Sermon For Ordinary Time 1 Genesis Series

Genesis 1:1-31

My daughter recently had a concert at her school to ring out the end of the school year. It was beautiful, and gave me opportunity to consider the careful nature of such an event. The plan laid forth in the pages written by the composer, the conductor orchestrating and giving order to the piece, the music being created by the many hands to produce poignant, beautiful, harmonious music. The beautiful spinning out of the singing of the spheres, the composition of creation, which flows out from the Father by His Word, the Son, who is the ordering principle, the conductor of the orchestra that is being played by the Spirit, present in all places and playing all parts. Light, and green growth, and the sound of birds, gravity, balance, the tides and the rains, all a system of mysterious beauty that bears the mark of its creator, nascent beauty resting in this existence we find ourselves in. 

The scene opens on the beginning of things, the moment that time itself begins. What existed before then was only God, though even saying “before” takes one out of the eternal state, the existence-beyond-time that is true of God. And there, at the beginning, there has been matter, created substance, God having created it out of nothing, a feat only possible for the one who is eternal, sovereignly powerful, and ruler of all things.

The image is what is called a “surd evil,” the dark, chaotic watery wastelands, “formless and void,” images conjured from the pagan creation myths like the Enuma Elish. In fact, this hints at us right here at the beginning the purpose of this text; it is not to give us a journalistic account of the moment of creation, nor a scientific source for all life, nor a historical account of events like we would find in a modern textbook; the creation narrative of Genesis 1 proclaims that God is the only source of all creation over which he is sovereign. Moses draws from the Sumerian Enuma Elish, the Babylonian Atrahasis, and the Egyptian creation texts, because this text is polemical, taking their familiar images and then toppling the idols, demonstrating that at each moment it is only the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who has created and is ruler over all.

And then, the composer speaks. “Let there be light.” The Word of God, whom we now know to be the Divine Son, the thing which organizes and puts into proper place all that is, ushers forth like the conductor, to achieve what the composer has designed. In this sophisticated, theo-poetic narrative the structure reveals so much of the intended meaning. Each day has a spoken command which is accomplished, a judgment of goodness, and the formation of chronological time. The days then persist in a parallel pattern: the first three see an unformed state turned into a realm (tohu), while the latter three are empty and then filled (bohu). Both cycles move from the heavens to land.

The first day sees the day and night formed, and on the fourth the sun, moon, and stars placed to rule those realms. The second day separates the waters of the sea from the sky, while the fifth then fills those places with birds and fish, told to multiply, the same command given later to humanity on the land. And then on the third day, the land is formed with vegetation, and then filled with all manner of animals, crowned with the creation of humanity on the sixth day. This careful symmetry of structure and gradual building leads to the climactic moment of humanity’s creation, and then the Sabbath.

In the ancient world, all of this happens haphazardly. The land is created because the chaos monster Tiamat is slain and her body thrown into the sea; humanity is made because the gods need someone to feed them. The sun and moon were gods, as were many forms of beasts and sea creatures. But here, all of it, every corner of the cosmos, every part of the earth, every minute detail is performed by the singular orchestra of the Spirit, overseen by the Son who is the Word and in whom it all holds together, composed by the Father whose overflowing love designed to make a people to adopt.

As God has created it, no lesser beings have any part in it. That is actually the significance of the Sabbath; it is not that God needed to rest. It lays a pattern down for us to rest, surely, but more dramatically than that, it shows that when God is finished in his work, the work is done. There is no other contender, no danger, but perfect peace, which is the goal of creation and one to which we will one day be brought. 

Each part is made with its ruling bodies, and over it all, as we will look at in more detail next week, humanity is given regency and authority. God has acted definitively against the primordial chaos, not needing to do battle to overcome it, but merely to speak. And it is this God who remains in authority over this creation, whose word cannot be resisted when it speaks definitively. When we doubt, and fear; when we are anxious, and suffer; when we face the struggle of life whether imposed upon us, or our own creation, we can know that if God has reigned in the cosmic powers, and he lovingly crafted this world for us, then we too will not be left to annihilation. As Bruce Waltke puts it, “God steps creatively into the primordial abyss and darkness to transform it into a magnificent, ordered, and balanced universe. Those who submit themselves to the Creator’s rule are assured that their history will not end in tragic darkness and chaos but will continue in triumphant light and order.”

Genesis 1 is a call to believe not in the forces of nature or lower gods or human force or chance as determining our fates, but that God is the only source of all creation over which he is sovereign, and therefore we have nothing to fear, and him to trust. If you are now in doubt, turn to the God who created all things by the mere power of his spoken will. If you are afraid, turn to the God who has overcome the darkness. If you struggle with the uncertainty that lays ahead of you, trust in the one who brings order to all things. Hear the music, the rolling song of the spheres of the heavens, and trust that the God who has created rules all, has composed and is conducting and playing the marvelous song of history, and will bring you too into lighted rest at the outro of all things. Amen.