This is not the only
creation story that has ever been told. It’s not even the only creation story
in the Bible. If we had kept reading this morning, we would have heard another
version of the creation story. This is not the oldest creation story told. It
is a story of a God who makes space within Godself for a creation. It is a
story about a God that looks over the vast expanse of nothingness and whose
imagination conceives us and whose Word births us into existence. It is a story
about a beginning out of watery chaos, like the Babylonian myth Ennu Emish. Some
think that the Hebrews told this creation story as a corrective to Enuma Elis.
Rather than calling their God Tiamat or Apsu, they called their God elohim,
adonai, even going so far as to give their God an unpronounceable name: YHWH. It
is a story of creating a human out of dirt, unlike the Mayan myth, in which the
first human – created out of dirt – crumbled and the second – made out of wood
– had no soul and was disloyal – and the third – made out of maize was the
first human. It is the story of one God and dark watery chaos extending to the
borderless horizon. It is the story that is told to remind us who we are and
from where we have come.
This is the story about
creation rooted in this God, who imagines creation out of nothingness. At the
beginning, God’s spirit hovered over the waters as if drawing creation out of
the deep, as if blessing the watery chaos before it gave way to what was about
to be born. “Let there be light,” and I’m not sure if the words echoed again
and again and again as light revealed the empty chaos or if they were absorbed
by the chaos, sucked up by the expanding vacuum. After the light, the sky, and
after the sky, the vegetation, and after the vegetation the sun, moon and stars,
and after the sun moon and stars, the sea and sky then land animals and after
the animals the humans. But why?
Robert Farrar Capon, an
Episcopalian priest, amateur chef and writer, sees it this way: “God made the
world out of joy: He didn’t need it; He just thought it was a good thing.” What
he says next, however, I think is the most powerful part: “But if you confine
His activity in creation to the beginning only, you lose most of the joy in the
subsequent shuffle of history. Sure, it was good back then, you say, but since
then, we’ve been eating leftovers. How much better a world it becomes when you
see Him creating at all times and at every time; when you see that the
preserving of the old in being is just as much creation as the bringing of the
new out of nothing. Each thing, at every moment, becomes the delight of His
hand, the apple of His eye.”[1]
But for having so creative a God, who makes space within Godself for creation,
for having a God who takes joy in creation because it bears the imprint of God,
we forget to be creative. We forget to see God’s hand at work. We forget that
it’s not just us and our efforts, trying to reach God. We spend our hours and
our days filling our lives so that creation becomes a means to an end and the
Creator becomes a taskmaster, standing over creation making sure it is all
just-so.
But it doesn’t seem that the
clockwork world that we envision is part of the creation account. As the watery
chaos gives way to what God calls good, to what God brings to life, we somehow
forget the wonder of the story. We forget where we came from. We forget from
whom we came. We imagine God very seriously and meticulously making creation,
putting everything in its place very carefully, noticing every piece of dust
that falls, demanding conformity rather than relationship, counting each time
we fall. But I think even God laughed the first time God saw light. I think God
watched with wonder, speaking these powerful words over creation, lifting
mountains to their height, smelling the plants and vegetables and fruits and
sitting in silent wonder at the flowers of all colors. I think God was like a
preschooler drawing the strangest creatures imagination has ever conceived:
vertebrates and invertebrates, fish and reptiles and mammals, humans in a
bouquet of colors so beautiful that only someone who has held a newborn has
experienced. I wonder if God teared up at looking at it all, realizing that
such love wasn’t possible before the world had been created. Such joy was not
possible before the smells of dew and rain and grass and sunshine. Such delight
was not possible before the dolphins and whales whose job is to play in the water,
before birds whose job is to swoop through the air.
But we forget. By the time
most children are in 1st grade, they no longer play make-believe.
Toddlers are persistently asked “What is it?” as though it is their job to
create something that has already been created. We become serious. We laugh less. We see creation as a chore
or as a means to an end, as something to serve our own purposes, as something
we own. The little children who dance and sing and draw uninhibited grow into
adults who are scared to dance, scared to sing, scared to create and try new
things. We become self-conscious if we laugh or cry too much, too hard. We
think the world ought to be just so.
I’m not sure the world was
ever “just so.” Though omnipresent and omniscient, God didn’t make creation so
that God would have a puppet or something to control. God created things in
relationship: light and dark, night and day, sky and sea, land and water,
creatures on land, water and sea, man and woman. God made a messy creation, not
because God couldn’t have made it otherwise, but because a God who has
determined to be in relationship with this creation, and this creation is
messy.
The messiness of creation,
however, does not take away from the joy, love or delight that God takes in it.
God created – and God creates – for the sheer joy of it. The earth is not an
inconvenient mistake that God made long ago and far away. It continues
spinning, the plants continue growing, animals and humans continue living not
because God hasn’t done something but because God has done something: God
continues saying “Yes” to this messy, broken, blessed creation.
Perhaps God didn’t need the
creation. But I think that it is in the nature of God to create. It is in the
nature of God to be in relationship. It is in the nature of God to continue
pursuing, continue hoping, continue believing, to continue showing up. God, who
flung the stars in the heavens and taught the whale how to play in the water,
who spoke creation into existence, is continually inviting us to the Feast,
beckoning us to squint and look at the world just a little bit differently, to
take a little more time to appreciate the flowers and plants and seas and stars
and mountains and valleys and plains, to realize that God isn’t waiting until
everything is just-so to draw near to creation. God is now – and at every
moment – drawing near, watching with baited breath as though it were the first
day. “Let it be light again. Let the sky and sea be today. Let them be
populated with all sorts of inconceivable creatures. Let there be humans, and
let them serve creation and one another. Let there be work and play and rest.”
The joy of the first morning continues echoing through creation with each new
morning. The delight of plants and creatures continues with dolphin song and
bamboo clacking in the wind. The love of God’s reflection of the humans made in
God’s image is always new, always hoping, always persevering, because the God
who imagined the light and dark and skies and seas and plants and animals
couldn’t imagine creation without you.
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