University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

Video | Download Video
Audio Player Below | Download Audio

Genesis 1:1 – 2:3
A Meditation by Robert E. Dunham
University Presbyterian Church
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
June 6, 2010

              The premise of the Judeo-Christian creation story is that at the beginning of time, God was…that at the end of time, God will be…that even now, God is. The story of the creation is thus a central story of our faith.  But with it comes a problem, as well.  Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are among the most important in Scripture. They are among the best known… and some of the most frequently misunderstood. [1] 

              As people who are rooted in the community of faith formed around these Scriptures, we thus need to know what these texts are and what they are not. To define them simply, the creation narratives are theological affirmations about the relationship between the Creator and creation.  We would do well to study them with that in mind, resisting all the while two popular modern temptations. On the one hand, there is the temptation to treat the creation story in Genesis as historical, as a report of what actually happened.  This temptation has been and will be embraced by those who regard science as a threat and want to protect the peculiar claims of the narrative. If these materials are regarded as historical, then a collision with scientific theories is predictable.  At the same time, there is another, opposite temptation: to treat these narratives as myth, as “statements which announce what has always been and will always be true of the world.”  This temptation will be pursued by those who want to harmonize the narrative with scientific perceptions and who seek to make the texts rationally acceptable.

              Over against these temptations, Walter Brueggemann urges us to regard the creation story neither as history nor as myth. Rather, he says, we should insist on seeing these texts as a proclamation of God’s decisive dealing with the creation. He says the whole cluster of words – creator/creation/create/creature – are confessional words (faith words, if you will), freighted with a peculiar meaning.  These words are God-centered, covenantal affirmations that are so central to our understanding. Says Brueggemann, 

The grammar of these chapters presumes that there is a Subject (creator), a transitive verb (creates) and an object (creation). The single sentence, “Creator creates creation,” is decisive for everything. It is not subject to inversion. The sentence asserts that God does something and continues to care about what he does…. The subject of the sentence, then, is never separated from the object; the object is surely never separated from the subject. Finally, the verb that links them is irreversible…. Creator creates creation. Subject, verb, object.  This is the peculiar “grammar of creation” in Israel [and the church].[2]

              Now, why is it so important to get the grammar right? What possible difference does it make for us? I would argue that such grammar, properly understood and appropriated, is the ground of reverence, which is an essential ingredient in a balanced life and an important key to the future of the creation we share with all the peoples of earth. The philosopher Paul Woodruff suggests that reverence is the virtue that keeps people from trying to act like gods. “To forget that you are only human,” says Woodruff, “to think you can act like a god – that is the opposite of reverence.”[3] Many of us recognize that the culture in which we live reveres money and power, education and spirituality, but Woodruff argues that true reverence cannot be for anything that we human beings can make or manage by ourselves.  By definition, he says, reverence is the recognition of something greater than the self – something that is beyond human creation or control or understanding.[4]

              Barbara Taylor tells of a Native American elder who says he begins teaching about reverence by steering his students to the nearest tree.  “Do you know that you didn’t make this tree?” he asks them.  If they say yes, then he knows they are on their way.  Taylor says, “Reverence stands in awe of something – something that dwarfs the self, that allows human beings to sense the full extent of our limits – so that we can begin to see one another more reverently as well.”[5]

              How different might our world be today—in the Middle East, in the Gulf of Mexico, in the war rooms and halls of power, in our own homes – if reverence were the watchword of our lives? A deep-seated sense of awe, an inherent reverence toward Creator and creation, might well be the virtue most needed by the human family today.

              How do we learn to stand in awe before the timeless Creator? Such reverence seems to come naturally to some people – particularly, I think, to those who live close to the land…who pay attention to the earth. I think of Wendell Berry’s character Jayber Crow, who never loses his perspective of the appropriate order of things, and so … well, notices. Late in his life he reflects:

I can’t look back from where I am now and feel that I have been very much in charge of my life…. I have made plans enough, but I see now that I have never lived by plan…. Nearly everything that has happened to me has happened by surprise. All the important things have happened by surprise. And whatever has been happening usually has happened before I had time to expect it.  The world doesn’t stop because you are in love or in mourning or need time to think. And so when I have thought I was in my story or in charge of it, I really have been only on the edge of it, carried along. Is this because we are in an eternal story that is happening [only] partly in time?

…. [Still,] I try not to let good things go by unnoticed. In spring the foliage slowly closes in the prospects from all the windows and the porch. When the trees are in full leaf, this place, close to the road as it is, seems remote and set apart. When the leaves fall, the distances lengthen all around. The river is more visible from the house then, and I can see the pastures and cornfields on the far side, and beyond them the hills.  Some days a strong breeze fairly fills the place. Every leaf moves, and the sound is like a long breath.  Sometimes there is a breeze that moves the leaves without a sound.[6]

              For Jayber Crow and many of his non-fictional kinfolk, a deep-seated reverence comes naturally. It gives them a healthy perspective on their lives, on their place within God’s creation, within God’s story. For others of us, I suspect, reverence is a discipline that takes practice. And so it is important for us to do two things, I believe. The first is to immerse ourselves in these stories from Genesis, to remind us of who we are and whence we’ve come, to help us recall the proper order of the simple sentence: Creator creates creation.  The second is to pay attention to the creation itself, to keep our eyes and ears open for opportunities to see and hear…so as to recognize the remarkable gift we and all the inhabitants of the earth have been given. Having recently spent two weeks exploring the extraordinary geological and geographical treasures of Patagonia and the southern Andes, I have returned in profound awe and deep reverence before the remarkable gift of this earth…and the Creator who has given it to us.

              But you don’t have to go to the ends of the earth to see it. Walk the Bolin Creek trail and listen for the birds. Step into your own backyard and study the leaves on the trees. Watch that spider spinning a web outside your bedroom window. Pay close attention to the baby asleep down the hall. Take stock of your own vulnerability, your own mortality. Remember the grammar of faith that lies at the heart of Genesis: “Creator creates creation,” and so remember who and whose you are…and whence you’ve come.

              At the beginning of time, God was. At the end of time, God will be. Even now, God is. Creator creates creation. In such trust lies the wellspring of reverence. And reverence… reverence is the beginning of wisdom.[8]

[1] Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, Atlanta, John Knox Press, 1982, 11.

[2] Brueggemann, 17.

[3] Paul Woodruff, Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, 4, as cited by Barbara Brown Taylor in An Altar in the World, : A Geography of Faith, New York, HarperOne, 2009, 21.

[4] Taylor, 21.

[5] Taylor, 21.

[6] Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow, New York, Counterpoint Books, 2000, 322, 323-324.

[7] Jeffrey Rowthorn, “Creating God, Your Fingers Trace,” The Presbyterian Hymnal, 134.

[8] Proverbs 1:7 says “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” “Fear” in its context can well be understood as “awe” or “reverence.” Old Testament scholar Christine Yoder says, “to talk of the ‘fear of YHWH’ we need to include everything from obedience to moments of trembling. The whole gamut, which reflects certain beliefs about God, humanity, and the necessity of a relationship between the two, is, for the sages, ‘the beginning of knowledge.’” Yoder, Proverbs, Abingdon Old Testament Commentary, Nashville, Abingdon Press, 2009, 7.