Genesis 1.1-2.4, Matthew
6.25-end
I’d like to take you on a
little imaginative journey today, back in time to the sixth century before
Christ, and across the world to the city of Babylon. It is one of the greatest
cities on earth, a cradle of civilisation and science, inhabited by people from
across the known world, from every background and nation, each with their own
cultures and stories. Some have chosen to live there but others have been taken
there by force, exiled and sometimes enslaved people from the nations the
Babylonians have conquered.
Imagine we are members of one
of those groups forced to make a new home here. We are from Jerusalem, which
now lies in ruins, destroyed by our captors. Years have passed, and those among
us who remember Jerusalem are getting old and dying, leaving a new generation
which doesn’t know the faith, the customs, the stories that had shaped our
lives back there.
Something needs to be done.
The stories must be gathered together and written down, so that they can’t be
lost. So that’s what we do. Scribes began to set to work, shaping the stories
so they will be memorable, telling them, so they won’t be forgotten.
Let’s imagine ourselves,
sitting around a fire in some rough shelter in Babylon, after another day’s hard
graft, listening to our storytellers. Like all good storytellers, they start
with something familiar, or something that sounds as if it will be, and the
most familiar story in Babylon is the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian Creation
story, known and told across the whole of the ancient Near East. It is named
for its opening words “When on high” – that’s what Enuma Elish means. As the
Jewish storytellers begin their story, they start with almost identical words, “When God created” – we think we know what’s coming because the
phrase is almost identical in the original languages. But as we listen we’re in
for a surprise.
The Enuma Elish, the creation
story we take for granted, that we hear around us all the time, goes on to
describe how Apsu the god of freshwater, and Tiamat, the sea goddess – who are
symbols of primeval chaos - create a whole race of gods who fight with one
another, kill each other and dismember each other’s bodies in an orgy of
violence, creating the world as pretty much as a by-product. Eventually they
make humanity to be their slaves, to do the work they don’t want to do
themselves.
That’s the kind of story
we’re expecting to hear. And at first, it sounds as if the story might turn out
to be the same. There are chaotic waters, like Apsu and Tiamat, after all. But
then it takes a very different turn. Instead of a host of divine beings at war
with one another, there is one God who brings calm and peace and beauty and
fruitfulness. And instead of humanity being created as an afterthought, as
slaves at the bidding of these cruel gods, they are the crown of creation, the
delight of the God who made them, entrusted with the care of the rest of the
creation. Again and again, this God looks at what he has made and declares “it
is good, it is good, it is very good…”
The story we are hearing, as
we sit in exile, takes us off guard. It is wonderful, but, can it be true…? What
would it mean if it was true…? Not true in the sense of being a literal
historical account, but true in its message, that God loves what God has made,
that it didn’t come about as the by-product of divine warfare, but was dreamed
up in love, in all its rich diversity. What would it mean if life was not seen
as a burden, one day’s hard graft after another, but a delight to the one who
made it, designed to be enjoyed, even having a day a week set aside simply to
do that? What would it mean if the world and everything in it, including us,
was good and beloved in the eyes of God?
Now, I can just imagine someone
among us sitting in that ancient Babylonian audience piping up at this point, “but
it doesn’t feel good, this world that we’re living in. It feels brutal, and
oppressive, and insecure, and we are treated as less than nothing. It feels
much more like we were created by malicious gods who didn’t care about us.”
And that’s often how it has felt, of course. Whether its enslavement in Babylon or
earthquakes in Turkey or war in Ukraine, or something more personal and closer
to home, the world can feel far from blessed.
But maybe the storytellers
might answer, keep listening, and let the tale unfold, and see what happens
next. You’re right. The world often feels like a terrible mess, but see what
that God does about it. So we keep listening and we hear that we’re not the first
people to feel far from home, expelled from Eden, out in the wilderness, but we
also hear about the God who goes out into that wilderness with his people, who speaks
to them from burning bushes, and rescues them from an earlier enslavement Egypt,
and travels with them through the desert. He promises them that he won’t
forsake them, and he doesn’t. Suffering is real and baffling, and the Bible
never soft pedals that, but God’s love is real too, and unstoppable.
If we had been there in that
Babylonian captivity, hearing that story, daring to trust its truth as it spoke
of our belovedness and the belovedness of the world, what would it have done to
us? Instead of swallowing the lie that
we were worthless, made only to work for cruel and capricious warring forces –
human or divine – that ruled our world, it would have given us the strength to
endure and to live and love again, eventually returning to our country and
rebuild it. And that’s exactly what it did, and what it has continued to do for
Jewish people ever since. As Christians we believe it was and still is, wonderfully confirmed by
the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, the one who shows us that “God
with us” in flesh and blood. As Jesus reminds us in the Gospel story
today, and as this week’s earthquake has
reminded us, controlling the world around us is often completely beyond our
power, but knowing we aren’t alone, that
life isn’t pointless, that every person matters to God is a vital antidote to
the anxious, and usually pointless, striving Jesus talks about.
And it all starts with that
foundational Creation story. It's hard for us to understand how revolutionary
this version was, how subversive, how life-changing, because we’ve lived with
it for so long. We are more likely to fuss about whether it is literally true,
and how it relates to scientific understandings – a great amount of energy is
wasted on that sort of debate - but it’s not a story about faith versus
science; it’s a story which asks us to consider what kind of God we believe in,
and what our belief says to us and about us, and about all the rest of his
creation, discerning his hand in all his works, and his likeness in all his
children, as today’s special prayer put it. Do we look around us and hear God
say “it is good”, and therefore treasure God’s world? Do we look at one another
and hear God say “it is good” and treasure one another? Do we look in the
mirror and hear God say “it is good” and treasure ourselves? What difference
might it make to the world if we did?
Amen
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