A Parable about an
Old Sailor and His Stories
There once was an old sailor who had journeyed all around the world on his boat. Sailing was his joy. But one day a great storm, unlike any he had ever encountered before, blew his boat off course, and eventually it was wrecked upon the shores of an uncharted island. The man was too old to rebuild his ship. And the natives, who had never left the island before, had no interest in helping him. So the sailor accepted his fate and resigned himself to living out the rest of his days on the island.
Over time, he developed a reputation as a storyteller. He could not help but tell tales of his adventures on the sea. And his words were enchanting. At night, he would speak by a campfire under the stars, and silence would fall upon his rapt listeners. He described in wondrous detail all the lands he had visited. All the exotic foods that he had tasted, all the colorful outfits he had seen people wear, all the strange customs and ceremonies in which he had participated. His stories were sometimes so outlandish, that the elders on the island cautioned their youth against believing everything they heard.
But their caution fell upon deaf ears. There was a group of youth who were so enchanted, that they began to dream day and night of sailing around the world. So, when the old man passed away, his stories did not. His stories had taken root in the hearts of these youth. Before long, the young dreamers began talking about building a boat of their own and sailing around the world. And that is what they did. There were, of course, many failures en route to their eventual success, but the old man’s stories fueled them like nothing else could. They kept building and trying until one day their boat glided on the water. With smiles, they set out to sea for the adventure of a lifetime.
…
This story is not factual, but I believe it is true. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who wrote The Little Prince, is attributed with saying, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up [people] to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
The most powerful word is not a command or a demand. The most powerful word is the one that inspires.
God Talks to the
Chaos
Many religious traditions represent God as all-powerful, an individual who can do whatever he likes. Certainly there are such depictions within the biblical tradition. But at the heart of the biblical tradition, is a rather different picture of God. We see it in today’s creation story. God is a talker. God speaks. Over and over again, we hear God say, “Let there be….” Let there be light, let the waters gather, let dry land appear, let the earth get greener, and so on. Creation begins not with actions but with words. The gospel of John picks up on this in the most succinct way: “In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was God.” And the epistle of John says, “God is love” (1 John 4:8), so we can put the two together and know that God is not just the Word, but the Word spoken in love.
The strangeness of God’s wordy creation cannot be overstated. In the ancient world, there were many creation stories. And nearly all of them have one thing in common. They begin with violence. Chaos is transformed into order by force. In Babylon, the creation story begins with the upstart god Marduk killing the goddess of chaos, Tiamat, and then creating the earth with parts of her body. Greek mythology likewise begins with bloody conflict among the gods. There is actually an enduring logic to these violent creation stories, if you stop to think about it. Many things in our world do begin with violence. Nations are often born from bloody conflict. One of the fundamental stories that our world continues to believe in is what we might call “the myth of redemptive violence.” It is the belief that violence has a redemptive quality, namely that it transforms chaos into order.
The creation story in Genesis 1 is a surprising deviation from the norm. God does not kill the chaos, which is represented by the deep waters and darkness. God talks to it. I would even suggest, God inspires it.
“The Earth Brought
Forth Vegetation”
I grew up thinking of the creation story as a rather solitary event. God is the monarch, and creation is his magisterial monologue. He commands one thing after the next, and it is accomplished just as he says. God seems rather like a magician whose word magically creates. “Abracadabra.”
But as I began to read the story more closely, my interpretation started changing. I noticed, first of all, that God is not alone at the beginning. God is not creating something out of nothing. There are pre-existing elements: “the face of the deep,” which contains the dark, watery elements of chaos over which God’s spirit sweeps and to which God lovingly speaks.
Then I noticed that God does not issue commands. Rather God expresses desire in an open, voluntary manner, “Let there be…” This is not a snap of the fingers or a wave of the magic wand. This is a loving call, an invitation, a request—God’s prayer to us. And the existing elements respond! When God says, “Let the earth put forth vegetation,” Genesis tells us, “The earth brought forth vegetation” (Gen 1:12). In other words, God does not bring forth vegetation singlehandedly. “The earth” is its own subject, and it willingly responds to God’s loving invitation and makes it a reality.
Creation is a story of God’s words made flesh. The flesh of vegetation, the flesh of fruit, the flesh of animals. They all take shape as the world responds to God’s loving call. I like to think of creation along the lines of our old sailor, whose words inspire the young shipbuilders and become a reality as they respond. So God’s words inspire creation, and it becomes a reality. God’s love transforms chaos into something good, something very good.
Relationship Is at
the Heart of Who God Is
Today is Trinity Sunday, a day when we celebrate the mystery of God, who according to our faith tradition is one reality but three persons, God the Creator, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. I know some people puzzle over the Trinity and argue about its finer details, but I lose little sleep over it. In my mind, it’s not meant to be a dogma we believe even though we don’t understand. It’s meant to be but a tool to help us understand. And here’s how it helps me.
It’s what we see in creation. God is the Word spoken in love. God is the Spirit of eternal conversation. God lives through call and response. Christ is what happens when the Word is heard and takes on flesh. That is why the gospel of John can speak both of Christ as existing at the beginning, in creation, and then Christ as being born in the person of Jesus, who gave full human expression to the desire of God.
Making Listeners
In the gospel text today, Jesus commissions his followers to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:20). A plainer translation would be, “Make learners of all nations.” My even simpler paraphrase would be, “Make listeners of all nations.” The myth of redemptive violence that the nations predominantly believe in, is the myth that there is a limit to listening, that ultimately we must make our own good independently, by force. But what I see in creation is a very different reality. I see a God in loving relationship. A God who does not conquer chaos but speaks to it. A God whose word has the power to bear fruit and multiply goodness if it can but find a listening ear. For me, to be a disciple, a learner, a listener, means simply that I trust God is always speaking lovingly to us, guiding us, teaching us. And to make learners and listeners of others, is not to have everything figured out but simply to invite them into the conversation, to listen too.
For the Trinity reminds me that God is relationship, conversation, a call looking for a response, a dream waiting to become a reality.
Prayer
Whose loving Word
Inspires goodness and beauty and truth,
Which we see in creation
And even more fully in Christ—
Sometimes we cannot hear you
Because we already have things figured out
And are not listening
…
May Christ and creation model for us
What it means to be disciples—learners, listeners.
Inspire us with your dreams
That we might give them flesh,
Wherever we are.
In Christ, in whom the fullness of God dwells: Amen.
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