The Story of Ourselves

 

Hello again! I've been away for two Sundays enjoying time in France. A post on that later. 

While I was there, it gave me time to rest, relax, and reconnect with nature. My wife's family's home is in a very rural part of the Pyrenees. Day time was filled with the sound of insects, birds and cow bells from the nearby pasture. Night time gave me the chance to see the stars in brighter array than when I am at home in Florida. 

And all of it helped feed me as I thought about our First Creation story slated for the Sunday when I got home. 

Text: Genesis 1:1-2:1a

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I love music.

I can’t play an instrument to save my life, but I enjoy listening to others play.

And as I have gotten older…I have come to appreciate the classics.

Not Jimi Hendrix, but Joseph Haydn.

Particularly Haydn’s masterpiece called “The Creation.”

I first heard this piece about ten years ago when I attended a concert at the Bradfordville Baptist Church in Tallahassee.

For about five minutes… the orchestra plays a through an overture in a minor key that rises with some dramatic punctuations of strings…woodwinds…and brass.

Then it drops to almost a near silence.

We hear a baritone voice sing out…

“In the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth…”

This baritone continues singing a capella…with the occasional punctuation by the orchestra…going lower and lower to match the darkness on the face of the deep.

Then the chorus of sopranos, altos and tenors joins in.

Their multitude of voices become the music of the Spirit moving over the face of the water of this formless void.

And in a quiet staccato they sing:

“And God said, ‘Let there be light.’”

And then…in an explosion of all the instruments and voices…the answer comes

“And there was LIGHT!!!”

The orchestra blasts out an exuberant interlude as we progress along with the singing of creation.

I highly recommend looking up this music… whether you’re someone who likes the classics or not.

It’s a beautiful way to capture the poetry of this opening to our Scriptures and adds an aural dimension to get that sense of what a Trinitarian God might sound like in our ears.

One voice… with many notes and ranges.

This is my best way of describing the Trinity.

Too many people have tried to come up with analogies for explaining the Trinity…like the one about St. Patrick and the three-leaf clover.

But I think obsessing over this doctrine…that really came about as a church festive date in the 14^th century… gets in the way of us having what I think is really supposed to be more of an experience of God than an intellectual argument about God.

And perhaps that’s why our diviners of the lectionary decided that Trinity Sunday is the perfect time to get us back to the beginning and hearing this opening chapter of Genesis.

Because it places us with God… the Trinitarian God…in the act of creation…as it says… in the beginning.

We’re invited into an experience of God… the creator, redeemer, and sustainer… that is all-encompassing.

It shows us that for God… the very essence of our being is the earth.

Because let’s face it: we…the human race… aren’t the beginning of this story.

God didn’t start with creating people… or nations…or even animals.

Out of this formless void of nothingness …God’s spirit moves as a wind…like that mighty wind we heard about at Pentecost last week…a breath blowing  over this vast expanse of what is called “earth”.

God issues the command to have light as a contemporary to darkness.

And… just as Haydn’s orchestration illustrates…it’s an explosion of wonder.

I’ve always loved this first creation story from Genesis… and yes: there are two: the other one is Adam and Eve.

I love it because of how it attempts to tell the story of the world.

An understanding of how we came to know and see…and touch…and smell… all that has come into being.

There are many other creation stories from other cultures as well… each of them a noble human effort to explain where in the heck did this world come from and how did we come to be part of it.

It’s in our human nature to tell stories like this.

I also love it for what it says about God: God is a creator… a cultivator… an artist and… in many respects… a hopeless romantic.

All of what God brings forth is good.

Once God has finished…there is still time to enjoy and delight in the work done in creation.

And perhaps that’s really the most appropriate way for us to mark Trinity Sunday.

Instead of trying to find some rationale for a belief that God can exist as one in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we might instead sit with this amazing and beautiful telling of this creation story and contemplate the meaning of a God who labored with such love to make all of this that surrounds us…including us…and be like our psalmist…taking note of the wonder of God’s works.

Spending time in France with my wife’s family at their home in the country gave me many hours of quiet to take in the sound of the wind blowing through tall grasses…and cows with their bells clanging in what at times sounded like some sort of Buddhist retreat.

Walking along the roadside…I could see little dots of red wild strawberries…ripe and ready for eating.

Not all nature is friendly.

When I stupidly pushed aside a stinging nettle branch in the driveway… my mother-in-law took me back outside and showed me the broadleaf plantain…not like the fruit, but a Greenleaf herb that grows wild in Europe…that had the medicinal benefit of relieving the throbbing pain in my fingers from touching the nettle.

Even when nature produces a villainous plant like the nettle… there is an equal remedy growing only feet away… and it was good!

(By the way…I’ve been told that nettles have good qualities, too. But I’m a little more cautious about that plant.)

All the goodness in this creation story culminates in the last of God’s creative works.

God…the “They”… the plural pronoun God “Elohim” in the Hebrew… brings forth humans in God’s image.

God is both male and female…and every other conception in-between. God is both flesh in Jesus and God is Spirit in that flaming breath that was there at the beginning.

Again…God is an all encompassing in this creative work.

God declares humankind to be good.

So good…that God entrusts humanity with the important task of having dominion over all the rest of creation.

In fact…as the story tells us… God blessed us with this opportunity to enjoy the earth and all that was brought forth from it.

It’s in our second creation story… where Adam and Eve eat of that one tree in the Garden of Eden…that we get the idea that we might be created for good…we might have access to all the good things… and yet we will still always find a way to get it wrong.

And we come back to the nettle plant.

We have those good qualities and we can be good.

But we also prick and hurt one another.

This happens when we make the mistake of centering ourselves in the creation story.

We forget that while we have dominion over all things in creation… we are not separate from it or each other.

We are made of the same dust of the earth…that is in our plants, birds, fish, and animals.

Seriously… we are only some variation of DNA strands apart from all the rest of creation!

We need to remember that the story we tell about ourselves is one that puts us on a continuum of God’s creative action.

And it is God’s creation, not our own.

Fortunately… we have the reminder from Jesus that we are not alone.

We have the promise from our Gospel that in all that we do… we can look to Jesus to be alongside us… and serving as the guide who encourages us to remember who we are created to be.

And it is good.

In the name of God… F/S/HS.