Scripture: Genesis 2:4-9; John 1:29-34; 1 Corinthians 15:55 Series: Creation
Second sermon in a Creation series reading Genesis and John together. Preaching Genesis 2:4-9, Pruitt frames the second creation account as a fresh-angle retelling (not a contradiction) of the first, focusing on humanity formed from messy, clinging ‘dust’ (apar/adamah). He reinterprets the tree of the knowledge of good and evil not as withheld good but as the deceptive lure of dualism—neat good/evil buckets that eliminate the need for faith. True clarity is found not in moral systems but in the person of Jesus Christ. Turning to John 1:29-34, he argues Jesus’ baptism inaugurates the church and is pure grace (sola gratia), not a one-time soul-cleansing. Tied to a stewardship drive, he contrasts the lean, legacy-cost-free church plant with the dusty, debt-laden, beautiful legacy of Covenant UMC—and declares he is called to embrace the dust. God anoints the dust, sending Jesus made of the same dust to offer mercy and an unfinished church with room for all.
Illustrations: premarital-counseling-love-story, hebrew-genesis-illegible, parents-liquor-cabinet, good-bad-buckets, baptism-car-wash, church-plant-legacy-costs, forrest-gump-seat-taken
October 15, 2023
Genesis 2:4b-9
John 1:29-34
Anoint the Dust
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 plant of the field was yet in the earth and no vegetation of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground, but a stream would rise from the earth and water the whole face of the ground— 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. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
- Genesis 2:4b-9
“The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.”” John 1:29-34 NRSV https://bible.com/bible/2016/jhn.1.29-34.NRSV
Whenever I have pre-marital counseling session, one of the first things I try to do is ask the couple to tell the story of how they met and fell in love with no input from the other partner. So one person starts, it doesn’t matter who, and they say their side of the story. Usually, it’s roughly similar, but there are always new things that come out when you have a different perspective on the story.
Today’s reading from Genesis starts with a different perspective on creation.
The language is different than Genesis one. I know this not because I’m a great Bible scholar, but because I’m a really bad reader of Hebrew. I can read Genesis one and I can’t read Genesis two. The language is so different that it is illegible to me without a lot of work.
Highlighting this difference doesn’t mean a chapter is wrong or it’s different or that scripture is wrong. But we can receive God’s wisdom in a fresh way while reading Genesis two. How should we understand what God is doing here?
John
The John passage has another big question for us with the baptism of Jesus. This is, on the surface, a confusing scene. Baptism is about the forgiveness of sins, but Jesus doesn’t have any sin. Why is he being baptized? It is a very good question. Why are there two creation accounts? Why does Jesus get baptized? Why are humans made from the dust?
Series Intro
My friends, we are continuing our series on Creation, looking at Genesis 1 and John 1 together to understand more Christ’s presence in Creation, God’s power in creation, and the importance of creation for us today. Today, Anointing the Dust.
Genesis 2:3 begins in a way that Genesis 1 could have started:
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 vegetation of the field had yet sprung up.
When we read earth in the Old Testament and the new, it is just as true to read it as land or ground. There is not a planetary conception in genesis 2. Genesis 1 offers us a cosmic account. Genesis 2 stays close to the land. We are not in the universal here but the particular. We are not in the sky but on the ground.
Other than the particularity, what is unique here is that humanity is made before vegetation, before animals, before birds, before any of it. Again, this doesn’t contradict Genesis one. It’s not wrong. It’s looking at creation from a different angle. And both of these have been given to us in scripture. They’re gifts for us.
As the text continues, “Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of the life.”
Humanity is formed of the dust of the ground. The word for man in Hebrew Adam is quite similar to the word for earth or land, Adama. The ground around which people live, the ground from which humans are created.
The word for dust is apar and could mean dust or dirt or plaster or even ashes. I really like this language of dust because dust is messy. It’s annoying. Dust is dirty. It clings to things. Humans weren’t crafted out of marble or granite or even limestone, but dust. It’s messy and we get messy really quickly with dust.
Genesis two is famous for this creation of humanity out of dust, and also for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What does that mean? We make a lot of assumptions about this tree and about this forbidden fruit. One of those assumptions has to do with thinking that the tree is good and that God is keeping something from humanity. That’s why it is forbidden. Kind of like when you were growing up and how you saw your parents’ liquor cabinet. It is forbidden. It is. It may be above the refrigerator, no one would ever suspect it’s above the refrigerator, but you know, you can’t go there. And there is of course, this adolescent desire for a lot of us. Once we find out what we can’t do, we wanna do it. But I don’t think that that’s what’s going on here. And it doesn’t make sense with the nature of God. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is more like a rotten fruit. It’s a deception in itself. God is not preventing us from gaining knowledge or protecting us from false knowledge, from lies, from dualism. This bifurcation of good on one side and evil on the other. The story of salvation, the story of biblical history is that there’s no dualism. It’s all God. God overcomes, overwhelms, destroys death. O death. Where is th victory? O death. Where is thy sting? But it can be kind of messy to say this, you know, to say that the cross out narrates evil, overcomes it. It’s a lot cleaner and neater to just to have good and evil. You have good guys and bad guys, you put ‘em in the buckets. You have good countries and bad countries. You have good states and bad states. You have good teams and bad teams. Let’s just put ‘em in the buckets. But that’s not what’s going on here at all. We’re tempted to fall into this trap, seeking what is nice and neat, seeking a system wherein we don’t need to have faith in God. Because if we know what is good and what is not good immediately, where do we need faith in God? If everything is clear and obvious, there is no space for faith. And then if we think we have it all figured out, whenever life goes sideways, we are lost. And life always goes sideways. Instead, in the midst of the brokenness of the world, our clarity is not in our system of morals. It’s not in our theology, but in the person of Jesus Christ and the love of God revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. With baptism too, it can get kind of messy. Baptism seems like it should be the clearest thing of all. We baptize someone in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They’re forgiven for their sins. They’re good. We’re done. That’s not what happens. Like we all know people who’ve been baptized, who have turned away from God. Some people say the baptism didn’t stick. Huge controversies over the years have taken place between different Christian traditions, over baptism, over whether babies can be baptized, whether you need to be an adult to be baptized. I think there’s also been misunderstandings about the baptism of Jesus. We baptize babies in this church because it is a gift. Baptism is a gift. Sola gratia, only Grace. It is not a work. It is not something somebody can earn. Baptism marks an entrance into a new relationship to other people and to God. And Jesus was baptized in order to inaugurate this system. It is the transition from the Old Testament to the New Testament in the person of John the Baptist. It’s not a one time car wash of our soul, so that our soul will never get dirty again. Instead, baptism marks a gift, an entrance into the community of faith we call the Christian Church, where we each need each other. We’re tied in the person and work of the Holy Spirit to grow in grace. Serving, giving, loving, taking care of our neighbors, taking care of each other, taking care of what we are given. It is not always clean. It is not always easy. When I was younger, I contemplated whether or not to become a church planter. I was asked to think about it, pray about it. And so I thought a lot about church plants, what goes into them, why they exist, different things like that. One of the realizations that I had is that one of the big reasons to have a church plant is not to add vitality to bring new voices, new structures, things like that. It is that you get to cut out legacy costs: a church plant has no legacy costs. Legacy costs in the church can be large, they can be messy. There are beautiful legacies in older churches, but there are also complicated ones. There’s debt, there’s underused facilities, there is a high H V A C bill: There are people with very different experiences and expectations. There are Also different visions about what the church should be about, what it used to be, about what it can be and where it is going. And it is not an easy thing to align those visions. A church plant usually has one vision and no legacy costs. They’re able to stay lean. I didn’t feel called to that cleanness. I didn’t feel called to cut away the past, to leave the legacy costs as somebody else’s responsibility. I felt called to embrace the history of the generations, even when it’s dusty, to support people who have found their spiritual home in locations that need new paint or washed carpet. 52:22 We are continuing our stewardship drive this week. If you weren’t here last week, I hope you’re able to grab a pledge card to support, to pledge your support of this congregation over the next year. There is a legacy here at Covenant, a beautiful one. There are people whose lives have been changed. There are also powerful ministries going on right now that need support, that are impaired because of the debt, because of the repair timeline of the facilities. There is also a community outside our walls in need of grace and Jesus and love and new life and direction. There’s opportunity there. I hope you will join with me and, and stay in the dust to support what God is doing here to anoint the dust because that’s really what God does at creation. God anoints the dust, blesses it. God didn’t say, “these people are too dirty for me.” Something we often say or think of others. No, God sent his son Jesus to be made of the same dust as us, to offer us life. To offer us a new family, a new community, not based on the judgment of good and evil, but mercy. This is the church. Baptism is our way into the church and at his baptism, Jesus blesses the water and creates the church.
The church we enter is not finished. I think of the beginning of Forest Gump, when Forest is getting on the bus for the first time. He tries to sit down, but the kid says, “can’t sit here: seat’s taken.”
No, the church is not finished. We have space for others and Christ has space for us.
May we support God’s legacy here. May we be unafraid of the dust of creation but instead give thanks for the life of faith which calls us out of the dust and into the light.
Let us pray, Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of life and gift of love. Thank you for giving us life in the midst of death. Help us to remember how you welcome us and to do the same for others. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.