Begin Again
January 14, 2024 - February 11, 2024
I’ve said before that I could preach from Genesis 1, 2, and 3 and never run out of things to say. Let’s test that theory with a short series on the creation stories from Genesis 1 and 2. What are the Big Ideas that we take away from a deep (repetitive) dive into these stories?
It’s all good. In the opening story of our sacred text, we encounter God’s imagination and intention in making a world that is good, and very good. Our faith has sometimes jumped too quickly to the brokenness of all things, but that’s not where God starts, nor where we begin. How would our theology be different if we started, always, from the goodness of all things, including ourselves?
The Quotidian Mysteries. In a book of this name, Kathleen Norris explores laundry as a spiritual practice. It relates to God’s creative work on the first several days when God is not mainly making something out of nothing, but rather separating this from that – light from dark, water from land, sky from surface, etc. God as an Orderer calls us to mimic this work in our own ordered lives – materially and ethically. A theological argument for making the bed?
Rest Finishes the Work. Fundamentalists speak of a “six-day creation” – but that misses the work of the seventh day, which is rest. What if no job is really complete until there’s been time to rest from it? To let it sink into our tired bones, for us to process the work with our loved ones or in our dreams, to get some distance from the work and let it become meaningful... Being in the image of God as we are, rest is one of the ways we can be godly.
Tilling & Keeping this Blessed Rock. When we think of “relationships” we’re usually speaking of people or Persons – relationships with family or friends, or perhaps with God. Maybe, for some of us, there’s a sense of “relationship” with an animal companion, but we sense that it’s not entirely mutual. (Fight me.) But what is the nature of the relationship that God designates for human beings with the planet God built us out of? “Tilling” and “keeping” (and “dominion,” from chp. 1) are words that deserve our attention, especially in this age of eco-anxiety after a long era of eco-domination.
Naked and Unashamed. We probably can’t talk enough about the loving care that God has for our bodies, especially because the counter-testimony (your body is wrong, dangerous, untrustworthy, problematic) is so strong. We remember that one of the first signs of the humans’ brokenness in chp. 3 is their strong desire to cover up. Genesis 2 calls us back to an exalted state of “body positivity” – though there ought to be a better way to say that.