Genesis 1:1 - 2:4a "In the Beginning"

         There is a story told about Augustine of Hippo, a fourth century church father, bishop, theologian, and saint.  In the tale, we come across this early Christian at the seashore, having taken a break from writing about the Trinity.

         While walking on the beach, Augustine came across a child with a little pail, who was intently scooping up a bucket full of water out of the ocean, then walking up the beach and dumping it out into the sand, then going back to scoop out another pail of water to pour into the sand, over and over again.

         Augustine asked the child what he was doing, and the little boy explained that he was “emptying the sea out into the sand.”  When the Bishop tried to gently point out the absurd impossibility of this task, the child replied, “Ah, but I will drain the sea before you understand the Trinity.”

         Here in church, we are now one-week post-Pentecost.  Traditionally this particular Sunday is labeled Trinity Sunday – you know, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost – or Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit.

         Trinity Sunday is the only Sunday in the entire church year where we are challenged to reflect on a doctrine developed in the early church rather than on a Biblically based event.  In a way, Trinity Sunday stands alone in the liturgical calendar – not being part of the Pentecost celebration, but also not being part of what we call ordinary time, that is, the weeks following Pentecost.

         Last week, we were introduced to that elusive and hard-to-get-a-handle-on third aspect of the Trinity, namely the Holy Spirit.  Remember?  She showed her most wild and unpredictable self by overwhelming the apostles in Jerusalem with wind and fire.

         This week, in contrast, we will side with St. Augustine.  That is, we will take a step back to get some perspective on this puzzling and frankly mysterious aspect of the threesome and attempt to better understand its role in the doctrine of the Trinity. 

         And I must say that the child emptying buckets of water into the sand is both correct and wise, at least when it comes to me.  I feel wholly inadequate to the task before me.  That little boy would surely drain the sea before I understood the complexities of the Trinity.         

         As I said earlier, the Trinity is a doctrine that is not found in the Bible but rather is the product of long study and contemplation by early church theologians like Augustine.  These church fathers were intent on figuring out once and for all the interrelationship between God the Creator, Jesus the Christ, and that pesky and elusive Holy Spirit that kept cropping up throughout Scripture. 

         However, be assured that this sermon is not going to be a long, involved, and heady dissertation on the three-in-one doctrine.  Rather, we are going to take a closer look at this Spirit piece that tantalized us so last week with its power and capriciousness.  What is it?  What is its purpose?  How did it all begin?

         How did it all begin?  That is always a good place to start.  Begin at the beginning.  Go back to first principles.  That is the advice of both sages and psychoanalysts.  And so…

         In the beginning….In the beginning, God…..In the beginning, God created……In the beginning, the earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters.  Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness.

         And God’s Spirit – the Holy Spirit - brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.  God’s Spirit – the Holy Spirit - hovered over the surface of the waters.

         And God spoke for the very first time, if eternity, if infinity can have a first time.  And God said, “Let there be light.” 

         And the Spirit brooded and hovered, until just over the waters a faint pinkness emerged, then orange, then yellow, and then there was more, much more than inky blackness.  And God the Creator saw that this astounding moment of creation when order first began to seep into the inky blackness of chaos was good, very good – and the hovering, brooding Spirit agreed.  

         And so the earth as we know it began, according to the author of the Book of Genesis.  However, let’s get this straight.  This story of creation found at the very beginning of our Bible is not a scientific treatise.  It is not an account of history, as we understand history.  

         In fact, if you were to continue reading in chapter 2 of Genesis, you would find a second creation story with Adam being formed from a clod of soil and Eve from one of his extra ribs.  You would find an apple, a serpent, and the Garden of Eden.  Our mass market culture, particularly with its current conservative bent, lumps the two stories together, but they really are separate tales, written at separate times and even by separate authors.

         The best way to think about both of these creation stories is as myths – but myths not in the sense of wildly improbably narratives to be dismissed as false, but rather in the very richest sense of the word.  Any Biblical scholar worth his or her salt would say that these stories explaining how the world began are not literally, factually true.  They would say that the earth was not created 6000 years ago, nor was it created in six days.  There were no dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden.  In fact, they would say there was no such literal place as the Garden of Eden. 

         Rather – at some point about 13.7 billion years ago (give or take a few millenia) all that we now know burst into being in a scene of unfathomable power.  Reformed pastor Scott Hoezee puts it this way:  “The universe continues to expand, hurtling ever-deeper into the far reaches of space. For a long time it was an open question as to whether that expansion outward would continue to push the cosmos outward or whether the universe would reach an outer limit and then, rubber band-like, snap back in on itself.

         But a few years back the Hubble Space Telescope happened to snap a picture that indicates that such a re-collapse of the cosmos may never happen. Instead the tremendous power of that original explosion will continue to drive matter outward. Eventually, however, the universe's energy will become too diffuse to sustain life. Suns will flatten and wink out, space will grow colder and colder until finally the ultimate result of that first Big Bang will be a cosmos spread too thin. If so, then the seeds of the universe's end were sown already at its explosive beginning.”  How amazing is the intermingling of science and religion!

         In the beginning, the Spirit hovered, and God created.  In the beginning, God…. The author of our story did not give a whit about getting the literal facts of creation straight, nor did the earliest listeners and readers care either.  This story is not science.  It is not history.  Rather it is poetry, with its own deliberate and predictable rhythm. 

         As blogger Daniel Clendinen wrote, it “doesn't enlighten us about history, cosmology, or science as we understand those disciplines today. (The stories) never intended to do that, and even if that was their intent, their science and history would have been outmoded shortly after the author wrote. Just like our own science of fifty years ago seems outmoded today — and how rudimentary today's science will look in 3,000 years.

           The Hebrew creation poetry elucidates truths that transcend and even undergird science and history. We call these transcendent truths "myths.”  (In short, they harbor a deeper truth. As) GK Chesterton rightly observed, myths “are more than true: not because (for example) they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”  You see, there are many layers of truth.

         Our creation story then is a beautiful statement of faith, one written in a very difficult age – and age when the Israelites were most likely still captive and in exile in Babylon.  Jerusalem had been sacked, their homeland overrun. 

         In those times, everyone believed that the conquering nation was the one with the most powerful god.  Therefore, because they had been defeated once again, questions abounded for the Israelites:  Is our God strong enough to protect us?  Has our God abandoned us?  Should we be worshipping another god?

         Our creation story was written to answer those deep and disturbing questions.  It was written as an alternative to all the other creation stories floating around in the pagan world, creation stories of the great empires and powerful nations. 

         Each one of those stories unapologetically included many gods. The Egyptians had the tales of their sun God, Re, and all his minions.  The Babylonians had their epic, the Enuma Elish, where war-faring gods first created and then tried over and over to destroy humanity, where men and women were constantly caught in the conflicts and disputes of a variety of deities. 

         In a way, then, our author had an ax to grind, an argument to make the popular idea of many gods running the universe.  You see, in our myth, our creation story, there is one God, a God who is powerful beyond measure, a God whose spirit hovers over the inky blackness, and suddenly there is light, a God who creates mountains and streams, who creates every imaginable plant and animal, who creates humanity in the very image of the divine,

and who sees everything – all of it - as good, very good – an original blessing - and the Spirit agreed.

         In the beginning, God created…and the Spirit hovered over the waters of the deep.  “If we in the postmodern world struggle to see truth in those art forms, it is not because Scripture is lying. It is because our post-Enlightenment imaginations are impoverished. To call the creation story true is not to quibble with science; it is to probe deeper than any scientific endeavor can take us. It is to acknowledge who we truly are and where we really come from. It is to affirm, by faith, the reality of a good God, a good world, and a beloved humanity.”  (Debra Thomas)

         In the beginning, God.  In the beginning, God created.  In the beginning, God created, and the Spirit hovered…..

         And the Spirit still hovers.  And God still creates and transforms.  That is what we uphold in the United Church of Christ, our denomination.  God is still speaking; the Spirit is still creating and renewing. 

        There is so much we do not understand about God, about Jesus, about the Spirit.  On this day that we set aside to ponder the Trinity, we cannot help but admit to the smallness of our minds and the shallowness of our understanding.  The child on the beach will indeed empty the ocean onto the sand before we fully understand the Trinity.  There is so much about God that is unknowable.  There is so much that will always be a mystery. 

         But what we do trust is that God is not finished with us yet.  God is still creating, and the Spirit is still hovering. 

         Where there is sorrow, somehow God will transform that emptiness into, if not joy, then pain that is bearable – and the Spirit will hover over the inky blackness of our lives. 

         Where there is despair and nothing but darkness at the end of the tunnel, there in the midst of the abyss, the seeds of hope will be born – and the Spirit will hover over the inky blackness of our lives. 

         Where there are questions with no answers, prayers with no answers that satisfy, there in the midst of souls that seem dead, a shaft of light – a tinge of pink - will emerge – and the Spirit will hover over the inky blackness of our lives – guarding, protecting, warming, embracing, enfolding – until God speaks, “Let there be light.  Let there be pain that is bearable.  Let there be hope.  Let there be life.”

         And that is good – so very good.  And we are blessed – so very blessed.  And the Spirit hovers – still the Spirit hovers. 

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine