Scripture: Genesis 1:6-13; John 1:6-9; Exodus 32; Acts 8:9-24 Series: Creation
Preaching from Genesis 1:6-13 and John 1:6-9, the sermon argues that creation proceeds by distinctions (light/dark, sky/sea, sea/land, living/non-living) and that the deepest distinction is between message and messenger: Jesus is the light and the message, while John the Baptist, the Bible, holy people, and the church are messengers who point to him. Confusing the two is idolatry, illustrated by the Golden Calf, Simon the magician, and Calvin’s ‘idol factory’ heart; idolatry’s great enemy is patience, a fruit of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is fully God and present with us without being us (panentheism, not pantheism). The sermon turns to baptism’s waters of creation and to stewardship, previewing Covenant UMC’s stewardship campaign and a congregational conversation, and closes with a Dayenu meditation on God’s overflowing generosity from creation through cross, resurrection, and the gift of the Spirit.
Illustrations: office-same-picture-meme, angels-on-a-pin, heartache-vs-heart-attack, maim-shmaim-word-play, vestige-footprints, golden-calf, calvin-idol-factory, simon-magus, umc-baptism-liturgy-chaos, passover-dayenu
September 17, 2023
Genesis 1:6-13
John 1:6-9
“And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.” Genesis 1:6-13 NRSV
“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” John 1:6-9 NRSV
Office meme
Corporate needs you to tell the difference between these two pictures.
They’re the same picture.
Distinctions are really important in life.
Distinctions were really important at creation
There’s light and there’s darkness, and they are separated. There is sky and water, and they are separated. Creation takes place along these lines of distinction, distinguishing between two forms. Creation does not take place with an idea of radical building, but the use of distinctions; there’s a logic to what God is doing. We go from the nothingness to light and darkness. What are the sources of light and darkness? We know from John that it is Jesus. The word is the source of light. In these moments of creation, before the sun and the moon and the stars in the sky, the light which shown in the darkness was Jesus. This is the same light that’s shown in John the Baptist, when we read this passage from the gospel of John. He wasn’t the light, but he came to testify to the light, a true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world. The light which was there from the very beginning was coming in a different Way. So in this, in this beginning, in this creation where Jesus is the source of light in the universe, first we have a distinction between the waters above and the waters below. The word for water in Hebrew is Maim, and the word for sky is sh’maim. That is sky, is the word got water with a prefix signifying up or above. The word for sky is waters above. When you stand on the beach and look out over a sea, that makes perfect sense.
And then we have a distinction on the third day between water and land. The third day also offers us the first forms of life: vegetation.
We have a lot of distinctions. The distinction between the sky and the sea. The distinction between the sea and the land. The distinction between animate and inanimate, that’s what we have with the vegetation. It’s the first animate objects or it’s the first living things, living and non-living. We have it all. We have a lot of distinctions that are made. And then we have in John this distinction between John the Baptist and Jesus, the word of God, which ultimately comes down to a distinction between message and messenger. Jesus is the message. Jesus is the content of the good news. The gospel. John is the messenger. He is not the word, he’s not the light, but he shows others to the light. This can be confusing.
Philosophers and theologians talk about distinctions in exhausting ways that don’t seem to matter. A classic question of medieval philosophy was how many angels could dance on the head of a pin? It seems like the most useless questions imaginable, at a first glance. The issue, though, is not the amount, but whether angels are material or non-material beings. Can angels be present around us and not follow the laws of material reality, or are they just hidden and we will bump into them or do they even exist? All of these interesting thoughts come out of this seemingly absurd question about dancing angels.
Another philosophical distinction that seems empty at first is between pantheism and Panentheism. There is a one-syllable distinction that makes a big difference. There are other words like this: heartache and heart attack. You know, there’s only a one syllable difference between heartache and heart attack. Yep. There is a major difference. There’s a one syllable difference between pantheism and pantheism, but there’s a major reality of difference. Pantheism is that God is everywhere. Trees=God, mice=God, birds=God pools, God, okay, this is pantheism.
Panentheism is about the presence of God. God is in the trees. God is in the birds. God is present but not equivalent to creation. There’s a distinction that matters. We don’t worship creation. We worship the God who created everything. We see evidence in creation. Vestiges in creation. Vestige is this great Latin word that means footprints. You see footprints of God in creation, but God is not creation. With John the Baptist, we see vestiges of the Good News of Jesus Christ, but John the Baptist is not Jesus Christ. With holy people that we have known, we see evidence of Jesus, but they’re not the same as Jesus. They aren’t who we worship. They point, they testify to God and God is present with him. In a similar way, the Bible is a messenger of Jesus, it is not Jesus. If we don’t have the messenger, we don’t have Jesus, but the messenger is not Jesus.
This is ultimately what happened with the Golden Calf during the Exodus from Egypt. Moses was on the mountaintop and the people wanted a god to worship. They wanted an object to look at it. They didn’t care what it was. They wanted to See the message, not just hear it. So Aaron made the calf. They were impatient, so they began to worship the messenger and not the message. This is what idolatry does. It takes something good, and then twists and distorts it. In the case of the golden calf, it was the desire of the people to follow God, which is good on its own. But they didn’t want to wait for Moses to come down the mountain, so they had Aaron form his own God.
John Calvin called the human heart an idol factory. Idolatry is not a question of worship but attention. Religious devotion is about our attention. What are we attending? Who are we attending? This attention can go in a million different directions and we can create idols like sacred cows. Our world today is not anymore idolatrous than previous generations, there is simply an easier way to find idols.
As long as there has been a Christian faith, there have been people who turn truth about God into idols. In the book of acts, Simon the magician saw the apostles healing and he wanted to learn their secrets so that he could exploit them and make a profit. Churches and businesses and politicians and rulers have exploited the church and the good of Jesus Christ for their own ends from the beginning. They have sold people idolatry and not truth. Good-hearted people have been deceived by charlatans again and again.
I say that to remind us that there is no space safe from the temptation to idolatry.
The great enemy of idolatry, however, is patience. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit for a reason. The Holy Spirit both gives us patience and encourages us to be patient by faith. We don’t need to rush to the next thing because we have been given faith.
The Holy Spirit is with us when we cannot see it because the Holy Spirit is not a created reality. The Holy Spirit is fully God and is fully present with us. This is the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is with us, but it isn’t us. It is an important distinction to make.
In the baptism liturgy of the United Methodist Church, we look back to the waters of creation, the centrality of waters. Eternal Father, When nothing existed but chaos, you swept across the dark waters and brought forth light.
And when we read this passage from Genesis slowly, we see how out of waters everything came, all existence is that all life came from the waters. There was water and sky and nothing else. Baptism offers us a distinction, a distinction between outside the kingdom of heaven and inside the kingdom of heaven. Now, the love and power of God on someone’s life is not dependent on baptism or on the church. The church is a tool for God. Baptism is a tool, it is not the only way God acts. Baptism is a gift beyond anything else. It is a gift to offer the waters of life to a child, to a teen, to a grownup, to offer the waters of life, to claim the power of God, to claim the forgiveness of sins, to claim the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting through these waters. Baptism is not an end, but a beginning, a beginning of new life in Christ. And that beginning can take place when you’re one month old or 101 years old. We all have to begin again. In Christ, there is a distinction to be made with this language of gift and this language of creation. There’s another important word that comes in: the language of stewardship. We’re stewards of our gifts, caretakers of them. God calls us to be caretakers of what God has given us. Do not waste the gifts that God has given you. This is true for all creation, for all the waters and vegetation and animals and people to be stewards. It’s also true for our own lives, for our own resources to be stewards, caretakers of what God has given us and for our church, for Covenant to be a steward of what God has given us, to not be wasteful of the gifts, to look rightly and care for the gifts we have been given. Sometimes that means investing in the gifts we have been given. In a few weeks, we’re gonna talk more directly about a stewardship campaign for Covenant United Methodist Church, ways of supporting the church for the next year. Ways of participating in the awesome generosity of God. Next week we’re going to have a church conversation after this service to talk about where we are as a church, what has happened during this pastoral transition. What I’ve learned through the cottage meetings, about the opportunities we have and the challenges we have. Throughout, I want us to hold on to this grace God gives us in creation. This grace of stewardship, of care, care for what has been given that we see most clearly throughout creation, the care and love and generosity of God.
In the classic Passover Seder, there’s a section called Dayenu, which in Hebrew, means it would’ve been enough. And it goes through the Exodus story part by part.
If He had brought us out of Egypt, it would have been enough. If He had executed justice upon the Egyptians, it would have been enough. If He had split the sea for us, it would have been enough. If He had fed us manna, it would have been enough.
If God had done such and such, it would have been enough. I think Dayenu also works for creation. And we’ll continue this spirit of Dayenu throughout Genesis 1.
- If God had created, had separated the sky from the sea, it would’ve been enough.
- If God had separated the sea from the land, it would’ve been enough.
- If God had separated the living from the non-living, it would have been enough. Yet God did more and more and more to the point of creating all of us. And yet, God did more beyond creation of seeing the brokenness and sending his son Jesus Christ. And God did more, by offering Jesus for us, for our life and our salvation. And God did more to the point of death on the cross. And God did more to the point of resurrection. And God did more to the point of sending the Holy Spirit to be with us, not to replace us, but to be with us. Not to be equivalent to us but to be present with us, fully. The God of all creation is not equal to creation but present in creation because God is three-in-one. The Trinity shows us how the Holy Spirit with us is fully God, not partially God, not a messenger of God, but all God. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray, Heavenly Father, Thank you for your great gift of creation that offers us light and air and life itself. We thank you for not leaving us alone in our brokenness but sending Jesus, your son, to give us new life in your kingdom. Help us to receive your patience so we don’t fall into the temptation but boldly live a life of love.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.