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Sermon by Donel McClellan
Continuing Creation
Genesis 1:1-5, Acts 19:1-7 It
seems appropriate that, at the beginning of this New Year, we read the Bible’s
book of beginnings, Genesis. Every time I read this chapter it creates a sense
of wonder in me—and raises more questions than I can answer. This is one of
those interesting places where the Bible contradicts the theologians. I’ll say
something about that in a bit.
But first, to illustrate the theologians
understanding, let me recall an old story. There once was a brilliant scientist
who was convinced that nothing was beyond the power of human creativity and
ingenuity, correctly directed. The scientist said to God, “We don’t need you any
longer, we can create life ourselves.” “You think so?” said God. “Most
assuredly,” said the scientist. So God proposed a contest to see if science
could really create life.
God and the scientist met, and God took some dirt
and formed a human, blew the divine breath upon it, and set down a living
person. The scientist, impressed but undeterred, said,
“I’ll need some dirt.”
“Oh no,” said God, “You go out and create your own
dirt.”
Theologians since the fourth century have believed
that God created the universe out of nothing, or ex nihilo as the erudite
phrase it. This is expressed in the ancient Apostles Creed which says, “I
believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth and of all things
visible and invisible, without Whom nothing was made that was made.”
The problem with the Bible and the theologians,
which I said I would explain, is that the Bible doesn’t say that God created the
universe out of nothing. Genesis reads: “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 from God swept over the face of the waters.” That
provides a little clue to the problem.
I like Catharine Keller’s take on this. Catherine
is Professor of theology at Drew University. She writes,
of “what use is
a clue without a mystery? Let me suggest that Genesis 1:2 poses not only a
mystery, but a murder and motive. Let us call the mystery: the case of the
missing chaos. Historically, this verse virtually disappeared from theology by
the fourth century. When it begins to reappear about a 100 years ago, . . . And
why does it matter? Because beginnings matter, and Genesis continues to
materialize disproportionate effects. Not because it gives a pseudoscientific
account of the origin of things, but because—with an intuition only now achieved
by science—it poetically channels that “extreme sensitivity to initial
conditions.” 1
You may be wondering by now, where I am going with
all of this. The simple answer is that I am trying to rescue chaos. Chaos is the
condition of uncreation, the state of all things before they were ordered by God
into an intelligible universe. Chaos is the flip side of order. Some chaos is
necessary for life and creation, but too much chaos destroys life and community.
Pam Walatka
uses wonderful images in her
article, Chaos in Everyday Life, She says that “chaos” comes from the
Greek word for formless matter. It does not have a shape that lasts through
time. It is not predictable. Chaos is all the random, patternless, haphazard
stuff in our universe.”
However, chaos is also necessary and useful. “Heat
is a form of chaos. This is an actual definition of heat that you could find in
almost any physics book: Heat is the random movement of atoms. The higher the
temperature, the greater the randomness of the movement of the atoms.
Pam Walatka concludes by saying that “heat is an
essential part of all living things; all living things have heat. Life cannot
exist without the heat that is the random movement of atoms. If heat is chaos,
and life cannot exist without heat, then life cannot exist without chaos. You
know that if you put a thermometer in your mouth, you are not going to get a
reading of zero. If you had no heat in your body, you would be dead. A dead
person is a cold stiff. A live person is warm and flexible.” She suggests that you “learn to appreciate the
chaos in your life, because chaos is keeping you alive.”
2
When God created the heavens and the earth, the
deep vibrated with chaos, and a wind from God, the Spirit, swept over the face of
the waters and God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw
that the light was good.
William James suggests that,
“were one asked to
characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms
possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen
order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves
thereto.” 3
It is that unseen order, that mystery beneath
creation, which is the realm of the Spirit. You might say that God’s Spirit
dwells in the unseen. The responsibility of faith is to be sensitive to that
Spirit and to adjust ourselves to that unperceived order.
Interestingly enough, the enemy of the religious
life is too much order. Creativity and vitality require just a bit of chaos in
order to thrive. This was pointed out in an article in the Atlantic Monthly on
building wealth. Lester C. Thurow, professor of Economics at MIT, lists a number
of “new rules” for individuals, companies and nations, including this one: No
society that values order above all else will be creative; but without some
degree of order, creativity disappears.
He tells the story of China at the beginning of the
15th century, a tale that is a particularly prophetic parable for the
21st-century church. Half a millennium ago, China's curiosity, its instinct for
exploration and its drive to build had created all the technologies necessary to
launch the Industrial Revolution—something that would not actually occur for
another 400 years. China had it all: blast furnaces for making steel; gunpowder
and cannon for military conquest; the compass and the rudder for exploration;
paper and movable type for printing; rotary threshing machines and mechanical
seeders for agriculture; the decimal system, negative numbers and the concept of
zero for sophisticated mathematics. Seven major Chinese expeditions explored the
Indian Ocean with ships four times as large as those of Columbus.
But the Chinese rejected and forgot the
technologies that could have given them world dominance. The geographic
conquests and the industrial revolution that
could have happened did not occur. They blew their big chance. Why?
It's simple: They became uncomfortable with chaos.
New technologies were perceived as threats, rather than opportunities.
Innovation was forbidden. Imperial rules and regulations prohibited the building
of new oceangoing ships that would take people away from the Chinese coastline.
By the end of the 15th century, the demand for
order had overridden intrinsic human curiosity, the desire to explore and
the drive to build. 4
I like the image of creation occurring as a shaping
of chaos into form, a separating of light from darkness, land from water,
continents from seas. Creation is a process which began once upon a time
and continues even now.
We are not only the result of God's creation, we
are part of the continuing process of creation. An old Rabbi, Simchah Bunam of
Przysucha wrote:
The Lord created the world in
a state of beginning. The universe is always in an uncompleted state, in the
form of its beginning. It is not like a vessel at which the master works to
finish it; it requires continuous labor and renewal by creative forces. Should
these cease for only a second, the universe would return to primeval chaos.
Genesis reminds us that all beginnings are
difficult. New beginnings are hard, and life, if it is vital, is full of new
beginnings. As human creatures we are never static but always moving, changing,
learning, adapting.
That Spirit, sweeping and hovering over the chaos
at creation appears again in the reading from Acts. It is an odd fragment of the
story of the beginning of the Christian Church. Paul is in Ephesus and comes
upon some Christians baptized by Apollos, a follower of John the Baptist. Paul
asked if they had received the Holy Spirit when they became believers. “No,”
they replied, “we haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” So, Paul laid
hands upon them in baptism and they experienced the Holy Spirit.
This is what happens to all the faithful when we
say “Yes” to God’s Spirit. In this tradition, we are not likely to speak in
tongues and prophesy as the Ephesian Christians did, but we do receive other
gifts of the Spirit.
I would like to suggest that the same Spirit that
wrestled with chaos to forge a created universe, is present with Christians
today as we wrestle with new beginnings. This congregation of God’s people
struggles with change. Like people everywhere, we are comfortable with the
familiar and uncomfortable with the new and unfamiliar.
To imagine ourselves in a new and different
sanctuary is both exciting and frightening.
To welcome so many new members into our community
is reassuring and challenging.
To consider how we ought to live out our faith in
the face of political pressures for war, and society’s indifference to people in
dire need is demanding and frustrating.
Chaos is always at war with creation and the Spirit
longs for our willing participation. That is what it means to be the people of
God. We are literally God’s partners in creation. The Spirit is waiting for our
response.
“Tell me the weight of a snowflake,” a coal mouse
bird asked a wild dove. “The weight of a snowflake,” answered the dove, “is
nothing more than nothing.”
“In that case I must tell you a marvelous story”
said the coal mouse. “I sat on the branch of a fir, close to its trunk, when it
began to snow—not heavily, not in a giant blizzard—no, just like in a dream
without any violence. Since I didn’t have anything better to do, I counted the
snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was
exactly 3,741,952. Then the next snowflake dropped on the branch—
“nothing-more-than-nothing,” as you say—and the branch broke off.”
Having said that the coal mouse flew away. The
dove, since Noah’s time, an authority on such matters, thought about the story
for awhile, and finally said to herself: “Perhaps there is only one person’s
voice lacking for peace to come about in this world.”
Amen.
1. The Lost Chaos of Creation,
Catherine Keller, The Living Pulpit
2. Pam Walatka, Chaos in Everyday Life,
1996, www.wildhorses.com, June 22, 1999.
3. William James, Varieties of Religious
Experience (New York: Collier Books, 1901/1961), 50.
4. Lester C. Thurow, Building Wealth,
The Atlantic Monthly, June 1999, p. 63. |