Gen 1 Harvest 2022 Seaford.
What an extraordinary opening chapter to the bible. In the beginning God … –
Sometimes school children will ask me where did God come from and sometimes I say ‘We don’t know this is how the bible starts – In the beginning God’ – And sometimes I say – ‘How do you answer that question when God invented time?’ And just wait to see their faces get all puzzled up.
So What do we learn about God, and what do we learn about ourselves from this chapter?
(1) The Goodness of God
The word Good appears seven times in this reading today. And God saw that it was Good. Its really helpful that our bible begins in this way.
Last week we were looking at David vs Goliath – Derreck preached and used an excellent remark from a preacher called JJohn who said there are two ways of seeing Goliath – either “He’s so big he’s going to kill me” or “He’s so big I can’t miss”.
David is not the first person to have killed a bear or lion with a sling, his older brothers have been doing this for years but David is the first one to look at Goliath through the lens of faith. Its faith that makes David see that the ‘Lord has delivered me before, the Lord will deliver me again’.
It is faith that helps us to see the World as good at its core rather than as full of hate and hurt and pain and anger.
So many creation stories have as their beginning and source a story of pain.
Can you imagine if it were to begin after the style of the ancient Sumerian tale of Gilgamesh – there we read how two gigantic serpents created the heavens and the earthly world – and they created more gods but these gods were noisy so that Apsu and Tiamat planned to destroy the gods – their plan was thwarted resulting in an army of angry gods fighting. Tiamat was killed in the fighting by Marduk – her body was then cut up and half was used to make the earth and the other half to make the sky.
Then, the surviving gods decided that they were angry at the humans and decided to drown them, but one human was warned to build a boat. And you might know a different version of this story from the Bible.
But that’s not how it was revealed to Moses, how we have it in our bibles, and this shapes how we see the world, how we see God, how we see each other, – at its core is this understanding that Creation is Good. That God is Good, that God is a Good Creator. That God loves creating so much that He gives to His creation the power to continue creating.
Some of you know how to make cakes, but none of you know how to make cakes that will make other cakes!
The Jewish, Christian, Islamic starting point is to see Creation as Good, to see God as Good.
That’s going to be important – because life is full of difficulty and struggle but it helps to know that from Page 1 – God is good, creation is good.
It’s so easy to take that for granted. We have grown up and this has been the prevailing story – that Creation is good, of course it is why wouldn’t it be – but most Creation myths have about them fear and hate and hurt and anger – but not so the Jewish Scriptures.
Its important as we read in the News of floods and hurricanes and forest fires and melting polar caps – to remember that Creation is good. This isn’t about the little gods of the earth and sky being angry at us – because we know that creation is good at its core. And that is because God is good.
(2) Complexity of God
In the first sentence we meet with a God who is a Creating God, in the next verse we find the Spirit of God hovering, and in the third verse we find the Word of God – and God said ‘Let there be … light and there was light’ – so straight up we have a complex idea of God – the word is Elohim – it’s a plural word – you knew that because you already know about angels called Cherubim and on valentines day you’ll see plenty of cards with a Cherub on them – singular Cherub, plural Cherubim, likewise Seraph and seraphim.
So here we are with a singular God who has also a plurality – the creator, the spirit, the word, who says ‘Let us make people in our image, in our likeness’.
The Goodness of God, the Complexity of God and the busyness of God
(3) And it was evening and it was morning the 2nd day, evening and morning the 3rd day, evening and morning 4th, the 5th day. Has it ever struck you as odd that the bible puts it that way round – Evening and Morning the 6th day. Surely that’s wrong, surely the correct answer is It was Morning and evening, the first day, morning and evening. This is how our clocks and calendars work.
Actually, the Jewish Shabbat starts on a Friday evening and ends on a late Saturday afternoon. It was evening it was morning.
There’s this simple understanding that God is bigger, and busier than we are. Try this as an idea, go to bed aware that God neither slumbers nor sleeps (Psalm 121.4)
This is good. As you go to sleep, give over to God your hopes and fears in the sure knowledge that God will continue to work on answering your prayers, that God has not stopped being God while you gather your strength and rest. And then when you wake up, remember its already half way through the day, God has been busy at work and you’re just joining him half way through His day.
It was evening, it was morning – this idea helps us to give over to God our hopes and fears, to realise that the burdens of this world are not all resting on my, your, shoulders, but that God is at work, God does not forget our prayers just because we have gone to sleep.
So we learn about the Goodness of God, the Complexity of God, the busyness of God
What do we learn about ourselves?
(4) SO there’s this goodness to God
who makes us in His own image,
If we are made in the image of God – then that should affect how we see ourselves – there’s a Narnia quote – You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve said Aslan And that is both honour enough to lift the head of the poorest beggar and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor.
If I am made in the image of God – then that should certainly lift my head. If you are made in the image of God then that should affect how we treat and value each other.
(5) God gives us a vocation – we are called to be fruitful and multiply. But I would like you to hold this calling in the one hand with what God does on day 4 – God created the Sun moon and stars – this is for the purposes of marking Sacred times, the days and years.
This word Sacred times – sometimes translated Seasonal, in the LXX Greek the word is Kairos time, which differs from Chronos time. We know about Chronos time, the days and the years, we need the sun moon and stars for that, but also God has created seasonal time.
Life has about it sacred seasons where we grow and others where we don’t seem to grow.
Its important here to be kind to yourself. To allow your apple trees not to be constantly pushing out apples, but to have their season, and then to recover and be refreshed and then fruitful again. The trick here I think is in finding the rhythm of grace, of living faithfully to the call of God, rather than feeling that each day we should be squeezing out another apple, instead to stay close to the Lord, to walk with God, and the fruit will come, in its season.
We’re made in the image of God, we’re called to be fruitful in due season,
(6) But we’re also given another vocation:
So in verse 28 we get this abominably abused text – God says to us Subdue the earth, Rule over the fish and the sea, the birds and every living creature.
We are learning to read that sentence more along the lines that God has called us to be stewards of Creation.
We have a responsibility to care and look after them, to reflect that image of God that God has made us in and so to treat and care for all of God’s creation.
This is a vocation to care not a proof text for plundering.
Until a couple of hundred years ago it’s not been especially relevant. We have not been capable of plundering it in a way that would really damage the earth – but recently we have really got the hang of messing up the earth.
We are learning not to do this but with every passing year we ask ourselves is it too little too late.
And we say What can little me do? And All that.
And you know the answer – like the little boy on the beach throwing one starfish back into the sea when there were so many thousands washed up – its not making a difference – but it made a difference to that starfish.
The Church of England announced that its aim is to be carbon neutral by 2030. And it was laughed at – ridiculous idea, it can’t be done – and I agree. It is a ridiculous idea. But we voted on it with the stupid deadline of 2030, instead of the more sensible 2050 – because we did not want to sit back and say ‘Oh good, lets leave it for the next generation’. We said ‘We want to get to grips and try, more than likely we will fail, but we will do a good deal more than if we had said to ourselves lets be realistic’.
Perhaps here is where the Gospel reading can be helpful. Here is the call of faith – the prayer – Lord increase our faith – we need this if we are to see that this is possible – and here we have the reminder of our duty.
To do the ploughing, tend the flock, to look after God’s creation – its just our duty. The prize?! – there isn’t one – no one will pat you on the back for getting it right – the prize is that we live, and that our children and their children have a fighting chance of living. All we can say is we have done our duty.
When God made humans, we were given a vocation. We always translate it as Subdue and Rule over – but a better grasp of this is Steward, be stewards of God’s good earth.
So keep doing the little recycling you do. I suspect that the rise of electricity and gas costs will make many of us turn down our thermometers just a little. So, we do our duty as best we can. And we add to that our prayer and to that our money when and where the Disaster Emergency Fund calls upon us. (Christian Aid – Pakistan Floods – now East Africa Hunger Crisis – they’ve had a terrible drought and so now face famine.
There’s a link in the notice sheet about this.
And remember Diana’s Notice about Samara’s Aid in Syria.
We’re learning that God is good ; that the Creation is good; that God neither slumbers nor sleeps, it was evening it was morning, so that when we wake up we find that God has already been at work.
We’re learning that if I am made in the image of God, that should shape how I see and care for myself, and how we go about encouraging and loving each other
And we’re given a vocation to be stewards of God’s good earth.
This is just our duty, to God, to the next generation, and for it we must Give and Act and Pray – Lord increase our faith! Amen.