And God Said, Let There Be Einstein
Hebrew Scripture: Genesis 1:1-5
Gospel: John 1:1-6
The Federated
Rev. John A. Mills
Our passage from Genesis is maybe one of the most misunderstood and misused passages in the bible. It is a profound and beautiful expression of God’s love and God’s intent for the creation. It begins the tale of why God creates and how God wants to relate to us.
We impose our own context onto this scripture and misread it as a scientific statement. It is not. It is far deeper, far more important, and far more meaningful than any scientific statement can ever be. But to truly see this we need to understand the context in which it was written.
So let me tell you another story … but this one is not a moving tale. It is grim, even gruesome. But fear not … God overcomes it with light and love. Our Genesis story was written by the ancient Hebrews. They were surrounded by many groups of people. All of these groups believed in some variation of the creation story I’m going to tell you. We know this story from an ancient Assyrian text called the Enumu Elish. When the Hebrew scriptures talk about Ba’al and the priests of Ba’al, they are talking about gods of this creation story.
[From Walter Wink; Engaging the Powers; pp14ff:]
In the beginning, the god Apsu (the fresh water) and the goddess Tiamat (the salt water) bore Mummu (the mist). From them also issued the younger gods, whose frolicking makes so much noise that the elder gods cannot sleep. So they resolve to kill them. This plot of the elder gods is discovered. One of the younger gods, Ea kills Apsu, and his wife Tiamat pledges revenge. Ea and the younger gods in terror turn for salvation to their youngest god, Marduk. He exacts a steep price: if he succeeds, he must be given chief and undisputed power in the assembly of the gods. Having extorted this promise, he catches Tiamat in a net, drives an evil wind down her throat, shoots an arrow that bursts her distended belly and pierces her heart. He then splits her skull with a club, and scatters her blood in out-of-the-way places. He stretches out her corpse full length, and from it creates the cosmos.
After the world has been created, the story continues. The gods imprisoned by Marduk for siding with Tiamat complain of the poor meal service in their jail. Marduk and Ea therefore execute one of the captive gods, and from his blood, Ea creates human beings to be servants to the gods.
Can you imagine living with such a gruesome, awful belief? Yet all around the Hebrews this is what folks believed. And it isn’t just a fairy tale. It said significant things about who the gods were and who we were. Fundamentally, the creation is a child of violence. Violence is natural. War is normal. Chaos is normal. The creation came about by a victorious and brutal war. We wouldn’t be here unless there had been this violent war. Further it was the actions of a female (Tiamat) that are the motivations for the war. It is the feminine that represents disorder and chaos. And only because of the slyness and strength of the male god Marduk is order imposed on chaos. Note that order, not peace, is the goal. Chaos is always returning, and order must be imposed constantly. And the most effective way to impose order is to violently, brutally vanquish chaos.
Chaos is embodied in our enemies. And since chaos is normal and always present, there must always be an enemy somewhere lurking. Enemies are not redeemable. They must be destroyed.
Further, humanity is created from the blood of a murdered god. Our very origin is violence. Killing is in our blood. We are incapable of living peaceably on our own. We need a strong leader to impose order. We are created slaves to the gods and to their anointed human surrogate – typically a King or dictator.
And this belief
was not just an isolated, cultic belief. It was widespread over space and time.
It recurs in various forms in
So why do we speak of this context this morning? Because thousands of years ago, the one true God spoke to the Hebrew people and set us on a long journey from chaos and violence to love and harmony. Our Abrahamic creation story says something altogether different than the story of Apsu, Tiamut, and Marduk. It is an antidote to their nightmarish vision of creation. It is a beautiful, enormously significant story that set the stage for the epic of which we continue to be a part. The story of our evolving relationship with a loving God is the story of our encounter with a God who holds no grudges, who reaches out to one and all, who transforms enemies into friends, and who is vulnerable and sacrificial. Rather than exterminate our enemies, we are called to love them, transform them and be transformed ourselves. The center of our belief is love, not violence or even the imposition of order. Love trumps everything. And it all begins with God’s loving creativity. God did not create to impose order. God did not create to vanquish enemies. God did not create to have slaves. God created out of love. God created to love and to be loved. God set us free, made us a little less than God, so we could choose or not choose to love God. And God would from Genesis up to this very day reach out to us and lure us and engage us into a divine free-will relationship.
Further, creation is not bad or dead material to be used. The creation is fundamentally good and a reflection of the loving God. Evil is derivative. It is not basic or fundamental to the creation. It occurs when we turn from God. It grows only if we become alienated from God and try to be God. It can be overcome, but only by love; never by violence.
The creation story is Genesis was revolutionary for its time. It’s revolutionary for our time. This is the significance of these few verses. What we need to carry away from this passage is that creation is fundamentally good – that includes us – all of us, and that God loves all of creation – all of us, friend and foe.
But what about science? That is a large part of our own context and influences deeply our understanding of creation. For some it is the sole source of understanding for creation. For us it should be one source … influential in telling us how God created. But it can never tell us why God created and what God’s expectations are for us.
And God said, let there be Einstein …
Prior to Einstein’s formulation of Relativity, the accepted understanding of creation was that space and time were eternal, without beginning and without end. There was no “in the beginning” when God created. Then Einstein came along and formulated that space and time were not absolutes, but relative. And indeed, there was a beginning to time and space. There was a beginning to creation. Scientists in the early 20th century resisted this. But Einstein’s theories were demonstrated as valid over and over again. Now scientists accept that there was a beginning.
And they called the beginning the Big Bang. What happened at the Big Bang? Light happened. And God said, “Let there be light …” and there was a Big Bang and creation continues. By the by, the Hebrew for “In the beginning God created …” can be just as validly translated, “When God began to create …” without the finality of our more popular translation. God rested on the seventh day. But on that day, God invited us into the creative process and creation continues to this day. We are co-creators with God.
Now the ancients didn’t know about the Big Bang. Maybe they intuited the magic and mystical nature of light. Maybe it was an antidote to the darkness of life. But I find the congruencies interesting.
The bible is not a scientific text. The seven days of creation simply represented how the pre-scientific ancients envisioned God’s creative act. They knew God created the universe, but they did not know how. What was important in what they said and continue to say to us today is that the creation is good, God is love, and we are free. This is far more profound and far more lasting than any scientific theory. Scientific theories come and go and are modified constantly. But God is love is eternal.
The bible is the story of our evolving love-hate relationship with God. God and ourselves are in a divine dance. God created us free – free to love and free to hate. God loves us and wants us to freely love God. God became human in Jesus to help us love God intimately and personally. God cares so much that we love that God would not remain a distant sovereign, but became a poor, vulnerable, fragile human.
Genesis 1 is the start of this great on-going epic. It isn’t done. God and we have a lot of work to do on our relationship. But if we are faithful, if we are good stewards of God’s creation, and if we walk with Jesus, our relationship will be fulfilling and loving.
God’s grace and love be with you …
Amen.