February 15, 2009 The Darwin Anniversary
Genesis 1: 1-10, 26-28, 31 Priestly Account of Creation

Today with Darwin's Anniversary, we celebrate the achievements of the sciences to broaden our understand and appreciation of life and the world. Beginning with Galileo and Copernicus, resurrecting a 1500 year old Greek idea that the sun, not the earth, is the center of our solar system; to Astronomers discovering that our solar system is only a tiny speck in the vast unfolding universe; Darwin, observing that species of life on earth are evolving; earth scientists discovering that the earth is still forming with continents or parts of continents on tectonic plates that are constantly moving; geophysicists discovering that earthquakes, typhoons, tornados, hurricanes, blizzards, floods, draughts, are not caused by God as punishments upon individuals or groups or races or countries but the working of the forces of nature; Einstein and quantum physicists penetrating into the atom and discovering that things are not at all the way they seem on the surface; geneticists figuring out the common link of DNA in tying life together; medical scientists advancing care and cure of diseases and our understanding of the body and its functions; and psychology expanding our understanding of the complexities of human motivation and experience. At the same time we have also learned the value of nonscientific languages -- music, painting, sculpture, dancing, theatre, cinema, poetry, fiction. These languages speak to the human experience of meaning and value and emotion and intuition, and, certainly, too, these involve the language of spirituality and religion. No one kind of kind of languages can contain the whole, so each are essential to foster our wholeness and fullness of life, and neither can supplant or pass for the other. Those who make the claim that the Bible is true in "fact" to all its scientific, sociological, anthropological, biological, cosmological details are trying to impose scientific language onto texts that carry a different kind of meaning and communication. Literalists assert that unless we accept every word of the Scripture as inerrant and true as actual "fact" in every detail, that we lose everything and the Bible will have no value. Literalism of the Bible has given us justification of wars of conquest, colonialism, slavery, segregation, suppression of women, justification of capital punishment, burning of heretics, and many more destructive events. Not such a good record.

To the literalists we may well ask, does our being moved by Beethoven's Ninth Symphony depend having factual knowledge about the notes on the score, the range of each instrument, and a technical analysis of every chord? Does our being moved by van Gogh's Starry Night depend upon factual knowledge of the chemical basis of the paints? Does our being gripped by Shakespeare's Hamlet or King Lear depend upon diagramming each sentence for syntax? Does our being moved to awe as we walk among the Redwoods in Muir Woods depend upon knowing the exact mineral content of the soil? Does our meaning of the Twenty Third Psalm at the time of the death of a loved one depend upon the fact that King David wrote it or not? And what about our experience of unconditional love?

I am asserting that instead of diminishing the Bible, the opposite is true -- that the more we are able to move past literalism in how we read the Bible and its stories, the more meaningful, powerful and valuable it will be for us in opening our hearts and spirits and minds to God's intentions for all life in God's grace and God's call to justice.

This morning, since we are honoring Charles Darwin, I would like to focus in on the Creation story as we have it in Genesis One as an example.

If we understand that this chapter was not written by an eye witness sitting in a space station watching the creation happen and recording each moment on digital camera and then sending that to the nearest TV cable channel in Jerusalem, then, we can ask: when was it written, for whom was it written, and for what purpose was it written? We know from the Jewish Scriptures that the occasions which stimulated the written Jewish Scriptures were times after Israel's national catastrophes of being attacked, or conquered, or exiled. Priests and prophets interpreted these events as punishments from God, having nothing to do with the "facts" that the enemies were stronger, better armed, and had superior technologies.

These priests were not unlike the fundamentalist clergy who claimed 9/11 was God's punishment on America for harboring homosexuals, and that Katrina was God's punishment on the sexual wickedness of New Orleans. So, from the point of view of the priests in charge of the temple and Israel's sacred writings, they believed their task was to establish a purified Israel, obedient to the laws of the holiness God had given, and only in this way could there be a guarantee that another punishment by conquest and exile would not occur again. The Jewish biblical tests the priests shaped were written and edited to support this goal and belief, whatever was the original form or basis of their story, whether adapted from the most ancient creation story from Sumaria or not. Biblical scholars call this the Priestly document, and it's beginning is the opening chapter of Genesis.

So, Genesis One was written, not as a literal description of what actually happened, no one was there, but adapted as part of the warning and promise to the Israelites about the uniqueness of Israel's God and his demand to be obeyed in order for Israel to be blessed and prosper and as a sovereign people. The problem was that the powerfully, culturally advanced, prosperous and aggressive nations surrounding Israel served a wide pantheon of gods and goddesses, many nature gods and goddesses, including those for fertility of the soil and the female body. Fighting against the influence of these religious practices to which the Israelites were continually exposed, the priests accomplished a master stroke against the nature gods and goddesses of the sky and sea and land in how they written their account of Creation. Notice, everything is created by one Creator God, who creates everything out of nothing but the power of his word. The sun is not a god, it is a creation of God and is not even mentioned by name, only identified as the "greater light". The same for the moon, she is not a goddess, but a creation, nor is she named, but referred to only as "the lesser light". So, the priests did not topple idols, they simply wrote them out of existence. Some of us here know what that is like, don't we?

In addition to sky and earth gods and goddesses, there were also animal and bird gods, especially among the Egyptian, always a power house in the middle east. So, these creatures also are redefined as created by the spoken word of Israel's God, and, with the creation of the humans in the Creator's own image, and that is the only allowable image. Human are given dominion over all birds and animals and fish, for they have no divine power over humans. It is only humans who are said to carry "the image of God." Not nature. Not animals. Not birds. Not the sun. Not the moon. This account of creation is like an exposition of the First Commandment, "No Other Gods!"

Further, in the life situation of Israel, believing its defeat and destruction was a punishment for its embrace of these false gods and goddesses, the text promises that Israel's powerful God was also capable of blessing them. The promise to Israel in Genesis One verse one is that if Israel remains true to its God, it could be "re-created" once more through God's almighty and powerful word.

Already this is beginning to introduce a further help to us in understanding this text. The Jungians, especially Maria Louise von Franz, Jung's right hand woman and heir of the movement, have done careful research on the Creation stories of peoples of every continents and all the diverse cultures, and have found common 'archetypes,' that is, universal themes in each that relate to the development of human consciousness and awareness and responsibility. O f significant for the point I am developing is they discovered that the creation stories in every culture played a significant present role in the life of those cultures. These creation stories are told during times of chaos and disruptions, and at times of new beginnings in family, culture and nation.

The opening verse of Genesis One in an alternate translation can be read as "the Spirit of God hovered or brooded over the chaos." What an apt description of the Israel's condition and situation after conquest and exile and return to ruin. Jerusalem and the temple were rubble. Life and commerce were disrupted. Families were torn apart. How were they going to rebuild their nation and its institutions and achieve prosperity and security? Very present issues for us, also. The message of the priests in Genesis One was that Israel's God was still there "hovering" over their chaos, ready to start their re-creation with the power of his word. You see, the very first verse of the Bible is not description, it is Gospel, gift, grace, hope, promise, -- Gospel for a dispirited, depressed, destitute people.

This reality -- that telling the people's creation story is necessary in times of chaos and crisis also helps us understand why the Fourth Gospel opens with a retelling of the Creation story, "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God…and the Logos became human." In our Bibles the word Logos has been translated as "word," but to the ancient Greeks it meant much more: it described the fundamental structure that made the whole universe cohere. The opening of this Gospel claims that this Logos, this cosmic structure, is the Christ made human. Today's second reading echoes this assertion that in Christ, "all things earthly and heavenly hold together." . The chaos the Christian Jews were experiencing in the later decades of the First Century was the fearful destructive persecution by Romans and their brutality.

The Creation story was necessary to the earliest Jewish Christians to assert that Jesus, both divine and human, the Logos of the Cosmos, is the beginning of a new creation, a new aeon of human and cosmic history. Luke, a Greek, follows up on this in his Gospel with its story of the Holy Spirit "hovering" over the early Christians on Pentecost and making a new beginning. The Apostle Paul was to claim that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male or female, but a new creation. Would that Christianity had followed this idea instead of the hierarchical model it did! But that's another story and issue for another time.

In ritual just as in biblical text, we also layer these multiple meanings, in Luther's words, "in, with and under" the words and the actions, or what Carl Jung called the transformational archetype. For example, the bread of the Holy Eucharist is taken from its use as ordinary bread to become a means of incorporating us into the very being of Christ's own life. So, when the presiding minister lifts the bread in elevation, it is not just that this is the Body of Christ "literally" understood as Roman Catholic doctrine teaches, but is the Body of Christ that is all of us recreated to be the presence of Christ's compassion in the midst of the chaos of our lives and today's world.

What better visual symbol do we have of God 'hovering" over us to be a source of healing and hope, regeneration and transformation, and not just for us, but for the whole of this world, and all that lies beyond it. This morning I will hold up the body of every person here in whatever is the chaos and turmoil and struggle of the moment in your life, our community, and the world. What chaos, pain, or hope do you hold up with the bread?

I hold up each one who needs physical, mental, spiritual healing, each one who is struggling with guilt or shame or rejection or alienation, each who is confronting open wounds and pain from the past, each who is struggling to survive economically or spiritually or psychologically, each who is homeless, each one who feels like the leper in today's Gospel -- excluded from full participation in church or society, each person who is struggling with any form of chaos, and it is the Holy Spirit "hovering" above it, if you will, whom we pray to descend upon us and the Bread to transform all this into the living Body of Christ for yours and for my own healing and hope and re-generation and re-creation. See yourself this morning with the Spirit hovering over you ready to go to work.

The Orthodox Christian Churches make it much clearer than those of us in western churches: to them every Sunday is Easter Sunday, every Sunday is the dawn of the new creation in the resurrection, and even Lent cannot belittle or affect the observance of Resurrection. Sunday, the first day of the week, is when we gather our chaos to be renewed in the "hovering" promise of God. It is the day of promise and work that regardless how chaotic it is, re-creation is under way. The work of re-creation, not the rest of the Sabbath, is our worship.

So today, let us thank our Re-creator and Re-newer for the gift of the Scriptures, for the gifts of science, for stories in which we find hope and meaning beyond literalism, and though we are living in a time of enormous uncertainly, fear, and chaos, we open to the promise of God who is hovering over all this with promise and hope. I think that is something to take home to begin the new week with. In the powerful name of the hovering Creator. Amen.