"The Word" (Gen 1:1-2:4a)

Creation from Chaos

1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void—in other words, the world was a mess, like a canvas with paint splashed indiscriminately, mixed together without rhyme or reason. And darkness covered the face of the deep—the “deep” is a Hebrew word (tehom) that refers to the chaos of the sea. In Babylonian mythology, the “deep” (Tiamat) is actually the goddess of chaos, personified by the sea. So, just imagine a dark, stormy night at sea, and you have a pretty good picture of the state of the world. It’s a soupy, chaotic mess.

In the midst of all of this…a wind from God—this could also be translated “breath” or “spirit” of God—swept over the face of the waters.

Since around the third century, Christian theologians have insisted that God created everything out of nothing (a concept called creatio ex nihilo). But in Genesis 1, this is plainly not so. The creation story does not begin with nothingness, with a blank canvas. It begins with chaos, with a messy canvas.

Most historians today believe that the creation story in Genesis 1 was written down in the time of the Babylonian exile. If you remember from our psalm from last week, the Babylonians lay siege to Jerusalem and brutally starved its inhabitants, before finally destroying the city and the temple and resettling the survivors in Babylon. It would undoubtedly have been a chaotic experience, losing home and homeland, losing family and friends, and then being forced to live in a foreign land where people spoke a strange tongue and looked upon you with suspicion and disdain.

The Hebrew scribes who sat down and gave written expression to the creation story in Genesis 1 were not simply reciting an ancient story. They were responding to the fear and despair of the present moment with a defiant, insistent hope that God was with them in the chaos. “The spirit of God,” the story says, “swept over the face of the chaotic waters” (cf. Gen 1:2).

3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

You probably know the story pretty well from here. Over the next five days, God creates sky and waters and land, stars and fish and birds and cattle, culminating in the creation of humanity.

Today, many readers are tempted to read the creation story as a scientific explanation about the origin of things. But that is not how the original writers intended it to be read. They told these stories not to explain the mechanics of things as much as the meaning of things.

And the meaning, very plainly put, is that God can create goodness out of chaos. (Which would have meant an awful lot to people whose world had fallen into chaos.) Remember those words that the earth was “a formless void? That means without shape (formless) and without content (void), just a soupy mess lacking structure and any discernible substance. So, what does God do? On the first three days, God begins separating one thing from another, light from dark, waters above (the sky) from waters below, land from sea. Things are given shape, structure, boundaries, distinction. Then on the next three days, God begins filling these secure but empty spaces with things: first stars and moon and sun in the heavens, then fish in the sea and birds in the sky, and finally land animals on the land and humans. In six days, we’ve gone from “a formless void” to a well-ordered abundance of life. Written between the lines is the affirmation that God can do the same thing in the life of the Judeans living in exile. What feels like a chaotic mess may yet be ordered into goodness and abundant life. God did it in the beginning, and God can do it today.

Every Human Noble / Imago Dei

27 [Then] God created humankind in his image,

    in the image of God he created them;

    male and female he created them.

28 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.” … 

In the ancient world, kings were believed to rule the world in God’s place. They were divine stand-ins, surrogates, bearers of the image of God.

For the exiles in Babylon, who had been firmly “put in their place,” so to speak, who had been forced to live on the bottom rung of society’s ladder, these verses defiantly insisted that they (and everyone) were just as noble as the Babylonian king. Genesis 1 declares that all humanity, not just royalty, bear the image of God. Every human is equally of divine stock. Every human bears God’s image in the world and is entrusted with caring for creation. For the disgraced Judeans living under the heel of the Babylonian empire, the creation story invests them with their inherent dignity and worth.

“Very Good”

31 God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

This verse crowns God’s achievement. We started, remember, with a soupy, stormy mess—with chaos. But at the end of each day of creation, as God calls the elements out of their chaos and into the goodness of relationship, God looks out and sees that creation is good. It becomes something like a drumbeat in the creation story: “And God saw that it was good.” “And God saw that it was good.” Now, six days later, God looks out upon a world that is well ordered and abundant with life, and God sees that it is all—not just good—but “very good.”

A Different Creation Story

Modern readers sometimes get hung up on whether Genesis 1 gives a scientific account of creation. My hunch is that this is missing the point. The point, as I mentioned earlier, is not the mechanics of creation, but the meaning of creation. At the bottom of things, this world is good, very good. But that’s not the only meaning of the story. Genesis 1 vehemently disagrees with a bedrock belief that held sway over the ancient world as much as it does over our world today.

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 an upstart god, Marduk, killing the goddess of chaos, Tiamat (who happens to be his grandmother). Then he creates the earth with parts of her body. Greek mythology likewise begins with bloody domestic 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. Borders are drawn and maintained through violent force.  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. If the world is indeed good, it is only because some strong men have fought for goodness and vanquished evil.

Amid all these violent creation stories, the exiles in Judea dared to believe a very different kind of story. They dared to trust in a very different kind of God.

Notice how God responds to chaos in Genesis 1. God does not attack it as something bad. God does not wrestle it into submission. Rather, God tames the chaos. God woos it. With words. With invitation. “Let there be…” “Let there be…” God invites the elements of creation out of their chaos and into the goodness of relationship with God and with one another.

What’s more, he entrusts the elements of creation with responsibility, with power. Readers have often noted that God confers upon humanity dominion over the fish and birds and living creatures, but less often have they noted that God makes sun and moon to “rule” over day and night (1:16, 18). And when God invites the earth to grow plants—“Let the earth put forth vegetation”—the earth responds of its own accord: “The earth brought forth vegetation…” (1:11-12). And whereas God originally fills the empty space of waters and sky, sea and dry land, God later entrusts creatures with the responsibility of multiplying and filling the earth. According to Genesis 1, creation is the result of not conflict but collaboration.

Is it a coincidence, I wonder, that in the gospel of John creation begins with “the Word”? The gospel of John clearly insists on the same truth of Genesis 1. The world did not originate from war but from a Word. And that Word, according to John, is Christ. The call and response from which creation emerges—when God calls, “Let there be…,” and the elements of creation willingly respond—is nothing less than the call of Christ. What we hear in the creation story is what we hear from Christ: God’s declaration of love followed by the invitation of love.

“God So Loved the World…”

I don’t have many houseplants, because my cats get pretty curious. They have already had one unfortunate allergic reaction. But recently, I brought home from the grocery story one of those potted basil plants, as I’d learned that most cats don’t have allergies to them. It’s been sitting on my windowsill the past few weeks. And I’ve noticed something—something I’d learned long ago, probably in elementary school, but due to lack of attention and experience had forgotten. I’ve noticed that the whole plant is now leaning toward window, toward the light. As though beckoned. As though responding to a call.

“In [Christ] was life, and the life was the light” of all creation (cf. John 1:4).

There on my windowsill sits a small, nearly invisible reminder that creation is not some inert object fashioned from blunt force but is rather tenderly called into life through loving relationship. Creation is chaos turning toward the light.

What we see in the creation story is no different from what we see in Christ. “God so loved the world that he gave…” (John 3:16). God does not battle the chaos. He breathes on it, bestows his love upon it, calling it into relationship, revealing its goodness, giving it freedom and purpose: sun and moon to rule night and day, plants to be fruitful, animals to fill the earth, humans to bear God’s image and to show the same love and care for all things.

The creation story we believe will make all the difference for how we live. If we believe creation is God’s conquest over chaos, then we will trust in conquest; we will trust in violent force. But if we believe creation is the result of God’s gift of love, which draws life from chaos, then we will trust in love.

“God so loved the world that he gave…” And he gives, and he gives, and he gives.

Prayer

Creator God,
Beloved who calls us to life—
In our world, we are inundated
With the myth of redemptive violence,
With the idea that might makes right…
Inspire us to see deeper than shallow victories
And fragile cease-fires;
To see that abundant life and fruitfulness
Result only from loving relationship.
Encourage us to turn toward the light of your love
And reflect our hope to the world.
In Christ, your Word, your invitation: Amen.