Point of Origin
Sermon
Light in the Land of Shadows
Cycle B Sermons for Advent, Christmas, And Epiphany, First Lesson Texts
Object:
The beginning of the world's story is our story. This magisterial word "create" suggests no point of origin other than God. This creation is an absolute new beginning which carries profound implications for what it means to be a human being. For the universe and humankind to be created by God demonstrates the surprising and uncontrollable power of God. For humankind to be created in the image of God indicates a uniqueness that leads to a significant purpose in life.
Despite the first five verses of the Bible being among the best known in all of scripture, their significance is often overlooked. The perspective that the universe and human beings are created sets the biblical perspective apart from other, competing perspectives in life.
Consider other perspectives of human development which often translate into practical consequences. The way we theorize about our origin and purpose often shapes the way we treat others. If we view human beings solely as highly-developed animals, we can find much to back up our claim. Certainly a biological or anthropological perspective has the weight of research behind it. We humans, indeed, still share 98 percent of our genes with chimps. We are indebted to Homo erectus as our Homo sapien ancestor. Perhaps a magic twist in 0.1 percent of our genes within the past 60,000 years did create the anatomical basis for spoken complex language. Certainly as long ago as Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man, it has been pointed out that we are similar to other animals in being subject to the same laws of development from primitive forms in nature, passing on variations by inheritance from individual to individual, reproducing in greater numbers than can survive, and possessing body parts we no longer use such as a tail bone to carry a tail, an appendix to store food when we ate only plants, and wisdom teeth with which to crush bones.1 If we believe that humankind is solely a part of nature, a species of animal and nothing more, then we are likely to treat the people we encounter as highly-developed animals. Those we like we view as pets. If they love us and remain faithful to us, we cuddle them as we would any friendly and lovable dog or cat. We will bring them into our household circle of friendship and even try to curry the favor of others as we, too, seek to be friendly animals. To those who are unfriendly, we act as if they are a swarm of flies at a picnic or a beast of burden. We ask our school teachers, our police, and our courts to protect us from these pests. We organize our labor force and our economy to enable us to take advantage of these beasts of burden, paying them lower wages and creating social programs to see that they are fed, watered, and sheltered. While all this is quite unconscious, it still reflects an understanding of humankind as animal: pets, pests, and beasts of burden. That is a perspective upheld by many.
Other thinkers view the human being as simply a unique creature that knows it's going to die. If, indeed, we are the only animal that knows it's going to die, what value is love, if we only return to common clay? The existentialist perspective raises genuine questions about the meaninglessness of life. If life ends for us as individuals and eventually for the cosmic scheme, why bother? Why marry? Your spouse is going to die anyway! Why even bother to preach this sermon? All of you are going to die anyway! We are helpless victims. The older we get the more aware we become of the impending end. Consequently, perhaps the best we can hope for is existence today as we eat, drink, and be merry and a painless suicide tomorrow when self-consciousness and good health begin to wane. The human being as a helpless victim of life's forces is a perspective upheld by many.
Finally, consider the perspective that the human being is more like a machine, a complicated but efficient machine. This perspective animates education and industry. In a computer age we tend to view people as data. This perspective doesn't pay much attention to "feelings" as long as the machine produces the goods. As long as the machine functions well it gets rewarded with merit raises and job security in the business world and good grades in the educational institution. We don't hand out bonuses or cum laude honors based on "feelings." When the machine becomes older or weaker and falls behind in production or starts making poor grades, we try to repair it. Retraining efforts, continuing education courses, tutoring centers, counseling agencies, and quotas abound. We even have affirmative action programs to make certain every machine gets its chance to perform or be repaired. When the machine stops going altogether and stops performing, we get rid of it, flunk it out of the institution, or dispose of it in some suitable way in a retirement center on the edge of town. That the human being is a machine is a perspective upheld by many.
The first chapter of Genesis is an irreplaceable portion of scripture because it gives us an analysis of the human predicament. It maintains that the universe and the humans within it were created by God. It upholds the goodness of this creation and proclaims a vision that all human beings, the ones we see on the street and ones we never see, whether in hospitals or prisons, are something like God. If we hadn't heard this scripture so many times and thought about it so little, we would see how blasphemous it sounds against other practical perspectives of life.
The lectionary text is more than God bringing order out of a surging chaos. It is more than the wind (ruah) which gives life and restrains the waters. It is more than the voice of a ruler on a throne who speaks in a sovereign voice. It is more than a God who calls into existence things that do not exist. It is a new beginning, a new perspective which continues to be blasphemous. God created! The order and the goodness presented in the first five verses moves symmetrically toward a grand climax. The order in the universe finds its climax in the freedom bestowed on human life.
The good priests in Babylon who compiled the account with striking resemblances to the Babylonian story of creation, the Enuma elish, moved beyond the details of Babylonian order to view humans not as slaves or machines, not as unique creatures, not as animals, but as very "images of God." Genesis 1 defines an element of goodness and freedom. The "images of God" are called upon to exercise dominion and care and finish off the creation.
That is the biblical perspective: the human is a created co-creator. The human is no pet, no pest, no beast of burden, no machine, no victim. The human being is a co-creator in a created universe.
The human self is holy. It lives in dialogue with its world, its creator, its fellow humans.2 It shares in creation. It has the freedom to create its own history. Among all the animals it is most helpless and unfinished at birth. It creates things from the materials of its universe, from the words you read to the paper on which it is printed. It creates time through memory and imagination. And it co-creates itself. It overcomes handicaps and blows great opportunities. For seven or eight hours each night it dies through sleep and must rise the next morning to create again.
Each night you and I die. And each morning you and I rise from the dead to create, almost literally. We exist, to be certain, but as for the world we live in, our family and friends, the work we are committed to -- we are dead for a while. Then, without even a hallelujah chorus, we wake up in the morning.
Each day we all enact the familiar biblical metaphor of death and creation, of sleeping and waking. Each year we all enact the metaphor of creation, of standing at bay the chaos of past experience and bringing to birth a new historical recognition. January is the time when we mark a new beginning, a new creation, on our calendar-conscious minds.
Both the calendar and the Genesis 1 text call us to reflect on this strange Christian term, "epiphany." The word means "to make known." Essentially, it's when something is recognized for what it is. When the wise men saw Jesus and knew what he looked like, that was an epiphany. Actually, Jesus was not the Messiah or the Savior until somebody recognized him as the Messiah. Like in sleep, it's perfectly possible to be unaware of what's going on around you. Each year Epiphany is celebrated on January 6. It's the time after Christ's birth when people recognize him not as the babe in a manger, but as the Lamb of God. Only when people recognize Jesus as the One who can take away the sin and despair of the world does Christmas mean anything.
A student made his first A in a course in graduate school. The school was on a British-type system. It had a reading period in January for two weeks and then students took exams. After the exams, everyone took off for home or snow skiing or warmer climates. When students turned in an exam, they gave the professor a stamped, self-addressed postcard. The professor would mail the grade. The day before this student was to leave for home, he received the postcard in his dormitory mailbox. It said A. He was an A student. Well, actually he wasn't quite. You see, all the others had departed on their trips. As the dormitory proctor, he had to stay there and lock up. There wasn't anyone for him to show his postcard. He was not recognized yet. He was a guy from South Carolina standing in the middle of a dormitory in Massachusetts with a postcard in his hand. Consequently, he caught a bus to Arlington, Massachusetts, where he was on the staff of the Park Avenue Church. He went into Park Florist and showed the card to the owner. "Wonderful," the owner exclaimed, as he showed the card to his daughters. Then he pulled in to visit the owner of the funeral home. And finally, when a friend came in to the local bank to handle the now mangled card, he was really an A student. After the hugs, he felt for the first time like an A student. It doesn't matter what you are if other people don't recognize you for it.
This is a good time for Epiphany -- for recognition. January is when we put away our Christmas decorations. A few more days and the darkness of winter will replace the bright candles which glistened brightly in our windows. It is now that the recognition of the light that shone in Bethlehem must take place. It is now that we behold the promises of the future, of new beginnings.
It is now that we must recognize who we are and what we are about as human beings. It is now that "God created" beckons us into an awareness of what we could become through Jesus Christ.
In 1931, the National Broadcasting Company invited the great musician and conductor Arturo Toscanini to conduct a concert tour of Latin America. The orchestra for the tour was made up of select professional musicians from around the United States.
The group came together on a hot and humid afternoon for their first rehearsal. They began rehearsing Beethoven's Sixth Symphony in a rehearsal hall that was not air-conditioned. These professional musicians had played the piece so many times that they could almost play it from memory. They knew exactly when to come in and when to rest. Usually during rehearsals they could get up and go out for a smoke or a soft drink and still be back in their places in time to play their parts.
If you've ever been to initial rehearsals for a Broadway play, a movie, a musical, or a great symphony, it's somewhat disappointing to be backstage. A card game is going on in one corner. The lead actor is in a room watching the New York Mets. People come running up the steps with a sandwich in hand, throw it in the trash at full gallop, and walk in on cue to give a dramatic performance in their sweatshirt and blue jeans. These people are pros. They can lay down their cards in a gin rummy game and rush out and play a torrid love scene. They can turn it on and off in an instant. That's why they are called professionals.
But something happened that day when Toscanini began to direct. Everyone could sense it. By the end of the first movement no one was daydreaming. Each person was intent on the music. They played it flawlessly. At the end of the final movement the maestro put down his baton. The members of the orchestra rose to their feet in applause. Toscanini stood there until they ceased. Then he said, "That was not Toscanini. That was Beethoven. You just never heard him before."3
Perhaps you and I are so familiar with the style and characters of the Genesis 1 account of creation that we can almost recite it from memory. Perhaps these first five verses of the Bible have been subject to more minute examination than any other opening verse of any book, religious or secular. But just maybe a recognition will take place in our lives this year. "In the beginning God created...."
The chapter which follows those words is not a scientific attempt to answer questions as to how life got going. The chapter is not a repudiation of the sexist passages in the other Genesis creation story of Adam and Eve which some have used to demean women. The chapter is not even just a radical break with myths in other world religions which put all the real action with the gods and goddesses. No, the chapter is a statement which governs how we relate to one another today. It is a theological statement about what it means to be a human being.
"In the beginning God created ... it was good." Those are not the words of this preacher. They are not the words of the priests in Babylon who compiled them. That's Word from God. And perhaps we need to recognize that we just never heard God before in those words. So be it!
____________
1. James Rachels, Created From Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
2. See Reinhold Niebuhr, The Self and the Dramas of History (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1955), especially pp. 3-5.
3. Thanks to Charles Carter, Forest Hills Presbyterian Church, High Point, North Carolina, for calling my attention to this story told by James Harnish in an article, "What Will You Do With King Jesus?"
Despite the first five verses of the Bible being among the best known in all of scripture, their significance is often overlooked. The perspective that the universe and human beings are created sets the biblical perspective apart from other, competing perspectives in life.
Consider other perspectives of human development which often translate into practical consequences. The way we theorize about our origin and purpose often shapes the way we treat others. If we view human beings solely as highly-developed animals, we can find much to back up our claim. Certainly a biological or anthropological perspective has the weight of research behind it. We humans, indeed, still share 98 percent of our genes with chimps. We are indebted to Homo erectus as our Homo sapien ancestor. Perhaps a magic twist in 0.1 percent of our genes within the past 60,000 years did create the anatomical basis for spoken complex language. Certainly as long ago as Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man, it has been pointed out that we are similar to other animals in being subject to the same laws of development from primitive forms in nature, passing on variations by inheritance from individual to individual, reproducing in greater numbers than can survive, and possessing body parts we no longer use such as a tail bone to carry a tail, an appendix to store food when we ate only plants, and wisdom teeth with which to crush bones.1 If we believe that humankind is solely a part of nature, a species of animal and nothing more, then we are likely to treat the people we encounter as highly-developed animals. Those we like we view as pets. If they love us and remain faithful to us, we cuddle them as we would any friendly and lovable dog or cat. We will bring them into our household circle of friendship and even try to curry the favor of others as we, too, seek to be friendly animals. To those who are unfriendly, we act as if they are a swarm of flies at a picnic or a beast of burden. We ask our school teachers, our police, and our courts to protect us from these pests. We organize our labor force and our economy to enable us to take advantage of these beasts of burden, paying them lower wages and creating social programs to see that they are fed, watered, and sheltered. While all this is quite unconscious, it still reflects an understanding of humankind as animal: pets, pests, and beasts of burden. That is a perspective upheld by many.
Other thinkers view the human being as simply a unique creature that knows it's going to die. If, indeed, we are the only animal that knows it's going to die, what value is love, if we only return to common clay? The existentialist perspective raises genuine questions about the meaninglessness of life. If life ends for us as individuals and eventually for the cosmic scheme, why bother? Why marry? Your spouse is going to die anyway! Why even bother to preach this sermon? All of you are going to die anyway! We are helpless victims. The older we get the more aware we become of the impending end. Consequently, perhaps the best we can hope for is existence today as we eat, drink, and be merry and a painless suicide tomorrow when self-consciousness and good health begin to wane. The human being as a helpless victim of life's forces is a perspective upheld by many.
Finally, consider the perspective that the human being is more like a machine, a complicated but efficient machine. This perspective animates education and industry. In a computer age we tend to view people as data. This perspective doesn't pay much attention to "feelings" as long as the machine produces the goods. As long as the machine functions well it gets rewarded with merit raises and job security in the business world and good grades in the educational institution. We don't hand out bonuses or cum laude honors based on "feelings." When the machine becomes older or weaker and falls behind in production or starts making poor grades, we try to repair it. Retraining efforts, continuing education courses, tutoring centers, counseling agencies, and quotas abound. We even have affirmative action programs to make certain every machine gets its chance to perform or be repaired. When the machine stops going altogether and stops performing, we get rid of it, flunk it out of the institution, or dispose of it in some suitable way in a retirement center on the edge of town. That the human being is a machine is a perspective upheld by many.
The first chapter of Genesis is an irreplaceable portion of scripture because it gives us an analysis of the human predicament. It maintains that the universe and the humans within it were created by God. It upholds the goodness of this creation and proclaims a vision that all human beings, the ones we see on the street and ones we never see, whether in hospitals or prisons, are something like God. If we hadn't heard this scripture so many times and thought about it so little, we would see how blasphemous it sounds against other practical perspectives of life.
The lectionary text is more than God bringing order out of a surging chaos. It is more than the wind (ruah) which gives life and restrains the waters. It is more than the voice of a ruler on a throne who speaks in a sovereign voice. It is more than a God who calls into existence things that do not exist. It is a new beginning, a new perspective which continues to be blasphemous. God created! The order and the goodness presented in the first five verses moves symmetrically toward a grand climax. The order in the universe finds its climax in the freedom bestowed on human life.
The good priests in Babylon who compiled the account with striking resemblances to the Babylonian story of creation, the Enuma elish, moved beyond the details of Babylonian order to view humans not as slaves or machines, not as unique creatures, not as animals, but as very "images of God." Genesis 1 defines an element of goodness and freedom. The "images of God" are called upon to exercise dominion and care and finish off the creation.
That is the biblical perspective: the human is a created co-creator. The human is no pet, no pest, no beast of burden, no machine, no victim. The human being is a co-creator in a created universe.
The human self is holy. It lives in dialogue with its world, its creator, its fellow humans.2 It shares in creation. It has the freedom to create its own history. Among all the animals it is most helpless and unfinished at birth. It creates things from the materials of its universe, from the words you read to the paper on which it is printed. It creates time through memory and imagination. And it co-creates itself. It overcomes handicaps and blows great opportunities. For seven or eight hours each night it dies through sleep and must rise the next morning to create again.
Each night you and I die. And each morning you and I rise from the dead to create, almost literally. We exist, to be certain, but as for the world we live in, our family and friends, the work we are committed to -- we are dead for a while. Then, without even a hallelujah chorus, we wake up in the morning.
Each day we all enact the familiar biblical metaphor of death and creation, of sleeping and waking. Each year we all enact the metaphor of creation, of standing at bay the chaos of past experience and bringing to birth a new historical recognition. January is the time when we mark a new beginning, a new creation, on our calendar-conscious minds.
Both the calendar and the Genesis 1 text call us to reflect on this strange Christian term, "epiphany." The word means "to make known." Essentially, it's when something is recognized for what it is. When the wise men saw Jesus and knew what he looked like, that was an epiphany. Actually, Jesus was not the Messiah or the Savior until somebody recognized him as the Messiah. Like in sleep, it's perfectly possible to be unaware of what's going on around you. Each year Epiphany is celebrated on January 6. It's the time after Christ's birth when people recognize him not as the babe in a manger, but as the Lamb of God. Only when people recognize Jesus as the One who can take away the sin and despair of the world does Christmas mean anything.
A student made his first A in a course in graduate school. The school was on a British-type system. It had a reading period in January for two weeks and then students took exams. After the exams, everyone took off for home or snow skiing or warmer climates. When students turned in an exam, they gave the professor a stamped, self-addressed postcard. The professor would mail the grade. The day before this student was to leave for home, he received the postcard in his dormitory mailbox. It said A. He was an A student. Well, actually he wasn't quite. You see, all the others had departed on their trips. As the dormitory proctor, he had to stay there and lock up. There wasn't anyone for him to show his postcard. He was not recognized yet. He was a guy from South Carolina standing in the middle of a dormitory in Massachusetts with a postcard in his hand. Consequently, he caught a bus to Arlington, Massachusetts, where he was on the staff of the Park Avenue Church. He went into Park Florist and showed the card to the owner. "Wonderful," the owner exclaimed, as he showed the card to his daughters. Then he pulled in to visit the owner of the funeral home. And finally, when a friend came in to the local bank to handle the now mangled card, he was really an A student. After the hugs, he felt for the first time like an A student. It doesn't matter what you are if other people don't recognize you for it.
This is a good time for Epiphany -- for recognition. January is when we put away our Christmas decorations. A few more days and the darkness of winter will replace the bright candles which glistened brightly in our windows. It is now that the recognition of the light that shone in Bethlehem must take place. It is now that we behold the promises of the future, of new beginnings.
It is now that we must recognize who we are and what we are about as human beings. It is now that "God created" beckons us into an awareness of what we could become through Jesus Christ.
In 1931, the National Broadcasting Company invited the great musician and conductor Arturo Toscanini to conduct a concert tour of Latin America. The orchestra for the tour was made up of select professional musicians from around the United States.
The group came together on a hot and humid afternoon for their first rehearsal. They began rehearsing Beethoven's Sixth Symphony in a rehearsal hall that was not air-conditioned. These professional musicians had played the piece so many times that they could almost play it from memory. They knew exactly when to come in and when to rest. Usually during rehearsals they could get up and go out for a smoke or a soft drink and still be back in their places in time to play their parts.
If you've ever been to initial rehearsals for a Broadway play, a movie, a musical, or a great symphony, it's somewhat disappointing to be backstage. A card game is going on in one corner. The lead actor is in a room watching the New York Mets. People come running up the steps with a sandwich in hand, throw it in the trash at full gallop, and walk in on cue to give a dramatic performance in their sweatshirt and blue jeans. These people are pros. They can lay down their cards in a gin rummy game and rush out and play a torrid love scene. They can turn it on and off in an instant. That's why they are called professionals.
But something happened that day when Toscanini began to direct. Everyone could sense it. By the end of the first movement no one was daydreaming. Each person was intent on the music. They played it flawlessly. At the end of the final movement the maestro put down his baton. The members of the orchestra rose to their feet in applause. Toscanini stood there until they ceased. Then he said, "That was not Toscanini. That was Beethoven. You just never heard him before."3
Perhaps you and I are so familiar with the style and characters of the Genesis 1 account of creation that we can almost recite it from memory. Perhaps these first five verses of the Bible have been subject to more minute examination than any other opening verse of any book, religious or secular. But just maybe a recognition will take place in our lives this year. "In the beginning God created...."
The chapter which follows those words is not a scientific attempt to answer questions as to how life got going. The chapter is not a repudiation of the sexist passages in the other Genesis creation story of Adam and Eve which some have used to demean women. The chapter is not even just a radical break with myths in other world religions which put all the real action with the gods and goddesses. No, the chapter is a statement which governs how we relate to one another today. It is a theological statement about what it means to be a human being.
"In the beginning God created ... it was good." Those are not the words of this preacher. They are not the words of the priests in Babylon who compiled them. That's Word from God. And perhaps we need to recognize that we just never heard God before in those words. So be it!
____________
1. James Rachels, Created From Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
2. See Reinhold Niebuhr, The Self and the Dramas of History (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1955), especially pp. 3-5.
3. Thanks to Charles Carter, Forest Hills Presbyterian Church, High Point, North Carolina, for calling my attention to this story told by James Harnish in an article, "What Will You Do With King Jesus?"
