Genesis 1:1-2:4 - "A Moment in Time"

“A Moment in Time”

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that God had done in creation. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

The story of creation is the story of ordered time. Genesis 1 tells us that God does not create at random; God creates with order and a structure that we can grasp and make sense of. Evening and morning. The first day. The second day. The third day. But although there is an order, the order doesn’t always make sense to us. God creates light three days before God creates the sun. On Day 5, God issues God’s first blessing and blesses the fish and the birds with the same blessing God will later bestow upon humanity to be fruitful and multiply. Lest we get too high mighty, we must remember that God blessed tuna fish and pigeons before God ever blessed us. Perhaps we don’t like everything about God’s order of time.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the notion of time lately. As those of you older than me can surely attest, with each year we age, time flies by faster and faster. Where did the month of May go? Where did the last 4 years go? Weren’t the ’90s just a decade ago? But then COVID hit and suddenly time seemed to come screeching to a halt. We all stayed quarantined in our homes for weeks and then months. We heard reports of vaccine development that maybe might be ready by 2021 or 2022 and then time seemed unfairly sluggish. Years? This could take years? I have to admit, it felt so unprecedented and there have been days that I just felt angry. How dare these years of my life be stolen by this virus! How dare these years that should have been filled with joy and growth and connection be robbed of us all. For this to take so long feels so unfair.

And then I thought about how the flu of 1918 lasted well into 1920. The Bubonic Plague began in 1347 and didn’t run its course until midway through the next decade. Those years were robbed too. This is precedented. In my mind, pandemics, plagues, and wars that last years have never been more than just facts of history. They were just dates to recall. I forgot that they were lived by real people. Real people who also had their weddings canceled. Real people whose teenage years were defined by fear, isolation, and quarantine. Real people whose lives were just about to get back on track when the world fell apart. Real people who sat at home, wondering when they would feel safe again. Years must have passed just as slowly for them as it does for us right now.

This is the funny thing about time. For although God created order and time, God also created time that somehow exists outside itself. For just as the days of the creation narrative tell the story of the ordering of the world, not of six 24-hour time periods, our experience of time is more than just seconds on a clock.

As Christians, our experience of time is informed by what we believe. In the winter of 1932, Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave a series of lectures at the University of Berlin that were later compiled into a short book entitled, “Creation and Fall.” The introduction begins, “the Church of Christ bears witness to the end of all things. It lives from the end, it thinks from the end, it acts from the end, it proclaims its message from the end.” Bonhoeffer is saying that the church sees all things through the lens of Christ’s saving death, resurrection, and future his return in glory. That is the “end” from which we view the world. Christ is the end of the old world and the beginning of the new. Since the church lives in Christ, we live in the world God created in the beginning, and in the world of Christ’s reign, and with our eyes fixed on the world yet to come. We are caught up in time and so when we read Genesis 1, we also hear the words of John 1 —"in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God."

Moments when God is at work are a special kind of time. The Greeks used two different words for time—chronos and Kairos. We get our word chronological from chronos, as it refers to linear time. One minute on the clock is no longer or shorter than the next. But Kairos time is different. Kairos means “the appointed time” or “the critical moment.” It is a moment in time, outside of chronological time, where God is at work. You may have had Kairos moments in your own life where God met you in a spectacular, life-changing way. I believe this country is in the midst of a Kairos moment right now. In the past week, we have seen peaceful protests in over 500 cities in every state in America and across the globe. Millions and millions of people have sacrificed time off, have put their safety on the line by gathering in the midst of a pandemic, and are uniting on a scale many generations have not seen before to denounce the evils of racism and demand a new, just system. It is a reckoning and it falls outside of the blue and red partisan lines we are so used to. It is a reckoning about what public safety and criminal justice mean and if our current system is able to achieve those ends. It is a moment in history of mass solidarity and cooperation, and I have never seen anything like it. 

So how do we make sense of this Kairos moment we are living in? I have turned to Genesis 1 over and over again my life because I love beginnings. I love what beginnings say about the rest of the story. I love what the beginning of scripture says about us and says about God. I believe that Genesis 1 has three important things to say to us this morning.

First, Genesis begins by telling us that God is with us. In verse two, the author of Genesis writes, “when the earth was still formless and void, the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.” This has always been an evocative image for me despite my inability to picture a formless world or the spirit hovering over the surface of “the deep.” The Hebrew word for hovering, rachaph, is only used in two other verses in the Bible. In one, the Psalmist compares God to a mother eagle that hovers over her young. When we read verse two, we imagine God’s spirit hovering over the waters like a mother hen brooding over her nest waiting for life to spring forth. As Miguel De La Torre writes in his commentary on Genesis, the good news is that God’s spirit still hovers over the formless void of broken lives and great darkness in which marginalized people find themselves. In the chaos that reigns—sexism, racism, classism, heterosexism, ableism and all other -isms—God’s spirit still hovers. In the darkness of oppression, we may not be able to see, feel, detect, or recognize the presence of God’s spirit; still, the good news of the opening verses of the Bible is that God is right here with us with all the love, care, and consideration of a mother for her young.

The story of creation is rich and each day, each verse could be a sermon in and of itself on another day. But the second truth that I hear Genesis 1 speaking to us in this moment is that life is precious. It is not until the latter half of the last day of creation work that God creates humans. The Triune God creates human beings in God’s own image. The Latin phrase is Imago Dei- made in the image of God. Verse 27 repeats three times in a row—"God created humankind in God’s image, in the image of God, God created them; male and female God created them.” It’s a stunning theological statement that undergirds everything else we believe about humanity. You bear the image of the divine. Your creativity and capacity for creation. You desire for order and structured time. Your laugh and your ferocity. Your skin. Your body. Your eyes. All you. There is no one who does not bear the distinction of “Made in God’s Image.”

And although we Christians proclaim this, a glimpse at our so-called Christian nation reveals that we do not live it. This past week has brought to light on a national scale the vastness of the racist polices, institutions, and norms of this country that are designed to deny the humanity and imago-dei-ness of Black and Brown Americans. The way our country polices and punishes does not reflect our belief that life is precious. If we believed that life is precious, we would care for and fix our social ills instead of policing them. If we believed that life is precious, we would not expect police officers to be social workers with guns and tanks who are supposed to solve every problem from mental illness to homeless armed only with rubber bullets and tear gas. This system was designed to fail. It has failed people of color. It has failed law enforcement officers. It has failed us all.

 To believe that life is precious and valuable means to get to work imagining a new kind of world. The systems that we are used to, that perhaps we comfortable in, or at least we are familiar with, are the systems that do not uphold our fundamental belief that life precious and so as Christians we have a mandate to build new ones.

So where does that leave us? With the third truth of Genesis 1. Finally, after creating woman and man in God’s own image, after blessing humans and giving us a purpose to tend to God’s good and beautiful creation, God took a step back to take a look at all that God had made. I imagine God taking a deep breath before declaring with a smile on God’s face that indeed, it was very good. 

Friends, this is the truth. You were created in the image of the utmost high and you were called very good. The question for Christians is not if people are, at their core, good or bad. We already know the answer—people are very good. But we also know that the story does not end with Genesis 1. We know comes next because it has infected all of our lives—sin. We know that even though we were created good, we are capable of all kinds of evil. All people do both good and harm. All people have the capacity for peacemaking and violence. For racist actions and anti-racist ones. Some give in to one more than the other.

The question for the church is what does it mean to treat people as if they are made in the image of God and called very good? What would it look like for the Church to radically, proactively, and unapologetically proclaim that all people are created good? How would that transform our understanding of protests or even rioting? How would that transform the way we view our communities in which we live and work? Would we view the “problems” differently? And if so, would we seek different solutions to those problems? Would we seek solutions that do not criminalize people but seek their rehabilitation and transformation? Would we change the way we view people who are “the opposite of the issues” from us? What would it look like to view the people whose behavior and ideals we find most abhorrent as imago dei? As victims of a sinful world, poisoned by evil ideologies, but not yet lost… What kind of world would that be?

People of Southminster, we are in a moment in time that I do not think we will forget. We are at a moment in which we must decide what kind of world it is want to live in. There are infinite choices ahead of us—who we will defend, who we will protect, who we will pray for, who we correct, who we will challenge, who we will be. And at this moment, we must not forget what scripture proclaims yesterday, today, and tomorrow—God is with us. Life is precious. We are good. May we live with the freedom these truths to offer to us and all people. Amen.