Genesis 1:1-2:4b & John 1: 1-5
5th Sunday of Easter/ 24th
April 2016
“In the beginning when God created the heavens
and the earth…” (Genesis 1:1). Familiar words.
In our day, this text is used (and abused) by those who insist that the
Bible is making a scientific claim, defending creationism over evolution. Unfortunately, the creation story has been
sucked into the science vs. religion debate (a false debate since science is
not at odds with religion), thus distorting what is actually going on here in
the opening verses of Genesis and the Bible.
So, what is going on here? It’s important to lift up that there are two creation stories in Genesis, not one,
each composed by two different authors, hundreds of years apart. The first
account is found between Genesis 1:1 and 2:4a.
The second account begins with Genesis 2:4b and runs through 2:24. A good Bible translation will make this
plain. The second story is actually the older
of the two, written in the 7th to 6th century BC, by a
writer that scholars call Yahwist, because of the Hebrew word used for God in
these verses, Yahweh. The first story, the one that opens Genesis
emerged later during Israel’s exile in Babylon and after their return home, in
the 6th to 5th centuries BC. It’s known as the Priestly writer, due, in
part, to this tradition’s concern for worship and ritual; the Priestly
tradition is identified by the use of different Hebrew names for God, Elohim and El Shaddai. The Priestly
writer composed this text in reaction to the prevailing myths and religions of
Babylon and Mesopotamia.
What I’m saying here isn’t radical; there’s nothing new
about it. Biblical scholars have been
teaching this in universities and seminaries, first in Germany, since the late
19th century (1878, to be exact).[1]
While Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was making revolutionary claims in On the Origin of Species, in 1859,
biblical scholars and historians were making revolutionary discoveries about
how the Bible came to be. It was in
direct response to advances in the world of science and scholarship that fundamentalism
emerged at the end of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century;
fundamentalism was a conservative reaction to progress in knowledge and
continues to plague the advancement of the gospel. Fundamentalism is always a conservative
reaction to progress.[2]
Considerable damage has been done to the hearing and
reading of Genesis by turning the opening creation stories into science. These stories were never written to offer
scientific proof for a theory of origins.
They were written, however, to make a theological claim about the nature and purpose of God. And this was especially so for the Priestly
tradition, the tradition behind the first creation story, because this story
deliberately confronts the creation myths of the Babylonians. The Priestly writer insists that the earth did
not emerge from a struggle between the gods, as one myth claimed, nor was it
born from a cosmic egg, or from primordial matter.[3] Instead, the Priestly tradition offers us an
entirely different, bold, understanding of God; it imagines an entirely
different story of creation, a story that tells us something profound and
amazing about how they came to conceive the nature of God. The clue is found in the first verse: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth….”
It’s so obvious; yet, it’s easy to miss.
So, here it is. The
earth is the result of God’s free choice to create; it’s an act of God’s
will. The very first image of God we’re given
in the Bible is a God who acts, who chooses, who has a will, who without compulsion
and in freedom, acts, that is, chooses,
wills the earth into being; everything is the result of God’s creative
activity. “God and God’s creation are
bound together in a distinctive and delicate way. This is the presupposition for everything
that follows in the Bible.” Walter
Brueggemann claims, “It is the deepest premise from which good news is
possible. God and [God’s] creation are
bound together by the powerful, gracious movement of God towards that
creation.” God wills to be in relationship with the earth. God is bound to creation and the “connection
cannot be nullified.”[4]
And it doesn’t matter whether all of
this was done in six or six billion days—this entirely misses the point. The critical point here is that we’re given
an image of God known chiefly as Creator.
What’s so radical or unusual about this? The image of God here is unique among the
religions of the world because behind the English word creator is the Hebrew word bara’. In the Priestly Writings the verb bara’ is used exclusively as a term for the divine bringing forth, for
which there is no human analogy.
This verb refers to a kind of creation that only God can do, beyond the
power of human will and action. “The
word means a bringing forth in the sphere of history, nature and spirit,
through which something comes into existence which was not there previously.”[5] It has a very specific meaning.
Bara’ is never used to describe the creation of
something out of something else. While
it’s true that human beings are creative, technically, theologically speaking
we are only creative with what’s been given to us; we don’t actually create
anything, that is bring something into existence out of nothing. When God creates, God creates something out
of nothing. Theologians refer to this as
creatio ex nihilo, God creates ex nihilo, out of the nihil, out of nothing, out of the void,
because before creation there was no-thing.[6]
This is what’s being imagined in the
opening sentence of Genesis!
When God creates it is always something new, never before
seen or experienced. When the psalmist
says, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within
me” (Psalm 51:10), the Hebrew here is bara’. Something radically new is coming into
existence—a clean heart—that was not the result of human effort or will.
The word bara’,
to create, is used in Genesis 1:1 in connection with creation of the
universe as a whole. Then in Genesis 1:2 a
related word is introduced, ‘asah,’
which means, “to make.” The “making”
begins in verse two: forming, shaping
creation from what God had created.
Technically speaking, only God can create out of nothing.[7] Following after the pattern of God, humans make, we manufacture, shape, construct,
produce, assemble, and form what God has given us and in this sense we are creative. We creatively, imaginatively engage with
what’s been given to us by the Creator and when we do this we come to
understand, in part, what it means to be created in the image of God.
We are the product of God’s creative imagination. Bearing the mark of God’s image, God’s
imagination, we are then invited, called, and even freed to use our
imagination, to use our creativity, to help form and reform a world that
reflects God’s intention for creation—this created world that God tells us over
and over again is good, given in love!
And note the way God’s creativity causes things to
be. God says, “Let there be…” and it
was…. “Let there be…” and it came into
being. The divine Word creates through speech. The same idea is
picked up in the sublime prologue to John’s Gospel, which was intentionally
modeled on the opening of Genesis, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word
was God and the Word was with God” (John 1:1).
The first Christians came to see the Divine Creative Word that spoke
creation into being was enfleshed, that is, embodied in Jesus Christ. He is the One who, like God, creates and
calls into being something radically new.
“Behold, I make all things new,” Jesus says in Revelation (21:5). And doesn’t Paul tell us that in Christ we
are a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17)?
Let there be....
Can you hear, even feel the dynamism, the movement, and the open-endedness of
the Divine Speech?
Let there be…
God speaks and things come into being.
God speaks and new worlds come into existence.
God speaks and things happen.
God speaks and people are formed.
Let there be…
God is the one who calls people, things, and new worlds
into existence! God doesn’t just create
and then step away. God creates by
“letting-be.” God makes room for
something to exist. There is an old Jewish
idea, known as zimzum, which suggests
that God creates by stepping back, as it were, withdrawing, and in the space
vacated by God’s presence something new is invited to come into being,
something other than Godself.[8] And then, remarkably, God doesn’t seek to
control creation, but trusts the goodness of creation and frees it to evolve.
God gives it, gives us the freedom to be, to flourish, to grow, even—and this
is one of the most remarkable aspects of creation—we are even given the freedom
to reject the Creator, to turn our face away from the Creator.
In “letting-be” God forms and lets go in order for the
creation to fulfill its purpose, to evolve and change and blossom and grow and
yield and bear fruit. God doesn’t
control or micro-manage everything, but creates the occasion, the setting, the space for growth; God grants creation
freedom, even risks freedom for the sake of growth, and then watches and waits
for the further unfolding of creation before God’s eyes. For us to be endowed with the image of God
means, in part, that we, too, are given the means to create spaces, settings,
places that allow ongoing growth, creativity, freedom for others, for the
world—indeed, this is what the Church can be and become, the place that fosters
creative living and flourishing.
Can you sense the grace expressed in this image of God
the Creator? “The grace of God is that
the creature whom [God] has caused to be, [God] now lets be.”[9] And in “letting-be” we are free to make and
form and create in our own way. In
letting-be, we grow and flourish and bear fruit.
But we have to be honest here and acknowledge that being
creative isn’t easy. As any artist
knows, there’s probably in us more that blocks creativity than fosters it. There is a force in us and in the world that
hinders growth, which resists evolution and change and progress, which hampers
our desire to “let-be.” Sometimes we’re
not very good at “letting-be.” Sometimes, actually, whether consciously or
unconsciously, unintentionally or sometimes very intentionally, we try to stop being, we try to stop growth, we resist
growth, we undermine flourishing in ourselves or we undermine it in others,
thwarting every effort to grow, impeding change, obstructing, standing in the
way of what God is creating in the world.
What I’m talking about here is how the Bible describes sin; it’s a way
to think about sin. Sin is the opposite of creation; it’s anti-creation. This is also a way to think about evil. Sin and evil seek to undo creation. Sin and evil work to breakdown that which is
trying to be formed. Sin and evil block
the forces working for growth; they negate the ongoing creative life of
God. Sin and evil hinder
flourishing. Sin, along with evil,
doesn’t bear fruit. The early
theologian, Gregory of Nyssa (c.335-c.395) was even more explicit, “Sin happens
whenever we refuse to keep growing.”[10]
Grace. Love. Forgiveness.
Resurrection. New Creation. These
are among the many ways scripture makes the point that while sin is real and
serious, it never has the last word. We were not created to sin, but for
something more. God’s grace, love, forgiveness,
resurrection, new creation are among the ways the Bible conveys to us that this is what it means to be
authentically human.
We were created with lives free to reflect the image of
God, free to grow, to thrive, and to flourish, all for God’s glory! And there’s nothing in scripture to suggest
that things today are any different. This is still the way God as Creator
relates to the creation, to you and to me.
In love, in grace, in trust, God is continually calling individuals and
families, communities and churches and things and worlds into being, changing
lives, resurrecting everything that is dead, creating new possibilities of hope
and healing and wholeness in people, through the work of the Holy Spirit,
allowing people and churches to grow and flourish and bear fruit.
The Jewish Talmud says, “Every blade of grass has its
Angel that bends over it and whispers, ‘Grow, grow.’”[11]
This is another way of saying, “Let be.
Let be.” What if we imagined
the Holy Spirit saying to us, “Grow, grow.” Go ahead, use your imagination. Imagine the Spirit whispering in your ear,
“Grow, grow.” What if God is saying
this to us all the time? Grow! Grow!
Be! Let be! Flourish! Become! Imagine how different our lives would be.
With every whisper, with every word spoken and heard,
the Holy Spirit calls us into existence, making and remaking, forming and
reforming, creating and recreating our lives. This is why it’s all good–very good. Very, very good.
[1] The German biblical
scholar and orientalist Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918) first put forth the
multiple-author hypothesis in 1878 with the publication of Geschichte Israels (Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel). Although the source hypothesis has been
challenged, it is still the primary methodology used in the study of the
Pentateuch.
[2] For an excellent
history of fundamentalism within the American context, see George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
[3] Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of
God (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 72ff.
[4] Walter Brueggemann, Genesis (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982), 28.
[5] Moltmann, 73.
[7] Moltmann, 73.
[8] This idea, zimzum in Hebrew, was developed by the
Kabbalist (Jewish mystic), Isaac Luria (1534-1572). Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991) makes
creative use of this idea in his novels, especially The Slave. God is one who
“hides his face.” The Kabbalistic
doctrine of divine self-limitation has found a place in Christian theology in
Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), J. G. Hamann (1730-1788), Friedrich Oetinger
(1702-1787), F. W. J. Schelling (1775-1854), Emil Brunner (1889-1966) and
others. See also Moltmann, 87-88.
[9] Brueggemann, 28.
[10] Cited in Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two
Halves of Life (Jossey-Bass, 2011), 51.
[11] Cited in Julia Cameron,
The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to
Higher Creativity (New York:
Putnam’s Sons, 1992), 3.
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