By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
January 7, 2024
Genesis 1:1–5 (ESV)
1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void,In the beginning. This statement is one that grabs my attention. It might be because it has that storybook feel from the books I used to read as a child, or movies I still love today. Long ago in a galaxy far away. Something important is about to be explained. Something profound, something that might just change our way of looking at things if we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3 And 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.
In the beginning. This statement is one that grabs my attention. It might be because it has that storybook feel from the books I used to read as a child, or movies I still love today. Long ago in a galaxy far away. Something important is about to be explained. Something profound, something that might just change our way of looking at things if we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.
For those of us who have been part of the church for a while, we know this story. We have heard it as children. Our Sunday School teachers probably had flannel-graph cutouts depicting all six days of creation. Unless you are in my Sunday School class because kids today have screens, and we do not need fanciful flannel-graph.
I have mentioned before that I love the Book of Genesis. I like it because it begins in this way. I also love the Gospel of John because it also begins in this manner. In the beginning sets the stage, it prepares us for some epic drama that is about to unfold. Unfortunately in recent history we often lose the mystery of this story. We have lost the mystery because various factions want scripture to prove their various points.
In the beginning. It might surprise most of us that the phrase used here, is not as definite as we might like. I will stop right here and let you all know that I believe that God created the heavens and the earth. I make this disclaimer because I want us to understand what is being said. The phrase we translate as, “in the beginning,” has two possible interpretations. It can mean the absolute beginning of all time. But the interpretation we are less familiar with is a nonspecific general beginning. If we were to say, “in the beginning,” in reference to our own life what do we mean? Are we speaking of our birth? Could it be the beginning of college or a new career? Maybe we are speaking of our wedding? We all have multiple beginnings depending on the context of which we are speaking. Just saying, “in the beginning,” does not fully tell us what is happening. We need more information.
To finish the first verse, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The storyteller gives us some additional information as to what beginning is being spoken of. This is either the absolute beginning of all things, or at the very least the beginning of God’s creative work.
I say at the very least the beginning of God’s creative work for a reason. We are bound to this plane of existence. We reside within the dimensions of our sensory universe. We do not know what, when, or even if something or someone was present before what we can perceive came into existence.
I want us to just sit with that for a moment. Many of us asked or been asked how life began. Many of us have quoted this very scripture in defense of that question, but I want us to recognize that even the words of scripture leave this a bit of a mystery.
This might make some of us uneasy. I understand. We all need to realize that the people in the ancient world were not asking the same questions that we ask today. We approach scripture in our contemporary culture and era, with preconceived ideas about what those ancient people meant. It was thousands of years after the telling of this story that the concept of ex nihilo, “out of nothing,” was formed. This is alluded to in the Book of Hebrews, and we can see segments of that theological stance take shape throughout scripture. We want this to tell us our scientific origin story, but science was not even on these ancient peoples’ minds when they shared this story. What they were interested was a purpose and reason to live.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This is an idiom in the Hebrew language that basically means everything from one extreme to the other. God created the heavens and the earth. The story continues, “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.”
Mysterious. I want us to really listen to what is being said once again, “The earth was without form, and void, darkness was over the face of the deep.” Tohu wabohu is what the Hebrew is. It means many things. It can mean empty space, unreality, confusion, complete disorder or chaos. These two words describe something that lacks boundary, order, and definition. Darkness was over the face of the deep. Darkness throughout scripture is a word that represents evil or calamity. With Tohu, bohu and darkness here at the beginning of this story, the storyteller is catching our attention. They are using the power of words to heighten our awareness by speaking to common fears. The fear of the dark. The fear of chaos. The fear of disorder and lack of control. This is where things get interesting. “Darkness was over the face of the deep.”
For many years I have been fascinated by various philosophies and theological thoughts. I am the type of person that wants to understand where someone that may not agree with me is coming from. In many cases I have found that many of the disagreements that I have, is because I assume that the words they say and the ideas they have, carry the same meaning as I have for them. I should not do this because I am a Friends pastor, Friends say things like, “weighty Friend,” and we are not speaking at all about physical features, instead that term weighty speaks of the depth of knowledge and spiritual discernment. And many of you might notice that I often say meetinghouse instead of church when I speak about the building we worship in. This is because when I was younger I was taught that the church is the people, not the building, the building is only a place the church meet, so it is the church’s meetinghouse.
The words people use sometimes carry different meaning depending on their own context. The Hebrew people, like us, lived in an area with various world views. And each of these world views have their own understanding of things. But when we dig a bit deeper we might find something of we can build a conversation on.
The ancient near east was not isolated. Israel was not a culture that developed on a remote island far from other people, instead they were a group of people that lived between. They were between Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, the Hittites, the Canaanites, and Ur. Each of these cultures participated in trade, and when people trade their cultures are shared. The interesting thing about these various Near Eastern cultures is that many of their earliest stories resemble each other. Some find this as being threatening, but for me, I find it fascinating. Some use these similarities to prove that words of scripture were just pulled from other places, patched in, and because of this it lacks meaning. For me this means that maybe the opposite is true. Perhaps the words of scripture are more accurate than we ever believed.
“Darkness was over the face of the deep.” This word deep in English is an adjective. We use it to describe something, but in Hebrew this word is a noun. It is a person, place, or thing. This thing we call the deep is a large body of water, the primordial or primeval sea, or cosmic waters of chaos. In Akkadian stories (Tay home) Tehom or Tamtu is the goddess of the sea. In the Mesopotamian stories Tiamat is a personified primeval ocean who Marduk splits in half, and from the two halves everything comes into existence. Ur, from which the religions of the Canaanites emerge, also speak of a watery deity which must be defeated. Each, of the cultures that encompass the Hebrew people in those ancient times speak of Tehom, the deep. In most of the cultures the Tehom is either a beast or lessor deity that must be battled, but in all the cases including the Hebrew scripture this Deep represents an existence based on fear and disorder. The main difference is that the Hebrew culture does not personify the Deep, it is a formless, unbound body of primordial fluid.
“And the Spirit was hovering over the face of the waters.”
What do we see in our minds when we hear of the Spirit hovering over the water? For me, I see a Coast Guard helicopter as it lowers the harness down to a struggling shipwreck survivor. This hovering is not stationary. It is fluttering, trembling, or moving about. It is sometimes used to describe, brooding over young chicks in a nest. What I once saw as this stationary helicopter, I now see a sheepdog gathering the flock together.
God’s Spirit is gathering this primeval sea, these chaotic waters, the deep together. What was once formless and unbound, is now being drawn together to one place. The formless receives form, and a boundary is placed around what was once unbound.
The Spirit gathers the Deep, “And God said, ‘Let there be light, and there was light’”
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God , and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Today is the first Sunday of Epiphany. Usually in this season the church celebrates the revelation of God with us. To have an epiphany, is gaining insight or knowledge about something that was once unknown to you. We might say that epiphany is the beginning of wisdom.
I mentioned when I started this morning that I like Genesis and that I like John because they have similarities. The similarities revolve around light.
Often when we read through this first day of creation, we make the assumption that God created light on the first day. Then our minds begin to question things. In our minds light comes from something. The sun gives us light, but the sun was not created until the fourth day. This is where our scientific mind and the storytelling of ancient days diverge.
What if light does not mean light. What if light in Genesis 1 is more like John 1?
In John light is knowledge and wisdom. It is the Word of God which is the embodiment of divine wisdom. God’s spirit hovered over the waters of the deep, the Spirit gathered the formless, meaningless, chaos together and speaks let there be light.
I marvel at this story. In my mind I see the cosmic dusts of a nebula submitting to the forces of gravity. I see the physics of the various forces, working on what was once formless and suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere the celestial bodies of our solar system emerge. What was once without form now has a form, what was once meaningless now has meaning. What once lacked purpose now has a purpose.
I sat this week contemplating this passage. I sat wondering if we were going to be able to rip the ceiling out in time for the electricians to start their work. I sat considering everything going on in my life. I sat fully expecting to speak today about creation, but instead my mind drifted between faith and science, between hope and despair, between heaven and earth.
This story is not about our origin. It is about meaning. This story is calling us to participate in the quest to find meaning, hope, and a purpose. It is an invitation for us all to explore God and everything he created. And that begins with light.
“And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.” I sat with this last verse of this week’s reading, and I began to look at it differently. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. These are words that speak of fear, but fear of what? Disorder, chaos, void. All of this points to the lack of knowledge of some form. We fear what we do not know.
A few years ago, we faced something unknown. A virus was spreading around the world and we did not know how to contain it. Various experts were telling us things and sometimes their wisdom only increased our fear because we could not make sense of it. During that time, I received a call from a reporter, I do not know if she was a real reporter or not because I did not ever find anything written anywhere by her. But she wanted to interview me as a pastor about how and what we were doing in the face of that great unknown. I sat in a parking lot talking to her on the phone. Explaining what we were doing and what our plans were. For about an hour we spoke and at the end of that time she said something to me that I hope I never forget. She said, “you do not sound afraid.” And then she asked why.
God separated the light from the darkness. We fear what we do not know, we fear when we cannot see, when we do not believe there is meaning. I did not fear. Was I concerned? Yes. I did not want to be sick, nor did I want to see anyone I care about sick. I hate being sick. But I did not fear. I did not fear because of what knowledge I did have and the faith I have in God in reference to the things I did not know.
God separated the light from the darkness. Good and evil, knowledge and ignorance, hope and despair. The spectrum between the extremes. The first thing that God created as he gathered in the sea of chaos was light. God spoke, he transferred his wisdom into our realm of existence, and brought order to the primordial disorder.
“The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth1”
God separates the light from the dark, He calls it day and night. He also calls it belief and rejection. We can look at the world around us and be gripped by fear, but what does this tell us about our faith and our hope? Do we trust the wisdom of God? Will we shine light into a world of darkness?
1 The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Crossway Bibles, 2016, p. Jn 1:9–14.
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