Don't Know What You've Got

Sermon preached June 15, 2014

Texts: Genesis 1:1-2:4a

            Joni Mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94bdMSCdw20

Counting Crows, “Big Yellow Taxi” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvtJPs8IDgU

            It is appropriate to begin this sermon with this song.  Obviously I think it is fitting to begin most any sermon with a song, but there is something particularly appropriate this morning.  It is appropriate to begin with this song because we will return to its theme later, but also appropriate because one creative endeavor deserves another.

            Genesis 1 is a creative endeavor.  It is wonderfully written, beautifully constructed.  It flows like poetry.  It is rich in meaning.  This morning, I want to offer three thoughts about this passage.

            The first thing that I want to say, that I think needs to be said is that Genesis one is not science.  Now I don’t want to say that science writing cannot be beautiful and creative.  It can be.  But Genesis 1 is not science.  It is not biology.  It is not geology.  It is not geography.  It is not oceanography.  It is not climatology.  Genesis 1 is a theo-poetic writing, a piece of writing that combines theology and poetry.  When we were in New York we visited the American Museum of Natural History.  There was a wonderful display about human evolution and within it was a video of a number of scientists who addressed the compatibility between religious faith and evolutionary science.  The need for this arises out of frequent mis-reading of Genesis 1.

            As best we can tell, this writing was probably finalized during the time that the Israelites were in captivity in Babylon.  Just a quick bit of history here.  Israel was a united kingdom under Saul, David and Solomon.  After Solomon, the nation divided between North and South – Israel and Judah.  In 722 BCE the Assyrian Empire defeated the Northern Kingdom and part of the strategy of conquering empires was to send significant numbers of people into exile.  In 587 BCE, the Babylonian empire conquered the Southern Kingdom and sent people into exile in Babylon.  This was a time of great political crisis, but also a time of great theological crisis.  Where is God?  Who is God?

            The Babylonians had an answer.  There were many gods, with the king of the gods being Marduk.  The basic Babylonian creation epic (Enuma Elish) is the story of the power of Marduk over all the other gods.  In the epic, human beings were made from the blood of a murdered god and were created for the purpose of serving the gods.  Marduk’s closest representative on earth was the king of Babylon.  It is the king who is the image of God. (Walter Wink, Just Jesus, 103-104).

            The contrast with Genesis 1 is stark.  Genesis 1 is a theo-poetic celebration of the goodness of God, the goodness of creation, and the importance of the human person, male and female.  “God saw everything that had been made, and indeed, it was very good.”  “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”  In the midst of political defeat and exile, an Israelite theologian-poet, inspired by God, pens words about the goodness of God, the goodness of creation, and the dignity of the human.  This is not a biology that tells us how we came to be.  It is a theology that tells us who we are and what it means to be human.

            In addition to being a celebration of the goodness of God, the goodness of creation, and the dignity of the human this theo-poetic writing is a celebration of God’s creativity, and an invitation for human creativity.

            The very first words of the Bible are, “In the beginning when God created.”  God is one who in the midst of chaos and darkness creates order and light.  This creative God creates abundantly.  “The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it.”  “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.”  “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind.”  God’s creativity is abundant and abounding.  We who are created in the image of God are created to create.

            Linking God’s creativity with human creativity the late Harvard theologian Gordon Kaufman wrote: Humans did not bring the world into being, and it is not we who sustain it….  There is a powerful, awe-inspiring creativity manifest in our world – and, indeed, in ourselves: the new, the novel, the unforeseeable, the previously unheard of, break forth roundabout us and in our midst; and human life continues to be sustained from beyond itself….  We are called to participate ever more fully and effectively in the creative transformation of our existence. (Gordon D. Kaufman, In the Beginning… Creativity, 70)

            Much earlier, the twelfth-century abbess, mystic and artist, Hildegard of Bingen, wrote: Humankind, full of all creative possibilities, is God’s work.  Humankind is called to co-create…  God gave to humankind the talent to create with all the world. (in Matthew Fox, Creativity, 230)

            The kind of creativity to which we are invited is not the artistic creativity of geniuses, though some of you may have such gifts.  It is not necessarily what the psychologist Abraham Maslow called “special-talent creativeness.”  Rather it is a creativity that can be expressed in every area of life.  Maslow:  Whatever one does can be done with a certain attitude, a certain spirit that arises out of the nature of the character of the person performing the act.  One can even see creatively – a greater freshness, penetration, and efficiency of perception. (Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality, 2^nd Edition, 170, 171).  God is creative, and we, created in the image of God, are invited to be co-creators of the world.  We are invited to live every day with a certain creativity.  We are invited to see the world in new and fresh ways, making new ways of living possible.  In New York this past week we visited the Museum of Modern Art.  I know I do not have that kind of artistic talent, but I find that art inspires me to find my own creativitiy.

            If this story is a celebration of creativity and an invitation to creativity, it is also an invitation to care.  That is the third thing I want to say.  This theo-poetic piece is not science, but is a celebration of and invitation to creativity, and an invitation to care.

            God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth”….  So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work he had done in creation.

            It is important to think through some of these words – subdue, dominion.  I think they have to do with responsibility, not with wastefulness or abuse.  I love how the poet Denise Levertov conceives of the human vocation based on this story.

Miswritten, misread, that charge:

subdue was the false, the misplaced word in the story.

Surely we were to have been

earth’s mind, mirror, reflective source.

Surely our task

was to have been

to love the earth,

to dress and keep it like Eden’s garden.

That would have been our dominion:

to be those cells of the earth’s body that could

perceive and imagine, could bring the planet

into the haven it is to be known,

(as they eye blesses the hand, perceiving

its form and the work it can do).            (“Tragic Error” from The Life Around Us, 13)

            We are to be earth’s mind, mirror, reflective source.  Our task is to love the earth, to dress and keep it like Eden’s garden – a garden that does not appear in this creation story but in the second creation story in Genesis that begins in chapter 2.  That story is not science either.  Our dominion is to be those cells of the earth’s body that can perceive and imagine.  Our dominion is to bring the planet into the haven it is to be known.

            How are we doing here?  Like many, I am concerned.  Environmental care issues have become too politicized and polarized.  We have some whose environmental concern seems deeply out of touch with the necessary tragedies of life, that all animal life lives to by devouring other life, even if it is plant life.  There are others who seem to think that resources are there to be used for the economy as we now conceive it, almost regardless of the long run consequences for air and water.  The issue of climate change has become so politicized that for some even to ask about it is overly political.

            Shouldn’t the church, though, shouldn’t we who are invited and called to care for creation at least be able to ask tough questions about how we are caring for the environment?  Shouldn’t we be able to ask about climate change and to have civil conversations about it?

            This year, The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its fifth assessment report arguing for the human impact on climate and for the increasing impact of climate change on the world.  This spring the White House released the National Climate Assessment.  Over recent decades, climate science has advanced significantly. Increased scrutiny has led to increased certainty that we are now seeing impacts associated with human-induced climate change.  Critics claim that both these organizations are too politically motivated.  How about the University of Minnesota Alumni Association?  The Summer 2014 has on its front cover “What Can We Do About Climate Change? Plenty”  Jonathan Foley, Director of University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment: “There is no doubt that the effects of human activities, especially the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere through our burning of fossil fuels and our land use practices, are changing our climate.”

            What if we are part of the problem, but fail to acknowledge it?  How will we be judged in our care of creation?  What if there are some things we can do, and perhaps this is where we need to be spending more time and attention discussing possible actions, but what if there are some things we can do, but never get around to discussing the possibilities or doing anything at all?  How will we be judged in our care of creation?  Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got til it’s gone.  Will that be our situation someday down the road?  I thought about some of the potential impacts of our changing climate this week.  If the sea rises, parts of Manhattan will be under water.  The impact of climate change will affect the poorest on the planet.

            When I read Genesis 1, I am moved, deeply moved.  Inspired by the Spirit of God, the writer of this theo-poetic piece speaks of God’s goodness and God’s creativity to a people in exile, to a people who perhaps don’t see much goodness or creativity.  The piece celebrates God.  The piece invites us to live into the image of God.  There is an invitation here in our own challenging situation to use our creativity, to use our best science, to do what we can to be earth’s mind, mirror, reflective source, to care for the earth like tending a garden.  The piece invites us to creative courage, which the psychologist Rollo May defines as “the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built” (The Courage to Create, 13).  Hear the call to creative care and creative courage, modeled on God and on the writer of this beautiful t

theo-poetic.  Amen.

This Sunday we began a “Faith Forum After Hours” time for sermon feedback.  The following questions were included in the bulletin and used for that discussion.

Questions for Reflection

“Genesis 1 is not science.”  When you hear that so starkly stated, how do you feel?  How does this have an impact on your understanding of the Bible?

Humans did not bring the world into being, and it is not we who sustain it….  There is a powerful, awe-inspiring creativity manifest in our world – and, indeed, in ourselves: the new, the novel, the unforeseeable, the previously unheard of, break forth roundabout us and in our midst; and human life continues to be sustained from beyond itself….  We are called to participate ever more fully and effectively in the creative transformation of our existence. (Gordon D. Kaufman, In the Beginning… Creativity, 70)

            Humankind, full of all creative possibilities, is God’s work.  Humankind is called to co-create…  God gave to humankind the talent to create with all the world. (Hildegard of Bingen in Matthew Fox, Creativity, 230)

            Whatever one does can be done with a certain attitude, a certain spirit that arises out of the nature of the character of the person performing the act.  One can even see creatively – a greater freshness, penetration, and efficiency of perception. (Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality, 2^nd Edition, 170, 171). 

Reading these three quotes, how do you think about the idea of being a co-creator with God?  Where do you experience your creative best?

Miswritten, misread, that charge:

subdue was the false, the misplaced word in the story.

Surely we were to have been

earth’s mind, mirror, reflective source.

Surely our task

was to have been

to love the earth,

to dress and keep it like Eden’s garden.

(Denise Levertov, from“Tragic Error” in The Life Around Us, 13)

If part of our task as created in God’s image is to love the earth how can the church foster constructive conversations about environmental issues which often get pushed into narrowly partisan political frames?  How can we talk about climate change?

What might we be doing to love the earth better?