2nd Sunday before Lent – evening
Sunday 24th February 2019
2 before Lent – evening
Gen 1. 1-23
Matt. 6. 25 –end
Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs
The story of the beginning of Time and of Creation itself, is meant to tell us something about our present and future.
That may seem like a bold claim, but let me try to explain a bit more…
You may be surprised to hear that the first chapter of Genesis as we have it now – as we have heard it tonight, was one of the later parts of the Hebrew Scripture to be written, maybe only some 500 – 600 years before Christ lived, although it includes much earlier material that circulated as oral tradition.
How can we know this? – Well it is the result of much scholarly research and analysis of the language and vocabulary used – not something that we can really go into tonight, but we can try to understand why it was written.
When a people are facing possible annihilation, it is difficult to live in the present, because it is being taken away from us, so the only possible strategy to try and make sense of what is happening, is to look to the past or the future in our imagination. We can imagine the future in hope for something new to emerge. Or we can look back, to a remote past, and ask why things happened as they did and what light from a real or imagined past can shed light on the present.
That is roughly what happened from the year 587BC – the only really significant date in Jewish history that we can be certain about. That was the year that Jerusalem was first besieged, then razed to the ground and its prominent citizens deported to Babylon. It was then that people asked questions about the past, about beginnings, in the hope that it could be seen where things went wrong, and some sense could be made of the catastrophe that had overtaken them.
So a group of scholarly priests set about assembling material from their oral traditions and embellishing them and reflecting upon them to try and show what they believed God was trying to show them. They were definitely not trying to depict the way creation takes place. The were explaining the present world to their audience and affirming that, contrary to all appearances, it is still in God’s hands.
The story tells us that God created, and that it is good. Because it is good, it is a source of joy and beauty. In the church we have tended to over concentrate on the fallenness of humanity. But modern scientists like David Attenborough and Brian Cox have done much to remind us of the awesome, sublime and even spiritual nature of the natural world around us.
So God created a universe that was good, but it did not reflect God’s image and was not able to respond to him. Only that which is free and responsive is able to reflect its Creator. God’s creation also means that men and women are drawn into God’s plan and entrusted with the care and stewardship of his creation –it is an awesome responsibility! But our relationship with God is ‘good’ and secure as long as we know God as God, and the world as God’s creation (not ours!)
So for the people in exile, how did the finely tuned relationship between God and his vice-regents, the kings and shepherds of Israel, fare against the story of creation? How was the freedom and stewardship entrusted to humankind carried out by God’s people? If anything was to be learned and salvaged after the exile, it was along such lines that hope would be reborn. And for us, this story is never more relevant than when the future of the planet is threatened by our exploitative and selfish lifestyles.
David Attenborough – who has done so much to alert us to the damage that we are doing through pollution and depletion of the planet’s natural resources for self-healing, was once asked whether he ever entertained the possibility of God. His response was to compare it to looking into a termite mound, and seeing them all hard at work, building tracks, carrying items purposefully to and fro, in some highly organized activity – quite oblivious to the human standing staring at them. Because they lacked the sensory equipment to do so. I can just imagine, (said Attenborough) that we cannot see God, because we cannot see.” There are times when our natural capacities fail us. The work of science and the scientists can help us to see the glory of creation, but only the word of God (in its broadest sense) can help us to see God. And to appreciate how relevant it all is to our lives here and now!