Creation

Genesis 1:1-2:3; John 1:1-14
Revd David Marshall

Sermon
1 September 2024 – St Ursula's, Berne

Today is Creation Sunday, the beginning of a month when our focus is on thanking God for the gift of this world, and reflecting on our responsibility for it. Yesterday members of our Church Council had an away-day to think and pray together about the environmental crisis and how we as a church-community are and should be responding to it. Next Sunday, Helen will be preaching on that theme, so today I will largely leave that to her. This morning I'm going to take one step back from that immediately pressing topic to ask the background question that frames our thinking about this world and how we relate to it. What do we mean when we talk about 'creation'? What does it mean to say that we believe in God the Creator of all things?

Some years ago I read Sophie's World, which is both a novel and an introduction to philosophy. It begins with a schoolgirl, Sophie, receiving a sequence of mysterious letters. One of these contains just the words: 'Where did the world come from?' 'I don't know, Sophie thought. Surely nobody really knows. And yet Sophie thought it was a fair question. For the first time in her life she felt it wasn't right to live in the world without at least inquiring where it came from.'

'Where did the world come from?' is perhaps the most basic question addressed by philosophers down the ages. Related questions include: Is the universe eternal? Or was there once nothing? Questions have also been asked about matter, the essential physical stuff out of which everything is made. Is matter good or evil? Is matter real or an illusion? These questions are significant not just for academic philosophy. How they are answered in different cultures and religions shapes how people think about themselves and the world around them, and about how they should live their lives.

Our faith has much to say about these questions, so let me outline some Christian affirmations. I'll refer mainly to today's long reading from Genesis, which conveys in a very structured way, with much repetition, the orderliness, abundance and beauty of creation, and also emphasizes the unique place and responsibility of human beings within God's creation.

First, then, we affirm as Christians that the universe is here because God created it. The very first words of the Bible tell us: 'In the beginning . . . God created the heavens and the earth.' In the modern age Christians have largely accepted that to say this does not prejudge the question of how or when God created. It's a mistake to expect the Bible to answer such questions. The origins and history of the universe are open questions, on which scientists shed more and more light. What our faith affirms is that the universe is not an accident and it did not somehow generate itself. The universe is the purposeful creation of a wise, loving God.

This bears on questions I mentioned earlier. It means that the universe has not always been there; that matter is not eternal. Only God is eternal; only God – to put it crudely – has always been there. In other words, God created the universe out of nothing, which means that God is not just a craftsman shaping material that is as eternal as he is. It's a vital distinction: God is the Creator, not just a craftsman. Why does this distinction matter? It tells us that God freely chose to create, to bring into being that which was not and need never have been. Why? Because at the heart of God is generous, self-giving, creative love. Just think: there need never have been anything but God; God is the only necessary Being, existing before all things in the eternal loving communion of Father, Son and Spirit. And the God who is eternally love calls into being that which is not, so that created beings (like us) can participate in the eternal goodness and love. So we should look out on the world, and look at ourselves, in grateful wonder that it is there at all, that we are here at all. Creation is in itself an act of God's love, not primarily a display of power. And this has huge implications for our attitude to our environment. If the world is an outpouring of God's love, we too should love and cherish it, because it is good.

That's the second important Christian affirmation: because the universe is God's creation, it is fundamentally good. In Genesis we read after several of the days of creation: 'God saw that it was good'; and at the end, 'God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.' (Genesis 1:31) God is like an artist, thrilled with what he has made, saying 'Isn't it good?' These words invite us to share in God's joy in the goodness of the creation. But some religions and philosophies have seen the physical reality of the world very negatively, so that our physical life is regarded as sinful and ugly, something to be ashamed of, to escape from, or even something unreal – an illusion to see through. Such outlooks picture the soul as a bird trapped in the cage of the body; on this view, we should despise and rise above the body and everything physical.

In contrast, Christians, agreeing here with Jews and Muslims, insist that the world is real and good. And the reality and goodness of God's creation point to the reality and goodness of God; more than that, the creation reflects God's glory and even sings God's praise, as St Francis especially reminds us. But the creation, however wonderful, mysterious and powerful, is not to be worshipped; only God the Creator is to be worshipped. As the gift of God, the created world is to be received thankfully, to be loved, revelled in, cherished: more environmental implications...

A third vital Christian affirmation concerns our understanding of ourselves as God's creatures and of our relationship to God's wider creation. Earlier I mentioned the second question Sophie has to reckon with: 'Where did the world come from?' But the first question was 'Who are you?' 'Who am I?' In the modern West that question sometimes grows into the often very anxious question: 'How can I find the real me?' If I bring that question, which is ultimately unanswerable, even enslaving, to our reading from Genesis, it will not be answered in the terms that I set. But Genesis does give us the key to understanding ourselves, though this may demand radical reshaping of our minds. It tells us that we are created in the image of God. (Genesis 1:26-27)

This is the foundation of the Christian understanding of what it means to be human: to know that we are created in the image of God. On the one hand, we are creatures – finite, created beings; on the other hand, we are made in the image and likeness of God – made for glory. Knowing we are created in God's image both humbles us and lifts us up. It humbles us because just as the animals and the plants, we are created by God: 'It is [God] who has made us, and not we ourselves' (Psalm 100:3). We are not self-made; we did not invent ourselves; we are creatures. Seeing ourselves humbly alongside God's wider creation with which our welfare is bound up is another vital perspective to bring to the current global crisis. But along with that humility, human beings also have a unique dignity and vocation. Stars and mountains, rivers and flowers, eagles and dolphins all reflect God's glory in their own ways, and sing God's praise, but none of them are created in the image of God. That privilege is given to human beings alone. To be created in God's image means kinship to God and capacity for a special relationship to God, enjoyed by no other part of the creation; it also involves responsibility, vocation. Much debate has focused on how to understand what Genesis says about God giving 'dominion' to human beings over all the creatures in the world (1:26-28). I recently read a very sobering and motivating book, This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein, a leading environmental thinker and activist. The most uncomfortable bit, for me, was her use of the common argument that the destructive exploitation of the world and its resources that has caused the environmental crisis has been given religious respectability precisely by appeal to this 'dominion' passage in Genesis. There isn't time now to do more than note this challenge to the Church and just to note that it has prompted many Christians to reflect deeply and self-critically on how God calls us to exercise dominion in the way of Christ, dominion as wise and humble stewardship over the creation.

We should also note the statement in Genesis (1:27), taken up by Jesus in the Gospels (Mark 10:6), that it is as male and female that God created humans in his image. I'll briefly flag up two big issues that arise here. First, if humans are created in the image of God as male and female, then the divine image is seen in both, so all cultural or religious tendencies to devalue the female below the male are challenged. Male and female humanity are equally in the image and likeness of God. Second, traditional Christian teaching is that the male-female distinction or binary stated here in Genesis, and echoed by Jesus, is essential to God's wise purposes in creation. Until very recently it was unthinkable for Christians to see marriage as anything other than between a man and a woman. Of course, thinking about marriage has changed in the wider world and the Church of England is currently negotiating a very divisive argument on this very topic, and related matters such as gender identity. This shows again how our understanding of creation, here our creation as human beings, relates to some major contemporary debates.

I mentioned earlier that Christians agree with Jews and Muslims on the reality and goodness of God's creation, so that cooperation over environmental concerns should be relatively natural between Jews, Christians and Muslims. We all believe in the one God, Creator of all things, and in human responsibility for God's creation. But Christians also have distinctive things to say. In our Creed every Sunday, we begin by saying that we believe in 'the Father . . . maker of heaven and earth'. But we go on to say about the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, that 'through him all things were made' which more or less quotes today's reading from John's Gospel (1:3). The Creed also describes the Holy Spirit as the 'giver of life', echoing biblical passages about the creative role of God's Spirit, as in today's psalm: 'when you send forth your spirit, they are created' (104:32). Christians believe that creation is the work of God the Trinity – the whole Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit. This is not just an obscure theological point. This teaches us that the eternal flow of divine love that was within God, Father, Son and Spirit, before anything else was, is what lies behind the amazing fact that there is anything at all. Everything that is arises from the fact that God the Trinity is eternally love.

Finally, this takes us to another vital point. Just as creation is the work of God the Trinity, Father, son and Spirit, so the same is true of God's work of re-creation or salvation. Because when God's creation falls away from God into rebellion and disorder, chaos and disaster, the same God who creates, Father, Son, and Spirit, now comes to re-create, to save, to redeem, to make us and all things new.

There's a danger when we talk of creation that it can all sound too nicey-nicey: all things blandly bright and beautiful. Yes, God's world is beautiful, but it's also a mess, a disaster area, a zone of injustice, brutality and ecological ruin. And we are a mess. We are made in the image of God, but that image is spoilt, distorted. As Christians we live in the tension between (on the one hand) celebrating the goodness of God's creation of all things and (on the other hand) knowing what a mess we've made of ourselves and of the world. We have to live in that tension, but we can do so in hope, not in despair, because of the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, God's love made flesh in this world, crucified and risen to bring us back to the God who created us; the good news also of God's Spirit, poured out in the world to recreate all things, to make all things new, ourselves included. So the Gospel reminds us to hold Creation and Cross together in our hearts and minds. God does not just create, but loves the creation; and in Jesus God embraces to the full the cost of that love. As one modern song puts it beautifully: 'Hands that flung stars into space – to cruel nails surrendered...'

Every day, when we look around and see the beauty that surrounds us; and the people we live among, women, men, children, of every race; and all the other wonderful creatures; we can echo words we sang earlier: 'This is my Father's world'. This is the world God has created; the world God loves so much that he sent his Son into it, poured his Spirit out in it; and God calls us to live in this world with both grateful joy and solemn responsibility, looking forward in hope to the day when all things are made new.

 

Summary of Main Points

 

Suggested Questions for Discussion

  1. How do you feel about questions concerning the relationship between scientific and religious explanations for the origins of the world and of human beings? Does this feel like a conflict-field to you, with two worldviews in fundamental tension?
  2. Think about the ideas that:
    ... God created out of nothing ...
    ... the fact that there is anything at all apart from God points to God's generous love ...
    ... the physical world is real and good (even 'very good'!) ...
    How do these traditional Christian beliefs relate to how people tend to think about the world and their lives today? Do you feel that your faith in God as creator gives you something important to share with other people?
  3. What does it mean to you that (a) you are made in the image of God and (b) every other human being is also made in the image of God? How does this comfort you? How does it challenge you?
  4. Reflect on what it means to hold together God as Creator and the love of God revealed in the Cross. It may help here to read from Sunday's Gospel John 1:10-11: 'He (Jesus) was in the world and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not receive him.' In Jesus, God the Creator embraces rejection at the hands of his own creation. Should we think of God as creating in full awareness of the cost of doing so?