Readings
Old Testament – Genesis 1:1–25
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.
Epistle – Revelation 3:14–22
‘And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation: ‘I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. For you say, “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.” You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. I reprove and discipline those whom I love. Be earnest, therefore, and repent. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.’
Gospel – John 1:1–5
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 came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
Sunday, Creationtide 1
We have a new liturgy today – all that means is that we have a new set of words for worship. The pattern remains the same, but our focus is just a bit different, because we have turned to Creation as the symbol through which we understand God approaches us.
As befits the beginning of such a season, our lessons this morning deal with the beginnings of the world. We have the creation story from Genesis. And we have heard from the first chapter of the gospel of St John. However, we have heard from St John the Divine’s book of Revelations as well.
The verse through which all of my thoughts this morning make their way is –
to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation
This verse stands everything we know on its head. The two creation stories we read have to be reconceived through “The Amen” which is “the origin of God’s creation”.
What do I mean by that? Well, I am not too sure. So let’s try to explore this together.
What is creation? Normally, we say that creation is everything around us, the world and everything that is in or on the earth, the skies and the sun and the stars, just as the Genesis reading says. The scientists among us would give a different story, theirs would be “the Big Bang”. The liberal theologians would say that the Genesis story needs to be interpreted in a way that leads to the very truth that the gospel reading exposes,
All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
Whether this is factually or metaphorically true is to be debated, but I want to race to “The Amen” in our third reading which is ‘the origin of God’s creation’. But what is that Amen?
We all know that Amen is a Hebrew word which acts as a rousing affirmation of what has just been said – “So be it!” When the word ‘Amen’ is pronounced it announces a radically clear endorsement of a statement.
How can something which is a conclusion be an origin? How can The Amen be the beginning of everything? This is the paradox of creationtide. We are assembled concentrating on the world and we have already said, “so be it!” Like the whole book of the apocalypse of St John, there are puzzles galore when we look at our place in creation, when we realise just how intimately we are bound up in our environment. But Amen makes sense if we think of creation as the world in which we live and move and have our being, doesn’t it?
I like the German word “Umwelt” to understand environment. They mean the same, but if we parse the word we come up with two parts – “Welt” means the same as the English “world”, and “um” is a word that means “what surrounds”. But I have always had the feeling that “um” is more than merely surrounding. It comes from reading the philosopher who speaks of the Umwelt, as being-in-the-world. This is being-there in a very vague but sensationally very specific way. We can be fully aware and authentic or we can be unconscious of our environment. We can either be a very aware human being or a rock, in tune with everything around us or just a lump without any care towards anything surrounding the space and time we inhabit.
The philosopher asks us to make demands of ourselves, in a way a rock would never do. And so I can understand how The Amen can be “the origin of God’s creation.”
We all know creation is not something like that stone we don’t want to be. Creation is that mysterious “Umwelt” which we enter when we are self-aware, when we are “mindful” to use a very recent trope to make sense of creation.
We need to be aware of creation today just as much as people were aware of the environment millennia ago. When Jesus walked the earth, he was so much more aware of his environment. He spoke in parables and metaphors. His language was full of symbols. And we are only now just catching up with his self awareness. He spoke about the fields and the people in ways that opened up meaning for everyone.
His miracles even called into question the laws of physics in order to serve the purpose of ushering in the Kingdom of God. Amen, we say to that, don’t we? Doesn’t it make sense that The Amen is the origin of God’s creation? We make that radically clear endorsement of ourselves when we proclaim “Let there be …” just like Genesis tells us how God created.
But hold on – creation is not something finite and finished, something completed for all time, is it? Creation is process. And the philosopher has a whole system of process as well. So creation is a living nexus of relationships. And if we follow the thinking of the philosopher, we have to be conscious of that world in which we have been thrown.
Since we find ourselves here in life, with all the complexities entailed, there is moral duty thrust upon us, never mind the care we need to use. Ethics is a way of being in the world. This philosophical enterprise of judging whether we have acted for the best is part and parcel of the complexities of living.
Creation is that process of living with, caring for, being within, everything around us, whether stones or people just like us. Creation is about our moral stance in the world. The Amen demands that of us. The Amen which radically affirms is most definitely the origin.
To call upon the philosopher again just briefly – I am sure you have heard that there are four causes, but I only want to introduce two here today, the first cause and the final cause. These causes relate to how we understand anything, the first means how something comes to be and the final cause means how something comes to complete fruition, its end-point, its, as the French would say, “raison d’etre”. Creation is about these two causes, isn’t it?
Creation is not something done once for all as we normally understand the Genesis story. Creation is not just this stone which seems to have nothing more than its being in itself. Creation is the for something else. Creation is what human being is all about. Homo faciens, the tool-maker, is the encapsulation of creation. There is a purpose to that stone when we are there with it, when we understand our environment.
Human being has to be there, involved, and at one. This is a moral being in the world, not just a physical attendance. There has to be intention to life and there it gets “complicated”. Creation is the where of complexities which the philosopher is so intent on getting to the bottom of, when we say, “We knew that already.” That “So be it!” acknowledges our unconscious understanding of what we come to know about the story we already knew. That may be how to get to grips with the paradox of The Amen as the origin of God’s creation.