survive because of our differences and others develop ways of understanding that fit particular settings of time and place.

One of my great-nieces was born with a genetic disorder that means, consequentially, she won’t ever be able to have children. She has lower than average intelligence and aptitude for learning, too, although that isn’t always the result of her particular disorder. Sometimes it has no effect on intellectual development, though it always has distinct physical effect of infertility. She is also very pretty with big blue eyes and caramel-blond hair. She is very loving and thrives on affection. Her disorder will not be passed onto children, yet her loving nature is a gift to the people in her world.

She is a gift all unto herself—her life will never be about genetic legacy, only about what she does and gives to those around her. I think it’s a wonderful result of a potential tragic situation. I hope that those who are closest to her lift up the gifts she has to give as she grows into her life.

The first account of creation in the bible is recounted in the first chapter of Genesis. If we listen while it is read, we can hear God’s intention for goodness and order in creation. What we don’t hear is an account of historical or biological accuracy. We hear of God’s intention to imbue creation with the ability to continue to create on its own. We hear God’s call for humanity to have dominion as God has dominion—in our own image, God says. To rule as God rules means to rule with mercy, justice, compassion and an awareness of the power to bring harm or injury.

As the first chapter of Genesis’ account of creation builds from its chaotic beginning—we hear God’s desire for an orderly progression: the light of day and the dark of night; the border between water and air; the tidal bounds between sea and land and plants to grow on the land. Then we hear about each realm of creation once again. The light of day is given an orb to rule it, the sun and the dark of night a lesser orb, the moon along with the stars. The water and the skies are filled with fish and birds respectively. Then the land is filled with creeping creatures and herd animals and finally with humanity as the crown of creation—not because we are more wondrous, but because we are to be responsible for what has been created in the same way that God is responsible for all that God has done.

God creates a time of rest, too, a day in each week that demonstrates the abundance of all that God has done. Order within the chaos of creation includes time when humanity and those creatures that live with humanity can rest and take time from toiling for their sustenance.

The story of creation in Genesis 1 isn’t how God created the heavens and the earth; it is why God created the heavens and the earth.

God created so that creation could continue to create—to grow and develop as species, not just humanity, but all creation. God created so that humanity could learn about God from the experience of dominion and authority. What is it like to be God—have and raise a loving child, teach others to value what you value and love what you love: farming, teaching, mining, cooking, sewing, whatever it is . . .

As we continue reading the story of God’s interaction with humanity throughout the biblical witness, we read of God’s development in relationship with humanity. When God encountered homicide, God didn’t kill Cain; God exiled him from those he knew best. When God found that humanity had become exceptionally violent and corrupt, God re-created humanity through Noah and his sons. Even then, as Noah demonstrated, God hadn’t perfected humanity, just gave them a new and less complicated start. And God made a covenant to never destroy all life again. God’s walk with human beings continued in Abram, later Abraham, and Sarai, later Sarah, and with Hagar, the mother of Ishmael.

God created humanity, not to fail, but to carry within each one, the possibility of creation—the image of God’s own self. In the materials for this week, I ran across a wonderful comment on this text. In Genesis 1:26, we read, God says, “Let us make humankind* in our image, according to our likeness.” A rabbi was once asked why the creation account in Genesis 1:1-2:4a says God created humankind “in our image”? If God is one, to whom does the “our” refer? The rabbi said God looked into the future and saw that after humans were created, some would bring about righteousness on earth but others would bring evil. God reconsidered creating humans so that no evil would come to earth but then realized that no righteousness would come either. So God lifted up mercy and said to her, “Let us make humankind in our image,” and then humankind was born.[3]

We contain the possibility and the potential for good that God has created in us. We also contain the possibility and the potential for evil. Sometimes that is more obvious to us. But each of those possibilities, for good and evil, are necessary for us to continue to create. We are given full freedom to do the worst we can—and we are given the opportunity to create the best that we can imagine.

The story of creation continues throughout the biblical witness—as humanity tries and fails and tries and succeeds over and over again. Most of the stories of humanity, we hear from the people of Israel, God’s designated witnesses—but we hear a little from beyond them, too. Stories of a righteous Moabite women and a stubborn, but grateful Aramite generals reveal that God worked beyond the borders of Israel, too. The story of Job doesn’t mention Israel, but God reveals great truth and wisdom in the story of his tribulation and life.

Creation continues as we read the stories of God’s work in Jesus. I don’t believe that Jesus intended to reinvent the wheel, as it were, when he began to preach, teach and heal in Galilee and Judea. He spoke the simple truths that he had learned from the history of his people and that he had experienced as he lived within his special relationship with God. He saw corruption and greed within those meant to carry on religious tradition and he saw righteousness in men like Nicodemus and Joseph of Aramathea.

He commissioned his disciples as a new creation to baptize a covenanted people, like Israel, that would witness to God’s work in their lives beyond the life of Jesus himself. The creation became the church and is witnessed to by the stories that its members began to tell about Jesus. Some of the stories are written in the gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke-Acts and John are witnesses to four traditions that kept Jesus’ stories alive in their communities. And then we have the less story-filled, letters of Paul and other teachers of the early church who taught by argument and example rather than by story as in the gospels.

And as time passes and history moves us from age to age, God continues to work within the lives of human beings all over the earth. When great tragedy strikes, God works through our creative responses to alleviating suffering—toward giving mercy as the rabbi might say. God’s witness is in our call to justice for those who are hurt in places like Myanmar and China. And God’s witness is in the voices that seek to open Myanmar to relief workers—at least in my opinion.

The self-image of humanity takes quite a beating in the daily news—if we listen to the worst that we do to one another. And we do awful things. Yet we also create and nurture wonderful things, too. When we think of Islam today, we may only think of terrorism and the hatred that we receive in some quarters of that religious faith. But scholars within Islam were the finest medical minds in centuries past. They were open-minded and more compassionate toward religious diversity than Christians of the same era.

Creation continues, as always, going up and down through times of growth and times of destruction, hopefully moving us onward toward the restoration of the health and vitality that God created within each of us and within all created by the voice of God, by the hand of our creator, by the order and the process that God began.

To the glory of God in whose image we are made—in whose universe we are called to serve and live. Amen.
[1] Psalm 139.14b
[2] Psalm 8.3-4
[3] Seasons of the Spirit, May 18, 2008, Logos Productions.