In the Beginning ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
May 2, 2021
There are so many stories. The life of the world is held in our stories. Our own lives are made up of stories, one after the other, flowing into each other, weaving our lives into the lives of others, and into the past and the future, creating a tapestry, a narrative. It is our ability and our need to tell stories that helps make us human.
We honor that ability and need this month with our theme of Stories. It seemed fitting this morning to begin in the beginning, with the most ancient form of stories: creation myths.
Across time and distance, from age to age, continent to continent, and person to person, people of every culture have told stories to make meaning of our beginnings. We cannot begin to share all the richness of creation myths in one service, so throughout this month we will take time to continue to share a myth from other cultures. Today we will begin with what for many of us is the best known myth, that you heard a few minutes ago, from the Book of Genesis. The word Genesis, after all, means origin, or formation. It is the beginning of the story of the Israelites.
There are multiple creation stories contained in the Bible alone. Think of these familiar words from the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) Another version of the creation story.
But let’s return to the Genesis account I read parts of a moment ago. Let’s think about what was missing: the details about Adam and Eve, and the Garden of Eden. They weren’t there.
But if we read further, in the second chapter, we encounter another version of the story of creation. Let’s listen: “In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up…then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed.” (Genesis 2:4b-8)
Right there, just paragraphs after the original creation story, was this. You’ve probably all heard it over the years, but did you ever notice that it doesn’t quite match the details of the first version?
The important thing to remember about creation myths is that they are not necessarily true. The details don’t matter. The important thing is that every culture has these stories. From the beginning of time, we humans have sought to make sense of where we came from, of the origins of the world. What connects us across time and distance is that basic need; to make meaning, to understand. That drive to orient ourselves, to form our identities and histories, is one of the most human responses we have to our very existence.
While the details will vary widely, as we will see in upcoming services, the stories all tell of the love and caring behind the act of creation. The acts themselves, and the names, are less important than the love and creative energy poured forth. “Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food…”. (Genesis 2:9) And the Creator was portrayed as a loving force, wanting the best for all that was created. Hear the compassion in this verse: “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” (Gen.2:18)
In Ovid’s description of the Golden Age, the first age, he offered this vision of humans:
The golden age was first; when Man (still) new,
No rule but uncorrupted reason knew:
And, with a native bent, did good pursue.
Unforc’d by punishment, un-aw’d by fear…
Humans were ruled by goodness, in other words, not the fear of punishment.
Today, we Unitarian Universalists sing these words:
Earth was given as a garden, cradle for humanity;
Tree of life and tree of knowledge placed for our discovery.
Here was home for all your creatures, born of land and sky and sea,
All created in your image; all to live in harmony.” (Singing the Living Tradition, #207)
We like to tell this story too; a story of inherent goodness, compassion, beauty, harmony, abundance. A golden age, with rivers of milk and nectar, and honey oozing from the oak trees.
According to these accounts, varying in details but similar in the image of abundant life on earth that they provide, this world was a great gift, a blessing. But somewhere along the way, people lost sight of the loving nature of the world, the blessing, and began to emphasize sin, and punishment. A new theology took hold; not a theology of love and blessing, but rather one that emphasized the evil nature of humans, and their sin.
The dominant narrative in Christian traditions, ever since early medieval times, has been what is called Fall/Redemption theology. This doctrine emphasizes sin, the ‘fall’ from grace of Adam and Eve after they disobeyed God’s command to not eat the forbidden fruit. The other narrative that we have been exploring today, which is much less well-known, is known as Creation Spirituality. Creation Spirituality honors the creation, the universe, as holy, honors and integrates the wisdom and beliefs of all people, including indigenous earth-centered religions, and creates room for our ever-emerging scientific understanding of life and the cosmos.
Western religion has long focused on the narrative of sin, of falling from favor.
It’s not bad enough that this Fall/Redemption version of the story emphasizes the negative aspects of human existence: disobedience, sin, and being cast out, rejected for our behavior – separated from the beautiful garden which nourishes us and gives us abundance. It’s not bad enough that this version leaves no room for creativity, or justice, or room for love, joy, and blessing. It’s not bad enough that this story recasts nature itself as fallen, sinful, not holy.
No, what is worse is that back in the fourth and fifth centuries, St. Augustine, or Augustin, took this narrative even further, and developed it into the theology of Original Sin. According to Augustin, the sin of Adam and Eve was then passed down through their descendants into every human being ever since. Through their physical desires and their consummation of those desires, original sin was inherited by every human who was conceived. Then, in the 16th century, Jean Calvin took this even further, decreeing that humans existed in a condition of sin from the moment of their conception. Because humans were unable to reconcile their relationship with God on their own, due to their fallen and depraved state, the only way to be restored to relationship with God was through redemption by Jesus Christ. (Wikipedia)
But, what about the other story? The story that emphasized the goodness of life, the holiness of creation, the abundance and joy of this life on earth?
According to theologian Matthew Fox, the story as we have been telling it this morning has a name. He calls it Original Blessing, to contrast with the notion of original sin. It’s a story based on the concept that the creation, our universe, is a blessing, and that all that emanates from it – life itself, is a blessing as well. It is Creation Spirituality.
Matthew Fox, a former Dominican scholar ultimately banished from the Catholic Church, noted that the universe is very much older than the concept of sin. Current scientific thinking places the age of the universe at about 14 billion years, and the age of the earth at about 4.6 billion years. (International Planetarium Society www.ips-planetarium.org). All these billions of years our beautiful blue-green planet has been spinning in space. Of that time, humans recognizable in our current form have been around for about 200,000 years. As Fox points out, the Creation, with all its blessings, has been around a lot longer than the concept of human sin and depravity. We’ve been seeing ourselves as sinful and in need of redemption only for about 1400-1800 years or so. Perhaps it’s time to change the narrative, to return to the original story, of the Creation and all its life forms as good, as holy, and a blessing.
What has been lacking in the past several centuries, has been a true belief in that goodness, of the Creation as a blessing. Because of our sense of separation from nature, because humans were cast out of the garden, we lost our basic understanding that we are a part of all that is, not above it, not superior to it. Our connections have been severed. There is too much focus on what divides us, rather than what unites us.
Creation spirituality calls not for fear and punishment, but for celebration. The energy and flow of creation isn’t just present, it is abundant. At no time are we more aware of this energy, this life force, than in the spring, when every day new plants emerge from the earth, when every morning we can see things that were not visible the day before. There is tremendous fertility in the world, tremendous power, just about everywhere we look. It is our responsibility first to notice, to care, and to participate in the growth, the abundance, the life. It is our spiritual work to enjoy what is all around us: to see life as a blessing, to foster it.
We waste so much time, so much opportunity, in not noticing the abundance, in emphasizing all that’s wrong, and forgetting to be grateful for all the goodness. The damage done by the Fall/Redemption theology is visible every day in human life: from our sneaking suspicion that people are basically bad, to our willingness to isolate ourselves and others. Let’s look at some of the ways this damaging theology still appears in our world. Many of us reject people who look different or speak differently. Many continue to believe that women are inherently less worthy than men, still to be punished for succumbing to temptation in the garden, still to be controlled. We treat the natural world as somehow less than ourselves, as less important, and not connected to our well-being, as something to be exploited and controlled. We absorb messages of guilt and shame, messages that pleasure is somehow sinful, and our bodies and desires are profane and shameful.
We dishonor the great blessing we have been given when we emphasize guilt and punishment, when we look for what divides us rather than what we share.
Our meditation this morning showed us how to move through our world conscious of the blessing, and teaches us how to bless the world in return.
“I open my mouth in astonishment.
Praises fall forth with my every breath.
I bless that I am not the first, nor shall I be the last,
to wonder under the stars that everything is.
I bless that everything is, and that I am part of it all.” (Simple Amidah, Mark Belletini, in Sonata for Voice and Silence, Skinner House Books, 2008.)
My friends, as we explore origin stories, creation myths this month, I invite you to remember what they all share: the goodness, the creative energy that emerges from a loving force in the universe. Listen carefully for the similarities: all that connects us across time and cultures, rather than what divides us. If we do that, then we honor the creation, and we will find ways to bless it in return.
May it be so,
Amen.
