IN THE BEGINNING. Genesis 2/7

“…then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” Genesis 2:7 ESV

There is nothing as satisfying to me than the creating of my own hands. 

I replaced my mailbox the other day and felt elated. All my measurements and cuts were right the first time. Bring it on, mailman.

I recently played Rush’s “Red Barchetta” on my bass nearly all the way through. On my couch. I felt ready to take my show on the road. 

With critically important help and input from Kristi, I made some Maine-style Lobster Rolls (yes I capitalized Lobster Rolls, because of respect and because of delicious) a few months back, and sent myself moaning in ecstasy on the floor. 

I drew a picture of an animal from memory for one of my daughters, and felt exhilarated by it taking shape in front of me. I sensed a desire to keep going. To keep drawing, faster and faster, as though speed would bring it to life.

I had an idea and wrote a short story recently all in one setting. Beginning to end, in two hours. I could levitate afterward. 

I made an ad hoc spaceship (qualifying me, as I've recently learned, for Master Builder) with my son, feeling pretty good about it. When his jaw dropped, I felt even better about it.

There’s nothing like making to me. And the only thing that can come along side it is sharing what I’ve made, whether out of ego or charity or mutuality, with others.

I’m sure the sweater-wearing psychoanalysts have interesting and even compelling explanations for all this. Validation hunting. Control out of chaos. Sense of accomplishment against the deeper sense of disappointment. Blobbity  blah blah.

When God forms Adam, the word form is translated from the hebrew “yatsar”. In one sense it means to narrow or squeeze. To squish. Which leads to the broader meaning; yatsar describes what potters do when they are making earthen vessels, pots or bowls, or even statues. Add to this “Adam” literally means soil, and the verse is pretty vivid. Adam, who might as well be named Clay, (Claude? Phil? I could keep going) is formed by an Artist. He is made as  something between a piece of art and a vessel to fulfill a duty, and is breathed into living. 

This isn’t just clever etymology. It’s a good reminder: humans are historically humus, which should keep us humble. 

Millennia after this text was written in Genesis, the apostle Paul would say to his brothers and sisters about their new faith and realized identity in the Christ: 

“…we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:10

Workmanship, translated from the Greek “poiema”, carries with it the sense of more than just construction. It's something between a piece of art and a vessel to fulfill a duty. A living, breathing statue of what God is like: the source of life, and of goodness.

Be reminded today that you are far more than an assortment of instincts looking for a meal and a mate.

You aren’t a pointless amalgam of materials having cruelly developed the ability to wonder about purpose and meaning that were never there. 

You are not accidental.

You are not incidental. 

You are not at your core loathed by God, or simply tolerated because of some deal Jesus made with his mean but almighty daddy.

You are art. 

Art that can observe herself and her world and move beautifully in it. 

For it. 

On behalf of its Creator. 

You are art that can see his life as integrated with the rest of creation and yet mysteriously disparate from it, being humble and yet confident by his own sense of belonging to both Maker and made. 

You are art that does good and loving sorts of things- never an animal subjected to its own selfishness to do selfish things.

May the Potter reshape you today, breathe into your nostrils the breath of life, and lead you to walk in the good works you were crafted in the Christ to walk in. 

IN THE BEGINNING Genesis 2/4-6

"These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground" Genesis 2:4-6 ESV

Some new details in the origin story emerge here. Some say so much change occurs it's apparent this is a different writing, from different authors, attached at one point in antiquity to Genesis 1. Others believe it's the same author throughout (traditionally Moses), but he's now digging into the details of creation since the overarching narrative of chapter 1 is complete.

I lean toward it being a once different oral tradition, finally written down and added to the account. Different author. Different take. Same heart. There's a few reasons I feel this way, though I'm not one to say I've got the truth cornered on all this:

*Genesis 1 is poetic, grand and climactic. Genesis 2 is folkish, plain.

*Genesis 1 has an order. Genesis 2 is not only not concerned with order, it's a different order than 1.

*Plant life occurs on Day 3 in chapter 1. Plant life hasn't yet taken off until Adam arrives, according to chapter 2.

*Genesis 1 has man and woman made, by God speaking, simultaneously. Genesis 2, as you'll see, depicts man from clay, then woman from man's side.

*Genesis 1 depicts Elohim. Genesis 2 introduces us to God's name, the Tetragrammaton, YHWH ("Yahweh", "Jehovah"...the pronunciation is unknown) translated in our modern english as "LORD God" (YHWH Elohim).

* To begin digging into the hypothesis that there are different authors and sources throughout Genesis, grab a shovel and start here.

An interesting side note is the use of the word "day" in Genesis to speak of the entirety of the Creative process. "in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens'. It's often argued that "yom" primarily means a 24-hour day in hebrew. Especially when numbered as it is in chapter 1 and "night and day" are used in conjunction. Here we have however, a chapter later, the same hebrew word yom used to describe the whole period of creation, earth and heaven, referred to as a "day". This should give us more than a bit of latitude as we discuss the age of things, and how long it took to make them.

My real interest in today's passage has to do with the culture it originally spoke to. Notice the challenge presented as the text sets the stage for Adam's existence. The necessary gears for successful agriculture aren't yet in place. No rain, and no workers. Just a mist watering the ground, which we can assume meant there were some plants, but the "good ones" weren't present yet. Or, the mist just kept the plantless mud wet. The issue presented isn't just that there were no humans yet. 

The fields were bare, and there was no such thing as farming to make them otherwise.

If you're reading this blog, chances are you don't live an agrarian life. The vast, vast minority of us have anything to do with the production of food, crops or livestock. Gardens and pets not withstanding, most of us don't have an understanding of the world Genesis came from and was originally intended for. That's not to say we in modern times can't benefit from it unless we milked something other than a carton today. It's simply to remind us that we are so far removed from the context that we have to work very hard to get to the heart of what's being told to us.

I have this conversation with people a lot. They can't understand - or they disagree with - something they find in the scriptures. Naïveté. Narrowness. Violence. Moral bankruptcy. I don't feel compelled to defend the Bible like I used to. I often just ask if the person believes they would feel the same way if, rather than being at the top of society as most of us in the US are (at least relative to the whole of history) looking down and back at the scriptures, they were at the bottom, looking up and forward. What if what you are reading came from oppression, hardship, poverty and having to work in order to not die? What if the narrative assumes you need hope in a comparatively hopeless situation, some comfort and a reminder that your life, however scorned and abused by the upper echelons of society, is deeply sacred. Sacred enough to be hand-designed in the Beginning by YHWH Elohim. Suddenly the severity of some of the violence, if still not justifiable, becomes understandable. The simplicity of the people and their views on keeping a nomadic, off-grid way of life together becomes coherent and respectable. God's severity with other stronger nations on behalf of Israel becomes a little easier to digest. The sense of the underdogs' needing powerful Advocacy resonates, and seems truer to human history than our current ability as a privileged people to implicitly judge god as morally beneath us.

The story starts really, really simple. And, if we're ranking; really really low. A relatively unsophisticated people celebrated that God, the LORD God of the Universe, created all things and then stooped low enough to care for basic needs. Beauty, agriculture, life, rest, food, and knowing you're as much a part of a sacred story as anyone else.

IN THE BEGINNING. Genesis 2/1-3

"Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation." -Genesis 2:1-3

Even if the six days of creation in the comparatively very recent past are literal, I doubt God ever needs time off. Colossians 1:17 says Christ, who is the image of the otherwise invisible, holds all things together. Perhaps holding things together is different than creating things, but it seems like everything would come flying apart each Saturday if the Binding of the universe clocked out for some R&R. 

There’s been an astronomical basis for measuring time presented thus far in Genesis, either directly stated or implied. Earth’s rotation creates the measurements we call nights and days. Then there are months, which are fairly accurately measured by moon phases. Then there are seasons, the experience of them varying by our geography and each corresponding to earth’s tilt toward or away from the sun. This phenomenon gives us equinoxes and solstices. Then of course there’s the year; one full trip around the sun. 

But the seven-day week isn’t directly tied to anything astronomical. There's a few ways of cutting up lunation (an average lunar cycle) to get to something close to a week, but it breaks down. Yet, despite numerous attempts to change it (a ten day system France tried that failed, a five-then-six day system the Soviets tried after that which failed, to name just a couple from modernity), the seven day week is and has long been, nearly ubiquitous.. No one is sure why. Frankly, it may have been God’s idea. And for ancient Israel, it also seemed to be God’s idea that this week ended in rest.

The Fourth Command states that Israel was to remember the sabbath and keep it set apart. Reference is made within that command to this very passage in Genesis two. When you think of it, not working one day a week as a top ten rule was probably a decent recruitment tool for Jewish proselytizers. “Sign up now and get a holiday every week for the rest of your life.” This perhaps served as a counterbalance to circumcision, an issue that made male conversion a bit tricky I’m sure. 

Breaking the Sabbath by the way was a capital crime. That is to say, “Rest, or you will be made to do so permanently!” Strange, I admit. However, I’m drawn to the mystery of such a strange, weighty command, to Sabbath and keep that day holy, being couched between commands 1-3 and 5. The first three outline properly honoring God. The fifth details properly honoring parents. What we have then, Kosher-sandwiched between rules about your relationship with your Creator and your creators, is the command to, fifty two times a year, stop creating. 

You aren’t what you make.

You are simply made.

Respect these facts every week, for one day.

The thing about astronomical events is that we do not control them. They simply are, and will affect what they will. But the seven-day week, and our resting at the end of it, are more a matter of the mind. We control it. And the template we are given in a Universe in which most everything happens with or without our consent allows us to thumb our noses a productivity, at anxiety and the impulse for constant motion, and to blow things off in the Name of the Lord.

I’ve been told a few times the reason a person doesn’t take time off is that they love their job. This misunderstands rest. We are not told to rest if we hate our jobs. We are told to rest because we are not our jobs. Even great-paying ones. Sabbath isn’t just for slaves. It’s so that none of us get tricked into ever becoming slaves again.

I've been told numerous times that a person cannot takes days off, or have rests throughout their job, because their schedule and responsibilities are just too demanding. Tough, I get it. But perhaps this helps us understand what it had to be commanded. Perhaps this helps us see why it was a capital offense. because, as has been pointed out by better thinkers than I; when our existence is inextricably ties to the production of our careers, are we really alive anyway?

I am often told a person can't take time off because they can't sit still, that they love moving and that being still and quiet make them crazy. To them, I would like to commiserate. I am frenetic. My mind never wants to stop. But motion is all too often a way of never facing concrete reality. Our constant doing is often a sure sign that we fear facing the idea that we may be disappointments, that we're actually quite screed of our thoughts and true desires. And so we run not to doing, but away from being. These people are prime candidates for rest. I pray they don't have to run themselves empty or dead to realize it.

It all began with tohu wa bohu. Wild, waste and chaos. The very picture of “unmade”. And then God created all things, humanity toward the very end. The seventh day, the last of the week, God rests from making. But that last day was really the first day for humanity. We’d just shown up and we’re already supposed to kick our feet up. We begin not with productivity, but with sharing in God’s rest. Why? Because all our making is derivative anyway. All our imagination is merely the reorganization of what the True Creator came up with. So relax. Stop thinking the clock needs your winding. The Universe works without us. Work hard, and then stop. Work hard, and then stop. Everything else keeps going. God and people know when to stop.

IN THE BEGINNING. Genesis 1

I signed up for a seminar at a Christian Conference. It was 2003 and my rear was ablaze in zeal for Truth. The seminar was entitled “Creation vs Evolution”. The guy poised to teach the class was young, but I excused this detail in my eagerness to gain by any and all means ammunition for my apologetic arsenal. Christians, as I was keen to point out, believe in a literal six day creation. If they don’t, then they aren’t.

Ten minutes into the talk my heart was pounding in rage. The kid was teaching not the science of creationism, but the necessity for those who hold my position to be at peace, to listen, and to remember the main thing had always been - and always would be - love. What an uninformed flake I thought to myself. Where’s the “vs”?

Humbly, after fifty minutes of making his case from the flipping gospel of all places, he allowed for a time of questions. My hand shot up through the ceiling tiles.

“Yes,” he pointed at me.

“Thanks. So, I get your point about love and all that. But how can you make so little of a thing Christ affirms?”

His face looked genuinely shocked. “What do you mean?”

“Well, Christ quotes from the first chapters of Genesis and says, ‘God made the earth in six days and rested on the seventh.’ So how can we just throw out, merely in light of other theories, what Jesus affirmed?” I was satisfied my tone and quote had showed the last fifty minutes to be the waste of time I knew it was.

“Jesus said that?” The guy was sincerely unaware. I was amazed. How do you get these speaking gigs?

“Yep. I’ll show you.” I sat down and began rifling through the crinkly thin pages of my New American Standard. Sensitive to the time we had, the young man moved on to other questions, inviting me to circle back when I found what I was after. He was genuinely interested in the implications of my point. But I never found the verse. Because it wasn’t there. Which says nothing about the heart of my point, but says everything about the spirit of those who cannot listen when defending their side is their goal. I was embarrassed, the room clearing as I continued checking the concordance and wishing someone would hurry up and invent Google and Smart Phones to see if Jesus ever said anything close enough for me to save face. It would be a couple years before I realized I had been sitting in the presence of a peace-maker, and had missed a wonderful, timely talk.

Some people believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis one. Some don’t. Neither position a better Christian makes. 

Christians follow Christ, not party-lines. 

And our ability to defend our position doesn’t make any point beyond “I can defend my position”, which is different than “I am right.” In one extreme Young Earth Creationists believe their view is the only one, and any view to the contrary was a lie, and perhaps conspiracy. I used to camp here. In the other extreme, physicists have everything reduced to predictable, lifeless formulas that make math god and a Creator God mere myth. Their work is invaluable, but their certainty is often simply more dogmatism.

Here’s my take.

I don’t look at Genesis one literally like I used to. I am generally persuaded that the Universe and Earth are older than many assume the Bible depicts. I am also persuaded that a strict literalist view of the text isn’t fair to the text. 

Some say in response to this, “I take Genesis exactly as it is. Word for word.” 

But this is the sort thinking that led me to back off the hardline stance; I tried literally reading it.

“Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation…Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds. And it was so.…" Genesis 1:11,12,24

Note the actual phrasing. Earth brings forth the vegetation. Earth brings forth the creatures. The earth seems to be the mechanism for making, if taken at face value. The response to this is generally something like, “That’s just a way of saying it.” Which is fine. But that admits and establishes we don’t take the words for themselves. We intuit that things are being said “in a way” to tell us things which aren't obvious from a literal reading. We bring that to the text. This one example isn’t the end all be all. It shows rather simply that probably no one embraces the text in the rigid literal sense many of us have been taught is requisite for the truly faithful. Being strict in our literalism isn’t fair to our own ability to appreciate the point behind the metaphor.

Other factors played a role in my backing off a young earth, literalist view. Such as the “firmament” or dome of water spoken of in Genesis one, upon which the starry host were attached. Or the stars themselves depicted as having been created for guiding earth travelers. Or the moon put forth as a light alongside the sun, rather than a reflector of the latter. But none of this rendered Genesis one obsolete, or even wrong. No more than a song about the rising or the setting sun is wrong because it supports an outmoded geo-centricity. That’s not the song’s point.

Where I used to get hung up is where some still do. “If you don’t take this literally, then on what grounds do we believe anything in the Bible?” I understand this. It isn’t a flippant exercise. But it also assumes that taking the scriptures seriously is equivalent to taking them literally, when we all know that we can’t always do that, and that that metric for taking them seriously isn’t articulated in the Bible itself.

More significantly, we have to understand that the worst possible reason to believe something is because the rest of our belief system falls apart if we don’t. This has the effect of making us believe things because we have to, rather than believing them because they’re true. A belief of necessity, but not necessarily of reality. I can’t stress this enough- if I have to believe something about someone, or something, because I’m scared of what will happen if I don’t believe it, I admit I am not interested in truth as much as I’m interested in glue. This way of believing things doesn’t open us to learning because our belief is already built on what’s predetermined as necessarily true. Any additions or subtractions bring disaster. This sort of calcified faith feels forced to be at war with science and others’ opinions out of its own survival. Not the sort of faith Jesus had in mind when he spoke of truth setting people free. 

Tim Keller said it well:

“I think Genesis 1 has the earmarks of poetry and is therefore a “song” about the wonder and meaning of God’s creation….There will always be debates about how to interpret some passages — including Genesis 1. But it is false logic to argue that if one part of Scripture can’t be taken literally then none of it can be. That isn’t true of any human communication." (Tim Keller, The Reason for God, page 94).

It’s fairly engrained in out collective mind that our interpretation of Genesis one is an either/or scenario. The upcoming, silly debate between Ken Hamm of Answers in Genesis and Bill Nye the Science Guy reinforces this false duality. There is no scenario where one side of that will win, because the truth isn't the goal. Once we understand our common goal is truth and unity, the divisive debating of the past becomes nonsense. None of this has never needed to be an argument anymore than enjoying a song like Freebird ever required a debate about bird origins and migratory instinct canceling out true freedom. 

If you choose based on the evidence to believe earth is thousands of years young and that Genesis, though ancient, is a fair telling of things, my challenge to you is to not put that conviction at the center. That would be idolatry. Leave yourself humbly open to new information, and never, like I did, conflate following Christ with fighting about things not ever listed scripturally in what it means to be Christians. And if you have chosen to look at the evidence and embrace an evolutionary view of things, be sure your position isn’t mere disassociation from your faith roots so your smart, cynical science friends will respect you. There’s belief and tribalism on both sides. Don’t throw out Genesis anymore than you'd throw out any other art which tells the truth.

There’s far more to this than I can post. Huge implications in the classroom, in churches, and in forums such as this are in my mind. There’s harm being done over this issue by both “sides”. Fear and defensiveness and line-drawing has that effect. A lasting effect, as I can feel tension even now as I admit my actual views, voices on either side of my brain wondering to me, “why do you deny the plain teaching of the Bible,” and “why do you present empirical facts of science as opinions one chooses?” I wish I could go back and thank that young guy for having the courage to talk about love in front of a room full of people like I was; who wanted armed more than taught. To win more than serve. I hope, no matter where we come out on this 1 chapter in the Bible out of 1,189 that we recognize Love isn't a flaky bait and switch, and is nothing like a distraction. It's the point.

IN THE BEGINNING. Genesis 1/3-31

“...And God separated the light from the darkness…” -Genesis 1:4

So begins distinction and separation: 

Light and Dark. 

Day and Night.

Land and Sea. 

Earth and Sky. 

Above and Below. 

Sun and Moon. 

Hot and Cold. 

Animate and Inanimate. 

Creature and Environment.

Male and Female. 

These distinctions aren't a disunity, but are that which gives substance to what unity means. Compliments and balances embraced by different polarities. Interconnections and contrasts. One not being the other but not making sense without the other, and therefore...one with the other. Much like the ancient concept of yin-yang and the Taijitu symbol, Elohim creates harmonies and tensions and calls them a whole. Elohim, that mysterious Plural Oneness, creating plural oneness.

The six days of creation, from Genesis 1:3-31, contain interesting correspondency. If you look not only at the contrasts within each day, but also between days, there's a pattern.

All napkin media property of The Pedestrian. Use subject to hand-written approval.

Often we think our duty as spiritual people is to be properly dividing up this from that. Sacred from secular. Holy from unholy. And in some important ways that's sometimes necessary. Even valid. But how much more spiritual might it be to understand that, from the Beginning, harmony and correspondence were God's design, not severing and marginalization. Where the impulse to push away that which doesn't fit (a behavior not exclusive to Christianity, or any religion, as all humans sever from themselves that which they don't like or fear) is trumped by an ability to incorporate it, a longing to find peace with it, to recognize it not as unclean or wrong or un-this or anti-that but as a potential part of the whole.

It is a holy thing to allow the differences of others -even deep, seemingly polar differences- to remain intact as we sit at the common table of faith. I struggle here. My instinct is that different is bad, or different is incomplete and needs my assistance. My role as a "teaching pastor" exacerbates this. It takes an enormous amount of maturity to be able to disagree with one and yet still look at the idea as having merit. To look at different people and see different, not wrong. It takes a maturity that most of us have never had because so many of us have learned our job is to properly uphold the THIS while dutifully renouncing the THAT. 

How comprehensively we need God to give us eyes to see. In all ways. Our inability to figure out how to live at one with the environment God gave us is a parallel with our inability to live at one with other people. We struggle with oneness of all kinds for much the same reasons; a general misunderstanding of relationships as peace-through-control-and-augmentation and our fear of losing "me" in the "us". We have a ways to go before we can see our relationships as peace because all is already connected. Elohim made it as such. We don't really make oneness. We discover it under our dividing.

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

-Einstein

Before Jesus was arrested and crucified, he prayed. According to St. John's account, he prayed and prayed and prayed. And at one point in the lengthy prayer, Jesus said this from John 17. Perhaps, as you ponder all reality having been designed to dance together, you can give his words, and the original intent of all creation, a place in your day. 

"Holy Father, keep these people you've entrusted to me in your name, that they may be one, even as You and I are one ... I don't ask this for these apostles only, but also for everyone else who will believe in me through their message, that they may all be one, just as you are in me and I am in you, Father- may they be one in us...I have given to them the glory you gave me, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one." Jesus, John 17:11-23

IN THE BEGINNING. Genesis 1/3-4

Anthony DeMello, a Jesuit priest, used to talk often about people’s desire to change, but their insistence they try and change through steps and techniques. He always pushed back:

“You only change what you understand. What you do not understand and are not aware of, you repress. You don't change. But when you understand it, it changes.” 

I speak to struggling couples who ask me how to fix things. Or men struggling with anger and condemnation. Or women who’re bitter and unforgiving. Or young people feeling low and anxious. And I am most helpful not so much when I give a number of steps, but when I help people see. No small task coming from me, a frustratingly chronic blind dude.

But how can we change something we don’t understand? What are we changing if we don’t even know how things really are, and then by extension, how they are supposed to be? Not having the answer to these questions hasn’t stopped us from trying. Our favorite psychosis is trying to transform the universe and all its inhabitants with little or no awareness to the reality we’re tinkering with. Friends try to change friends. Parents try to change children. Spouses try to change spouses. The rich try to change the poor. The poor try to change the rich. Missionaries try and change foreign cultures. All while people continuously try and reinvent themselves.

It’s as if the driving force isn’t so much a beautiful endgame as it is a desperate confused desire to get rid of what is.

Early in Genesis, the Spirit of Elohim is hovering over ruin. Emptied chaos. And then,

“. . .God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness.” -Genesis 1:3-4

God is speaking. These are depicted as the first words. And they’re words about light. But light for what? Does God need to clap twice and get the lamp on before God starts sculpting planets? 

God’s first declaration is to light up what’s just been described for us as a formless, ruinous void enveloped in darkness. And the reason, in my opinion, gives me peace: God is a gracious, unthreatened judge who doesn’t condemn. God is light and love, and simply calls things as they are. 

Because how are things ever supposed to get better when you go on trying to make with the lights out, the mess unattended to?

Genesis begins with tohu wa bohu illuminated, not hidden. Acknowledged, not swept under the rug for the sake of reputation or even holiness. Genesis begins with creation. With recreation. And, in a strange but necessary way, with confession. All creation being drawn into the honesty of what is before there's any preoccupation with whatever else there could be.

In a few chapters, Adam and Eve will forget all this and start veiling shame again. But that’s the cycle you and I are invited into anyway: We bring our mess to God. God shines light on it so it can be seen without pretense or shadow. And then change begins. Because in the light there’s nothing to hide, and only in true awareness can things be as they should be.  And if we forget the order of God’s universe and the invitation of light, we will try and hide what we regret. We return to the shadows, trying to change ourselves and everything else in an anxious, visionless delusion. Eventually, we get tired of hiding and pretending and the fruitlessness of trying to adapt everything to our delusions, and come quivering into the light again. 

May we enjoy the piercing, painful, humbling bright light of God’s love. And may we offer others the blessed safety of being really known by us, and loved anyway.

“Arise, My people! Let your light shine for all the nations to see! For the glory of the Lord is streaming from you. All nations will come to your light”  -Isaiah 60:1-3

IN THE BEGINNING. Genesis 1/2

Prophets had a tough job. They warned (which is different than threaten) their own family that their continued foolishness, continued mimicry of other nations, would come to a bad end. Borne out of love, prophets used imagery and rhetoric to make their point: I know the other nations have better weapons and technology and more impressive reports from their census bureaus, but we are not to live like them. We are the people of light. They're supposed to be mimicking us! Turn back, or we're going to ruin ourselves!

In Jeremiah 4, war and destruction are coming. Israel’s enemies are drawing near, their trumpets and shouts echoing in the distance. Israel's enemies are going to treat them the way they treat all the other nations, since Israel is behaving like them. The prophet pulls few punches: “You guys are acting like stupid children. The whole land will be laid waste. It will become unrecognizable and devoid of its former beauty. We have to turn back to who we are. To who God is.”

In Isaiah 34 rebellion of God’s chosen people is threatening to get everything destroyed. The imagery is vivd: God’s people will be besieged and torched to the ground by neighboring peoples. Only scavengers and birds will be found in what is destined  to become a place of chaos, waste and emptiness.

Job, Isaiah, Psalms talk about beloved places ruined for rejection of God's way. Gutted of their former glory. Waste, wilderness and chaos where something whole and good had been. 

Genesis 1:2 reads, "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. "

As the story goes, Elohim makes all things from no things. Yet the second verse in Genesis paints an interesting picture for us as we try and imagine the beginning. “Without form and void” is the poetic Hebrew phrase tohu wa bohu. These are the very same words used by the prophets to describe something ruined and reduced to broken chaos and waste. Devoid. Emptied. Unrecognizable. The connotation does less for the idea that there was nothing in the beginning, and more for the idea there was something that got messed up.

Some insert all sort of ideas here. Interesting ideas. Speculations. Argument fodder. Perhaps you’ve heard, for instance, of the Gap Theory. This isn’t the theory of well-folded jeans. I’m not even saying that was a funny joke. Gap Theory is in essence the idea that the perceived gap between verse one and two can be found the mysterious allusion to a former creation that got tanked, and then, some time later, got remade. 

I am not selling this as the case. 

I’m simply interested in the idea that in the beginning, God was not just making things from nothing (which our tradition holds, on faith)  but can be read as taking circumstances usually understood as being the result of former, regrettable behavior - tohu wa bohu - and turning it into something good. There in the second verse of the Bible is the Spirit of Elohim, hovering like a mother bird on her nest, eagerly anticipating rebirth where others would say there was no hope at all.

Jesus’ stepdad was Joseph. And Joseph was a tekton, typically translated carpenter, or better, craftsman. Joseph* apparently taught Jesus** the trade, as Jesus was known as a tekton himself. And what do carpenters/craftsmen do besides make guys like me feel useless at a worksite? They take available materials and create things from them. Beautiful, meaningful, essential things others eagerly adopt as part of their life.

Piles of dead trees. Buckets of tacky mud. Mounds of broken stone.  Formless and chaotic. “Nothing” to the unskilled eye and in unskilled hands. And then, where there was nothing, there is suddenly something.

When we live at odds with love and humility and generosity, we bring ruin to ourselves and our world.

But when we entrust ourselves to God, living in God's ways . . . we still find we’ve brought some degree of ruin to ourselves and our world. 

There’s no way to avoid it. Created things have a tendency to unmake themselves. There is no experience where we humans aren’t in varying measure complicit in tohu wa bohu. You and I will always break stuff. Ourselves. Others. Even our attempts at fixing tend to result in formless void. But the story of creation is at the same time a story of re-creation. Of messes being remade. Individuals and families and churches and nations understanding they've varied from their proper course and have wreaked havoc on their part of the world, and yet believing that that's not at all the end of the tale. Much the opposite. It's a beginning. From the very inception of reality, all that is not God has needed the redemptive creativity of God. 

May we make the material of our tohu wa bohu realities available to the Craftsman and find ourselves being remade.

* Whose name means “He will increase it”

** Whose name means “The Master Salvages”