Creation and Discovery

This is actually the text of the sermon I preached this morning, which was Peace with Justice Sunday in the United Methodist Church. It was my first sermon, so it was a little nerve-wracking, but I think I did alright. The passages were Genesis 1:1-2:4 and Amos 2:6-7a, 5:10-12, 24, if you feel like reading them before you read the sermon. Also, I was going for around 10 minutes of speaking, so it's quite a bit longer than my normal posts. I hope you all like it, though, and I'd welcome any comments (as always!).

Claude Monet has always been my favorite artist. I’m specifically drawn to his works of impressionism, and my favorite by far is his water lily series. When I was in high school the Houston Museum of Fine Arts received a large exhibition on loan from the Met that included three massive panels of water lilies- I was SO there! I remember walking into the room and walking straight up to the canvas, my nose just inches from the paint—at that distance, of course, it just looked like dots and dashes of color. But when I’d finally convinced myself they were real, though, that I was actually seeing an original Monet in person, I sat down on the benches provided and I spent a good 20 minutes just reveling in what they truly were- not dots and dashes of color, but an amazing panorama of beauty.

When I read the first creation story in Genesis, this memory is always what I think of: God taking a swirling, chaotic deep and crafting from it a rhythmic order of stunning beauty and purpose. Each layer brings more complexity, more beauty as God stretches God’s self, playing and creating and discovering.

The final stretching of God’s creative powers, according to the Genesis story, the culmination of God’s discovery, is itself a creative being. God’s own image, with responsibility for all that has come before. Artists and creators in our own rite. The breath that brought order to the deep has been breathed into us; God’s ordering, creative spirit is our own.

Famous sculptor and artist Michelangelo is noted as having said that, “every block of stone has a statue inside and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” One of the tips for good writing is to begin the story and see where it takes you rather than to come at it with every plot detail already in mind. Creation, both for us and for God, is an act of discovery as much as it is a work of design.

So if God is the sculptor, the author, that means that we, the stone, the story, have immense creative responsibility. Not only do we have our own creative powers, reflections of God’s own—producing art and story, bringing order to the broken, chaotic places of the world—but we ourselves also guide the story that God is telling. God discovers with us as we guide the pen, the paintbrush, the chisel that is working out our history. This is the responsibility that comes with the word “dominion,” as the word is often translated when the passage talks about God giving humans responsibility over the earth.  

This phrase, “have dominion over,” has long been used to excuse the exploitation of the earth and its creatures. When peoples are seen as less than human it has been made to excuse unbelievable atrocity. This single phrase, “have dominion over,” has masked war, slavery, genocide, oppression, pollution, extinction, depletion of resources and unsustainable living practices.

But this, I think, is not how our part of the story ought to be read. If our relationship with the earth and its creatures is the reflection of God’s relationship with the creation then it is understood differently.

Moltmann writes in God in Creation that if the creator is present in the creation, the relationship to the creation, instead of one of the ruler and the ruled, “must rather be viewed as an intricate web of unilateral, reciprocal, and many-sided relationships. In this network of relationships, ‘making,’ ‘preserving,’ ‘maintaining,’ and ‘perfecting,’ are certainly the great one-sided relationships, but ‘indwelling,’ ‘sympathizing,’ ‘participating,’ ‘accompanying,’ ‘enduring,’ ‘delighting,’ and ‘glorifying’ are relationships of mutuality which describe a cosmic community of living between God the Spirit and all [God’s] created beings.”

This is the “dominion,” the “stewardship,” that we are charged with. In our one-sided relationships, we are charged with “’making,’ ‘preserving,’ ‘maintaining,’ and ‘perfecting’”—we bring order from chaos. But in our relationships of mutuality, which are the vast majority of our relationships, our responsibilities are “’sympathizing,’ ‘participating,’ ‘accompanying,’ ‘enduring,’ ‘delighting,’ and ‘glorifying.’” This is our simultaneous power to guide the story that God is telling and responsibility to discover the story that springs from our own creative work. God accompanies, delights and glorifies with us, and as we order and care for the world we delight, and glorify with it. As we seek right relationships with our fellow humans, they are relationships of honor and equality, where we accompany and sympathize.

Now, this creation story, this laying out of God’s relationship to us and our relationship to the world, this likely comes from the time of Israel’s exile. The covenant relationship that they thought protected them from all harm seemed to have failed. The community in exile and the remnant left behind struggled to work out exactly what had happened and why. It is also from around this time that we heard the voices of the prophets like Amos, reminding Israel of the reciprocal relationship of their covenant. They, the reflection of God, had been given responsibilities, and they had failed. Israel had discovered the distortion of the phrase “have dominion over” way before the modern age got ahold of it.

Sustainable rhythms of sowing, reaping, and lying fallow had been abandoned for constant overproduction of cash crops leading to depletion of resources. Societal structures of enough for all and excess for none had become hierarchies of inequality in a trickle-up economy. Corruption in power and oppression of the weak had become commonplace.

Sounding familiar?

So it is with trepidation and shame that I read Amos’ words, still stinging these two and a half millennia later.

We who have been given the privilege of creation, we who hold the responsibility of guiding the pen that writes our history—we trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth. We take from them their portions of grain. We abhor the one who speaks the truth.

Are we perfecting? Are we glorifying?

Does God sympathize with us? Does God delight in us?

When we step back from the painting that we as humankind are creating, is it a work of order and beauty? Or is it a work of confusion and pain?

Today is Peace With Justice Sunday. It’s one of the six special Sundays in the United Methodist Church, a day when we hear inspiring messages and make a special donation above and beyond our tithe to continue our many good efforts in the world.

But for many people all over the world, today will bring neither peace nor justice. Our world remains in disorder and chaos as wars brew in Africa and the Middle East, as unjust rulers remain in power the world over, as creation waits and groans for our own creative, healing hand. When we pray for peace today, it is not just peace that we pray for. Peace alone often serves simply to preserve the status quo. The peace that we pray for, the peace that we work to create together, is a peace that brings justice rolling down like waters.

This is our responsibility- as members of Dumbarton, as the United Methodist Church, as human beings. We have been given power for a purpose. History’s pen is in our hand, and God waits breathlessly—accompanying us, enduring our failures, delighting in our triumphs, waiting to see exactly what kind of story we will write.

Amen.