If
you even only half-listened to the Scripture reading because you have heard it
so many times before, you know that, in the beginning, in the very beginning,
it was good. It was all good. It was a gift. That is the fundamental truth of
this first creation story in our Bible.
It is not, in my humble opinion and according to all reputable Biblical
scholars, that God did it all in six days some 6000 years ago. That
being said, here is a paraphrase I found this week of those first few verses in
the Biblical Book of Genesis:
“In the beginning
was the gift.
And the gift was
with God and the gift was God.
And the gift came
and set its tent among us,
first in the form
of a fireball
that burned
unabated for 750,000 years
and cooked in its
immensely hot oven
hadrons and
leptons.
These gifts found a
modicum of stability,
enough to give
birth to the first atomic creatures,
hydrogen and
helium.
A billion years of
stewing and stirring
and the gifts of
hydrogen and helium
birthed galaxies -
spinning, whirling, alive galaxies
created trillions
of stars,
lights in the
heavens and cosmic furnaces
that made more
gifts
through violent
explosions of vast supernovas
burning bright with
the glow
of more than a
billion stars.
Gifts upon gifts,
gifts birthing gifts, gifts exploding,
gifts imploding,
gifts of light, gifts of darkness.
Cosmic gifts and
subatomic gifts.
All drifting and
swirling, being born and dying,
in some vast secret
of a plan.
Which was also a
gift.
One of these
supernova gifts exploded in a special manner
sending a unique
gift to the universe,
which later-coming
creatures would one day call
earth,
their home.”
In
that first creation story in Genesis, we are told six times that it was all
good – a gift. The blinding light was
good. The earth in every conceivable way was good. The plants that blossomed and all the
vegetation that grew on the earth were good.
The sun, the moon, and the stars that exploded in the heavens were
good. The birds and all manner of fish
were good. The animals – domestic and
wild – were good. And the humans that were
created in the image of their Creator?
Not only were they good, they were blessed.
And
yet, in the long history of the Christian Church, it has chosen to focus
instead on a literal reading of the other creation story in the Bible. It is like the first chapter or so of Genesis
never existed. Down through the ages, the
Church has been quite adamantly focussed instead on the story of Adam and Eve
in the Garden of Eden and the subsequent story of the fall.
I do not know why except that St. Augustine in
the fifth century made a very convincing case for the fall from grace, pointing
to banishment from the garden paradise as the reason for the world’s terrible
consequences – everything from snakes having to crawl on the ground to pain in
childbirth to the expectation of a life of hard labor –
but most of all condemning all humanity to
the doctrine of original sin. And all as
a result of a clearly mythological incident that involved a serpent that wound
itself around the tree branch in front of Eve and offered that apple that she
and Adam nibbled on.
And
so, even today we find that much of our Christian tradition and doctrine is
founded on a belief in our separation from God, in our inevitable flawed
nature, and in our inability to do anything good. In short, we are taught that we are born with
a defect, with a very big problem, one that is nestled right there in our
DNA.
Any
of you who grew up Catholic might resonate with what Elizabeth Jarrett Andrews
wrote in her blog, “ I
understood myself to be fundamentally wrong, and faith was the antidote. Every
time I screwed up, deliberately hurting my boyfriend, turning my back on a
stranger in need, lying to my parents, my ‘sin’ was a guilt-soaked reminder of
my hidden, awful nature.” And she is not
even Catholic. She is a Methodist!
This
doctrine of original sin, this idea of our fundamental wrongness, that
something within our nature is – and always will be – contrary to God - is
tragic really –
and has led many who claim to be Christian
to live in condemnation and judgment of others and in guilt toward
themselves. It has also left us
homophobic and xenophobic among other phobias.
Christianity
is the only one of the three major world religions to embrace original
sin. Did you know that? Islam does not, nor does Judaism. Jesus had never heard of original sin – and
probably would have been quite shocked if he thought that some people
understood God as anything other than the loving Creator, the Eternal Abba, the
Compassionate Parent. Such goodness of both Creator and creation lay at the
root of the wisdom literature with which Jesus would have been familiar.
So
– our question this morning is this? Is there another perspective for us as
well? What if we believed differently,
and, instead of setting aside the first chapter of Genesis, what if we embraced
it? What if we took to heart the
goodness of creation – and the goodness of all that is within it – including
us? What if we affirmed original
blessing instead of original sin?
We are going
to be looking through that lens of original blessing as we focus for the next
four weeks on what is known as Creation Spirituality.
Creation Spirituality is an ancient tradition that is now most
associated with a former Dominican monk, Matthew Fox. He was instrumental in resurfacing this
theology in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
Feminist
theologian Rosemary Radford Reuther described creation spirituality this
way: “Creation
Spirituality starts with original blessing, rather than with original sin. It
regains the understanding that our original and true nature, the original and
true nature of all things, is ‘very good.’ Although this good original self has
been obscured and distorted by alienation and sin, it is still our authentic
self. Redemption comes to us, not as a power alien to our natures, but as an ‘aha’
experience that puts us back in touch with our authentic natures.” In other words, Creation Spirituality seeks
to show us the world and ourselves through the lens of original blessing.
Ruether
continues by noting that
“Creation Spirituality unleashes vitality, creativity, and playfulness.
It is generous, mutually affirming of diversity, and non-competitive. It does
not set up competitive dualisms between males and females, celibate and
married, heterosexual and homosexual, white and black, Christian and
non-Christian, us and them. It is egalitarian and pluralistic, rejoicing in
the interconnectedness of a rich cosmic community.”
How
would we live our lives differently if we lived truly connected to the origins
of creation and the Creator? What if we
really trusted, as author Danielle Stroyer postulated, “Before anything
else is true about us—before we can talk about what we are good at or what we
are bad at, what we loathe and what we favor, before we can talk about gifts or
struggles, virtues or vices, before we can even begin to talk about what it
might mean for us to be saved—what is true is that we are in a relationship
with God, and God started it. And God is sticking with it.”
How would we live differently
if we believed in the goodness of all creation rather than in the unfixable
brokenness of it all? What would we do
differently if we just knew that we -
each one of us – are God’s beloved sons or daughters, that we are linked to God
the Creator through an unbreakable bond of goodness and blessing?
Would
we live with a spirit of compassion?
Would we live more appreciative of our diversity? Would we live joyfully and playfully and
creatively? Would we paint window panels even though we are
not a Picasso? Would we sing even though
we are not a Pavarotti? Would our relationships be healing ones rather than
those that tear off the scab time and time again? What kind of faith community would we choose
to be?
We are going to think about those questions even as we will
have an opportunity to do some rebuilding in the next four weeks. You see, we
are going to take a stab at reconstructing our faith on a foundation of
original goodness or blessing rather than original sin. Of
course, as Lutheran pastor Monte Stevens observed, “It’s not that we need to be blind to
people’s failings but (we need to ask ourselves) how do we see them on their
deepest level. Because how we see them at their deepest level is
ultimately how we will treat them, and how they will feel as they walk through
our doors.” Or, I would add, into our lives.
Will we see them first as potential terrorists – or racially inferior to
us? Will we see them only as lazy or old
or conservative or liberal? Will we be closed
and fearful – or open and curious? Will be begin with a yes – or a no to them?
Here in our church, we are going to begin with an
intentional yes as we reflect on Creation Spirituality as a way of life
because, well, because, as theologian Richard Rohr wrote, “you cannot begin with no, or it is not a beginning
at all.”
“Yes”, of
course, has to begin in the heart of each one of you, in that place where your
spirituality takes root. And so, In
order to journey from that place, we will acknowledge the four paths that
Matthew Fox outlined in his writing about Creation Spirituality, the paths that
express the breadth and depth of our relationship with God the Creator, the
paths that, if followed, will lead to our own transformation. They are:
• the
first path - recognizing and celebrating the inherent goodness of all
creation (including our own potential for good)
• the
second path - befriending dark places and times in our lives and in the
world as potential gateways to new life
• the
third path - rejoicing in divine creativity and affirming our ability to be
creators as well
• the fourth path - embodying compassion and power to
bring more wholeness and justice to the world.
We will have opportunities here in worship each week to
celebrate, to acknowledge the darkness, to create, and finally to be empowered
to bring Jesus’ message of reconciliation and justice to the world.
Here in worship, it will be all about original blessing –
and the inherent goodness of every single one of us. Why? Because
God does not make junk and because goodness and blessing is as old as the world
itself.
As one blogger I read this week wrote, “Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s leading
physicists…began his book, A Brief History of Time, with this story: A
well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public
lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and
how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars
called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old
lady at the back of the room got up and said, "What you have told us is
rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant
tortoise."
The scientist gave a superior smile
before replying, "And what is the tortoise standing on?"
"You’re very clever, young man,
very clever," said the old lady, "But it’s turtles all the way
down."
As the blogger went on to explain: “The little old lady may not have had all her
facts straight, but she knew something has to support the universe. (However),
what holds the world up isn’t turtles, of course, but blessing, God’s
blessing….It’s blessing all the way down.”
So come with me these next four weeks and explore
this notion of original blessing and Creation Spirituality. We will be in the
light – and in the dark. We will create,
and we will find the tools to be empowered, so that we can more readily and faithfully
say to God, each day, ““Hey, God, look, I want to live out of my goodness today, so
feel free to help create that opportunity for me.” Hey, God, because I am
blessed, how can I be a blessing to others?
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