“God the Creator” Genesis 1:1-5 March 16, 2015 Do you remember the movie “The Enchanted Cottage?” Robert Young and Dorothy Mcquire movie stared in it. It was produced at the end of World War II. A pilot (Robert Young) had been shot down and injured. He was disfigured and alienated from life. He withdrew from society and everything that he knew. He found himself in a cottage in a little town. A young woman (Dorothy Mcquire) who had physical problems worked at the cottage. These two were fearful, hurting, broken, isolated people. A relationship developed between them, they married and moved into That little cottage. Something miraculous began to happen. They invited a close friend who happened to be blind to their cottage. The video clip captures the moment the injured pilot and his love shared all the things that had happened to them with their friend. The couple shared that he did not seem to be disfigured anymore. Her physical problems seemed to be gone. They felt a sense of vitality, a love of life, a desire to reach out. With the tricks of film making, the audience could see that Robert Young and Dorothy Mcquire had not changed. They still had the problems that they came into the relationship with. It was out of the magic of love, out of their relationship nurtured in the cottage that their lives were made whole. I would describe the theme of this movie to be the tragic transfigured. That is exactly what we are talking about today in our sermon title “God the Creator”. It is the heart of our narrative out of the Old Testament. “In the beginning God. . . .” speaks of the void transfigured. The first verse is the summation of the entire chapter of Genesis. It is the quintessence of the Old Testament. “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth,” Sums up everything that we as Christians believe about God. This was written by the priests of Israel. We think of it as being the ancient writings, the oldest of sacred traditions. Some bible students think it might have been written 500 years before Christ. This may have been one of the last parts of the Old Testament to be written. It was not simply current or popular thought. It was the distillation of the ancient material that had been reflected on for over a thousand years. Our Bible’s versus might be a historical rear-view mirror. It is Israel’s attempt to put into human perspective the great story of creation: God acting in our world. We will miss the true meaning text unless we see Israel’s attempt in this creation story to tie two great themes together: God’s creative power and God’s act of salvation. Neither God’s creation of life nor God’s salvation of life stands alone. God created both life and love. “in the beginning” speaks of God’s creative “word” of love. It is that “word” which called men and women to life itself. That same “word” is calling each of us to love. That “word” transfigures the tragic: cosmic and personal. The children of Israel had seen God’s presence. They had heard the voice of God through Moses who called them out of Egypt. They had followed God through the desert. God ushered them into a land that was dripping with milk and honey. God continued to create and recreate in their lives. Belief in God was not a proposition. It was not something to which they simply gave their assented. Belief was something they felt was self-evident to every thinking person. It was more the end of the discussion than the beginning. One of the criticisms of belief is that faith and religion arises out of a primitive people’s attempt to explain mysterious events or things they do not understand. Many religions attribute a mysterious power to finite things such as the stars. The Christian faith does not try to explain the mysterious by a finite object. The Christian holds that everything which is exists as the result of one force which is ultimately beyond the grasp of our knowledge. The God we believe in cannot be held in our hand nor set up on a pedestal. The God we believe in is the creator of everything we experience. There are other stories of creation. Babylonia, India, and Egypt all had their stories. In each of these a god or gods came in and created some kind of order out of chaos. But there are some differences between what the Christian God has done and what the other gods have done. The other gods came and found chaos and created order out of it. In some cases the god had to fight chaos. The God of the Christian, the God of the Jew came into a void and out of that void called forth even the chaos and set that chaos within order. Israel did not want to announce to the world the beginning of a quaint science. They wanted to proclaim to the world that among the tragedies of everything we see God is still in our midst, creating and recreating. Just as God called forth life he calls forth love again and again in people’s lives. God not only created everything that is, but is constantly in the future, creating again and again. We don’t need a prime mover in order to believe that this world was created by God. We don’t need to believe that there was a first cause. We don’t need to look for a cosmic watchmaker. We don’t need to believe that this world was created by God because there are “oughts” in it. That the very existence of those “oughts” call us forth to respond. Belief in God the creator can only come as we see this creative power of God again and again taking the tragedies of life in our human nature and bringing them forth reconciled. God calling forth love, calling forth wholeness and making a difference in people’s lives. That is what we need in order to believe. It is only then that redemption takes form out of the void. It is only then that the chaos of the human heart is transfigured. Freud said love cannot remove human need. He said love was too demanding for humanity. Freud is right in that he sees very clearly the need we have for love. Freud’s error is in the fact that he had never felt the power of this creative God. A God who called forth life from the void and who continues to call forth love out of life. It is only through love that the human need can be touched and transfigured. Winthrop Knowlton, in his book, Family Album, sees deeply into the human void. Peter, his main character, constantly recounts stories that his mother told him. He relives memories that he has of his childhood. The power of this book is not found in his attempt to recapture the joys of childhood. The power is not simply trying to recapture the smells, the sights, and the sounds of days gone by. Peter says that it was not the memories that he wanted so desperately to call forth, but rather that which “was not there at all; words never spoken, arms never thrown open, and the promise, never fulfilled, of an end to bitter and bewildering quarrels.” Perhaps some of us have memories like this. I recall the story of a young woman recounting her memories of her younger life. She could remember trying to crawl upon her mother’s lap. But her mother would drop her knees so that the little girl would slide off. She was trying desperately to reach out and to be loved: feeling all the while that she was being pushed away. Only God’s creative “word” of love can touch a need so deep. I was moved deeply by the Up With People song written from the musings of astronaut Neil Armstrong. During one of the lunar landings, he glimpsed the world below. I think he heard the “word” of God calling once more for the transfiguration of the tragic. He was moved to think of how the world could be; of what kind of “word” God might be speaking into our world. Perhaps The songwriter caught the sense of that experience. The sun is setting on the Pacific. They are just getting up in Rome. I can’t see the lights of my city, but all that I see is home. I see the world without any boarders, Without any fighting, without any fear. So, captain, give the order. Were crossing into the next frontier. This is the response we must make if we are to take seriously the proposition that we believe in God the creator. It cannot be something that harkens back only to the primeval beginnings. It must be something that is alive. It must be what we feel and sense today. It must be a word of love and creation that stretches from the very beginning all the way to today and beyond. So, captain, give the order. We are crossing into the next frontier. Amen.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 05:54:11 +0000
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