Second Sunday before Lent
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Readings: Genesis 1:1 – 2:3 and Romans 8: 18-25
We don’t often hear the full text of Genesis chapter 1 in the ordinary course of our readings. It is long, of course, but it is also one of the really famous texts of scripture, one that Christians and non-Christians alike take notice of. To the casual reader, Genesis seeks to tell us how it all started. Whether you take a literal interpretation of the chapter, as some still do, or prefer to accept the big-bang theory of creation, or follow one of the many scientific theories surrounding our existence, most of which I wouldn’t be skilled enough to talk about, you’re more or less bound to deduce that creation really came out of nothing.
We inhabit a beautiful world which God takes great delight in – and he crowned it by making something that was as like himself as possible – us! He shares his creation with us. Of course, that is where it all began to go wrong, as we shall be thinking in the coming days of Lent. The Fall, as we call it, human disobedience in the garden of Eden, is just a couple of chapters on in Genesis.
Scholars have pored over the structure of Genesis chapter 1 for centuries now. It seems the chapter was a kind of responsive hymn, so that after God’s activity of each day, we read the reflection, ‘And God saw that it was good.’ It seems that the work of creation was packed into six days to mirror the Jewish working week – six days’ work then a Sabbath rest. Other non-biblical accounts of the start of things depict creation as the result of a struggle between the gods and the forces of chaos, but our scriptural account here stresses the effortless activity of the one God.
As far back as the time of St. Augustine, in the 4th/5th centuries, people were saying that the talk of the six days’ creation must be metaphorical. Augustine says that Genesis cannot be talking about six separate things that God does, one after the other, because God is not in time at all. However, it is possible see the broad scope of evolution in the timetable of the six days, worked out, obviously, over millions of years, with human beings appearing as the final element in the creation.
One of my old college lecturers from King’s, London, Professor Keith Ward, in his book The Word of God, asks, “How could a nomadic group of tribespeople in a Middle Eastern desert, who knew nothing of the real nature of stars and planets, or of the size and age of the universe, think about God’s creation? God does not, in Scripture, reveal scientific truths that might have come in useful a few thousand years later, like the Theory of Relativity. That is not the sort of thing the bible does,” says Professor Ward, “and if it had done, it would have been totally incomprehensible to its readers. No, the message of Genesis is a spiritual message – a message about how we should think of God. Since God is always greater than we think, the appropriate language to use will be the language of metaphor. If that message is to be put in a metaphorical way, then the metaphors will not be literally true, but they will convey spiritual truths in a cryptic and imaginative way that can produce deep personal insights about our own relationship with God.
So says Professor Ward. Genesis tells us that God brought all things into being, but he is not some distant First Cause. Chapter 1 starts with God, and with nothingness. The first thing the universe knows is the voice of God. And so come light, darkness, waters, earth, vegetation, and swarms of living creatures – on land, in the sky and in the waters. It was a joy to God. At the close of each day, the writer tells us ‘God saw that it was good.’ Looking at the mess we sometimes make of the world, the cynic might have advised God after the fifth day, “Quit, while you’re ahead.” But no, God goes on until he makes something that is as like himself as possible. He is prepared to share all this created beauty with us. How risky and dangerous to create something in your own image, as we’re beginning to think about now with developments in Artificial Intelligence.
But God gave instructions. ‘be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air … and over everything that has the breath of life.” Two words there deserve particular comment – subdue and dominion. ‘Subdue the earth’ – meaning, in this context, take possession of the land; make use of it; till it; make it subservient to human use. And then – ‘have dominion’. That word comes twice. The 19th-century Scottish minister The Reverend Stevenson McGill says that the dominion we are given over the created order is as servants of God. Our dominion can only be lawfully exercised according to God’s designs. It’s a very pertinent observation as we grapple with sustainability and the very future of our planet.
The creation story in Genesis presents two balancing truths. On the one hand, we human beings are part of the creation itself, bound into the fabric of the world and belonging to the same story as the planet. On the other hand, humans are alone ‘in the image of God’, transcending the rest of creation by having ‘dominion’ over it, like God himself. We are responsible for everything else, and not just a part of it.
In thinking more about this ‘dominion’, we come to realise that we cannot do just what we like with the created order, by ravaging its resources and exploiting it just as we wish. Creation was made to flourish when looked after by humans. Freedom isn’t throwing off all constraint, suggests Bishop Tom Wright, it’s finding what you were made for, and being obedient to that and nothing else. It will always be costly. So this dominion involves responsibility on our part, as it has been entrusted to us.
Now St. Paul, in the passage from Romans which formed our second reading, sees the whole creation ‘groaning in labour pains until now.,’ He considers the creation itself has flaws within it, and is in bondage to decay, and that it waits with us for redemption. This is not too easy a concept to get our heads round. But might we see tsunamis, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions as indications of the creation in its labour pains?
There is also, of course, great beauty in the spiritual world, from which we can learn more about the divine purpose. The evangelical leader John Stott, a great bird-watcher, writes of what the ravens teach us about faith, on lessons of freedom from the flight of the eagle, and on the joy we get from the song of the lark. Creation teems with Christian teaching aids. But perhaps more is meant. The natural world is not simply full of illustrations of spiritual truths; it is also itself charged with meaning. Many theologians have said that Creation is sacramental; it bears and conveys the truth of God.
In talking about the Creation ‘groaning in labour pains until now’, St. Paul adds that ‘the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed.’ He saw Jesus as God’s key to the completion of Creation, writing in 2 Corinthians that whenever anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.
Paul uses the image of a woman groaning in travail, and he seems to see himself as a ‘midwife’ figure helping the new Christian communities give birth, with all the joys and pains that brings, and then nurturing with ongoing care. New life brings hope, but to live in hope entails living with patience; living with the unexpected and the unknown. That is true whether we are talking about the birth of a child, the birth of a nation, or a change in directions in one’s life.
But let’s go back to the first chapter of Genesis, and remember that God created an orderly and coherent world; that the focus of Creation is on humankind, and that God creates us for a special relationship with him. We remember, too, that God continues to create, and that with the coming of Jesus he inaugurates the new Creation, bringing the world back to the originally intended harmony.