Tag: genesis 1

Holy and Human

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Sermon for Trinity Sunday

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

I’ve got this phone. You may have one similar to it. And this thing tracks a lot of my data.

It can tell me how many steps I’ve taken today. It can tell me how much screen time I had last week (answer: too much). It can even track my weight and my blood pressure, so my doctor can keep an eye on it. It can tell me how productive I’ve been by checking things off a to-do list.

It knows a lot about me.
But it doesn’t really know me in the way that my family and my friends do.

There’s a big difference between knowing about someone or something and knowing them as a person.

We experience this in other parts of our lives, too.

At work, there are all kinds of productivity trackers. Even here at our church, where I work, once a year I’ve got to gather statistics: What was the attendance like on Sunday? How much came in through the offering plate? How many weddings and funerals did we do this year?

This data is useful.
But there’s a lot about this church that that data can’t tell me.
Can it tell me how much you love God and love each other?
The answer to that is no.

Same thing with the government. Every ten years it takes a census and writes down things like our ethnicity, our gender, our age, our address, how many people are in our household—lots of data points.

But they can’t really capture the essence of you and your family.
It’s just data.

The data is useful.
But it’s tempting sometimes to reduce complex, mysterious human beings to data.

Data points can’t capture who you are, because people are not statistics. People are not cogs in a machine.

The ancient Jewish people in the sixth century BCE understood intimately what it felt like to be treated as parts of a machine.
What had happened to them was that they had a war with the Babylonian Empire, which was the great superpower of that day, and they lost.

And the elite and the leaders among the people were taken off as slaves in Babylon.
And the Babylonians did their best to erase who they were—erase their religion, erase their culture, erase their language.

But here’s the thing:
The Jewish people resisted.

They accepted the fact that they had lost the war and were now obligated to work as a slave class.
But they did not accept the conclusion of the empire—that they were just cogs in a machine, that they were just property.

And our first reading today, from Genesis chapter 1, is a statement about that.

It is not a science book about the origin of life.
It is a poem about the meaning of life.
It is a song of human dignity in the face of oppression.

The language we hear in the text is very rhythmic and repetitive.

“God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that it was good. And God called the light day and the darkness night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”

And that pattern repeats itself again and again for each of the six days.

Now, there’s a form of language that uses a lot of repetition and rhythm: Poetry.

Within that poem, if we read carefully, we see something really fascinating happening.

There is a thematic match-up between the first six days:

  • Day one and day four.
  • Day two and day five.
  • Day three and day six.

In those first three days, God creates a habitat in which beings will dwell.

And in the second group of three days, God creates beings to live in those habitats.

  • On day one, God creates light and darkness.
    Match that up with day four, and God creates the sun, the moon, and the stars.
  • On day two, God creates the sky and the sea.
    And on day five, God creates the fish and the birds, which live in the sea and the sky.
  • On day three, God creates the land and the vegetation.
    And on day six, God creates the animals and the humans.

In each case, there’s a habitat and the beings that live in that habitat.

And the interesting thing about those beings is that they’re all Babylonian deities.
Except that, in this story, they’re not called gods and goddesses.

The sun and the moon, for example, were major features of Babylonian religion.
The Babylonians were telling the Jewish people, “You’d better bow down. Our gods are stronger than your God because we beat you in the war.”

And the Jewish people say, “No.”
These are not gods at all.
In the language of the text, they’re literally just “the big light” and “the little light.”

They’re not even given proper names.

According to the view of humanity that the Babylonian Empire held, humans were created to be servants of the gods. Humanity existed for them.

But in this biblical passage, the Jewish storytellers say:
Actually, we are created to be stewards of creation.

God made us in the divine image and said, “Rule over and care for” all these other creatures.

So it’s exalting human dignity above these so-called deities.

And finally, most of all, is the last day of creation, the seventh day, which came to be known as the Sabbath.

“On the seventh day, God rested and sanctified a day of rest for all creatures.”

Just imagine the Jewish people who were working as an enslaved class in Babylon at that time.

Their culture is being erased.
Their faith is being erased.
But they practice the Sabbath.

A day of rest, one day a week, when everybody goes on strike.

They say, “Six days a week we will do our jobs. We will work hard for you.
But one day a week, we all stop working.
And we’re going to take that time to pray, to be with our families, and to remember that we are not your machines.
We are not your property.
We are the beloved children of God.
That is who we are.
You cannot erase that from us.”

That’s powerful.
It gets me every time.

And it makes this message so meaningful.

This is a poem about human dignity.
It’s about people who refuse to be dehumanized, who refuse to be pushed aside and reduced to productivity statistics.
No matter what data was collected about them, they knew they were always going to be more than that.

Their faith gave them the strength to make it through that season known as the Babylonian Exile.
To endure.
To resist the erasure of who they were.
And to remember their own human dignity.

And when they would go back to their work, they would go back in a new way.
They weren’t serving merely the Babylonians who won the war.
They said, “Our daily lives are about serving God and each other.”
And that’s a much more meaningful way to work.

I can think of several examples—one from history and three that are a little closer to home.

First is the historical example: Dr. Jonas Salk.
He was the doctor who invented the polio vaccine.
And this obviously was a dramatic scientific accomplishment.
But the interesting thing is that he refused to patent it.
He could have made a lot of money.
But after he invented this vaccine, he said, “This belongs to humanity.”
This vaccine was going to be distributed freely to the world, to eradicate polio and ease the suffering of human beings.
That is holy and human work.

That’s a historical example from the past.
But we don’t just have to look at history to find examples of meaningful work that honors human dignity.

Chris Russell runs a game every other Sunday night at a comic shop here in town.
I’m part of this game.
It’s very silly. A bunch of nerds get together and pretend to be the crew of a spaceship, and we have a grand old time.
It’s a fun hobby.

But let me tell you something:
It is so much more than just a game.

The place where we meet is so much more than just a local business.
This is a place where people have formed a community of support.
Many of the members of this group have been through crises—hospitalizations, family members passing away.
Time and again, the members of this group have gathered around each other to offer support, helping one another buy cars, find jobs, and get through difficult times.
It’s become so much more than just a comic book shop.
It’s become something deeply holy and deeply human.

I think also of Patti Fosdick and Joanne Grigg, who took a shoe store on Chicago Street and turned it into an animal rescue.
A place where cats who have no home can receive care.
Where they can be introduced to families.
Where they can be there for anybody who wants to come in on a random Friday, and play with them, and feel a little better.
Through caring for animals, they too are doing holy and human work.

This is a sacred thing.

The last example I’ll mention is our dearly beloved departed sister, Mary Dally.
She worked for decades in our local schools.
And yes, she had a job to do.
There were children to educate and benchmarks to meet.
But the essence, the soul of her work as a teacher in this town, was the way she loved multiple generations of students.
The week that she passed away, I was having lunch over at the diner, and the waitress said, “You know, I was one of Mary’s students. And years later, my daughter was too.”
The testimony to her holy and human work came during her funeral service, when this church was standing room only.

All of these are snapshots from our local community of people living from that essence of human being that God gives us—the image of God.
And I think it can lead us as we go about our lives and our work.

Yes, our data continues to be collected.
It’s useful.
But I invite you to consider the essence and soul of who you are as God’s child.
Your soul, loving the souls of other people—is a part of God’s work in this world.

When God had made the world, he didn’t say, “This is very productive.”
He said, “It is very good.”

“And God saw that it was good.”

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon2 Comments

Image of the Carina Nebula taken by the Hubble Space Telescope

Trinity Sunday sermon from First Presbyterian, Boonville.

The text is Genesis 1:1-2:4a.

We read this morning from the story of creation in the book of Genesis.  This is one of the most familiar (and controversial) texts in the entire Bible.  It’s often used as a wedge and a weapon by those who would try to set up science and faith as mutually exclusive categories of knowledge.

Some say that this is a literal and historical account of what actually happened during the first week of existence for the universe (which they take to have happened about six thousand years ago).  These folks often have witty bumper stickers that say things like, “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it” or “The Big Bang Theory: God spoke and BANG, it happened”.

On the other hand, there are those who say that this story is nothing more than an ancient legend made up by people who didn’t have the benefit of modern science at their disposal.  These days, they say, this story is useful only as a cultural artifact.  It should be studied in the same way that Greek mythology is studied: without regard for its truth or relevance to contemporary life.

So then, are these our only two options for understanding this text?  Do we reject, on the one hand, the findings of the scientific community as the deceptions of Satan or the product of secular humanist conspiracy?  Or, on the other hand, do we throw out the Bible as an ancient relic, abandoning it to be used and abused by ignorant bigots, like those who once believed that the earth is flat?

Or is there a third option?  Is there some way for us to lower our mental buckets into this well and bring up gallons of living water?  Can this text serve as a source of divine truth for us, even if we don’t accept it as literally and historically factual?  I think there is.

Let’s start by looking at the text itself.  You’ll notice that there is a lot of repetition going on.  “And God said, ‘Let there be… and God saw that it was good… and there was evening and there was morning, the [#] day.”  This happens over and over again, so much that you start to expect it.  There is a kind of natural rhythm to this passage.  Tell me, where else do you find rhythm and repetition in language?  In poetry!  This text reads like a poem.

What’s even more interesting is how the ideas and images in this poem develop as we read on.  Let’s look at the first six days of creation and the creatures that emerge on each day.  To make it easier to understand, we’re going to divide the days into two groups that stand side by side: days 1-3 and days 4-6.

On the first day, God creates light and darkness itself.  Parallel this with the fourth day, when God creates the sun, moon, and stars (i.e. those objects (beings) that dwell in the light and darkness of day and night).  On the second day, God separates the sky and the water.  Then look at the fifth day, when God creates birds and fish (i.e. the life-forms that live in the sky and water).  On the third day, God calls forth the land and vegetation from the sea.  Match this up with the sixth day, when God makes land animals and humans, whose job it is to care for the rest of creation.

On days 1-3, God creates a particular environment and then fills each environment with inhabitants on days 4-6, leaving human beings in charge of the whole thing.  Then, on the seventh day, God takes a break.  For this reason, the text tells us, every seventh day is set apart as sacred.  On this day, people are called to rest from their work and reflect on the goodness of God’s creation.

“Okay Barrett,” you might say, “it’s a nice poem, but what does it mean?  Why are these words and ideas laid out in the way they are?”  In order to answer that question, it would make sense to look at who wrote this poem, where and when it was written, and why they wrote it.

The problem is that we don’t exactly know the who, where, when, and why of this poem’s author.  Unlike modern writers, authors in the ancient world didn’t exactly sign and date their material.  And, as any teacher will tell you, it’s almost impossible to figure out who wrote a nameless and dateless paper, even when you know it was written in the last week!  Imagine trying to do it with a paper that’s several thousand years old!  Forget about it!

Biblical scholars have spent years trying to solve this mystery.  Their best guess is that this poem was probably written by a Jewish person sometime during the sixth century B.C.  Jews at that time were living in exile, working as slaves in the country of Babylon.  The Babylonians had conquered the holy land and dragged many of the people off to work for them elsewhere.  Removing people from their land was a common strategy used by the Babylonians to break people’s spirits and keep them submissive.  The Jews living and working in Babylon huddled together in sorrow for their lost home.  All around them, their Babylonian bosses made them feel like they were less than human.  They treated God’s people like machines or property.  They made fun of Jewish culture and religion.

“You God is so weak,” they said, “our god, Marduk, was able to beat yours in battle.  That’s why you’re our slaves now.  Why don’t you give up worshiping your pitiful little God and worship ours instead?”

Well, the Jews didn’t listen to that talk.  They got together and, once a week, these Jewish slaves went on strike.  They refused to work.  They huddled together to sing, pray, and tell stories.  They celebrated their faith and culture.  This is the Sabbath day.

On the Sabbath the Jews said to the Babylonians, “You might be in charge (for now) but you don’t own us.  We belong to our God, who made heaven and earth.”  That’s where scholars think this poem came from.  The sun, moon, and animals were all different gods to the Babylonians.  They worshiped them and made all kinds of sacrifices, but the Jews said, “Those aren’t gods!  The sun and moon are just lights in the sky.  The animals were made by our God and given to us to care for.”  Rather than bowing down, the Jewish people stood up to preserve their dignity and celebrate their faith that, one day, their one true God would free them from slavery and bring them home again, just like God once did with Moses in Egypt.  In the meantime, the Jews kept going on strike once a week.  They kept meeting together to worship.  “We’re not your property,” they said, “We’re God’s people.”

So this poem becomes a celebration of faith, hope, and human dignity in the face of chaos, destruction, and oppression.  The poem opens with the image of a dark and stormy ocean.  Nothing but a “formless void”, but God is there.  God is speaking.  And God is making something good out of this mess!

In the same way, you and I live in a dark and chaotic world.  The society around us laughs at our faith.  It would be so easy to become frightened or cynical.  Maybe we’re not exactly slaves, like the Jews were under the Babylonians, but we often get treated like we’re less than human.  Government bureaucracy treats us like cattle, shuffling us around and identifying us by our Social Security Number.  Corporate advertising calls us “consumers” and tells us that our only value as human beings comes from how much money we have to spend.

“It’s a dog-eat-dog world,” they say, “you’ve got to take whatever you can get or somebody else will!”

Can we, as people of faith, find the courage to stand up and say no to that?

Like the ancient Jews, you and I already gather here once a week to sing, pray, and tell stories like this one.  When you come here, you’re reminding yourself that you are more than just a consumer or constituent.  You are a child of God.  You have inherent dignity as a human being.  You matter.

That’s a message that the world around you will try to drown out, if it can.  It will try to swallow up your soul in that ocean of darkness and chaos.

The power of faith is the power to resist that fear and cynicism.  It’s the power of hope.  It’s the power of human dignity.  It’s the power to celebrate the goodness of creation.  It’s the power to say that our God is more real than the false gods of consumerism and ideology.  The power of faith is the power to say, “God is making something good out of this mess!”

Do you believe that?  Can you see in your life what the ancient Jews saw in this passage?  The truth in this text has little to do with how the universe began, whether it was thousands or billions of years ago.  It has everything to do with how you look at the universe today.  Are you a faith-full or a faith-less person?  My prayer is that God would open your heart in the midst of this life’s “formless void”, so full of darkness and chaos, and that you would somehow sense the mystery of God’s presence saying to you, “Let there be light.”