Made to Order
Genesis 1:1-2:3
I wouldn’t exactly call myself a neat freak, but if my environment is in disorder, I have a hard time focusing. If my desk is in disarray, I can’t even begin to think about sermon preparation. Then again, my desk is never in disarray, so maybe I am a neat freak. The church is another matter. In an old building such as this, with decades’ worth of bric-a-brac accumulating in every corner—hinges, hooks, and miscellaneous hardware of all kinds, half-empty paint cans, fallen wooden ceiling panels, vintage vacuum cleaners, boxes of bulletins from 25 years ago, along with a steady stream of new donations of clothing and household items—disorder comes with the territory. Nevertheless, I have made it my mission—or at least one of my missions—to bring some order to this chaos.
When I arrived three years ago, one of my first self-assigned tasks was to organize the parlor, which at that time was basically a storage closet filled with mismatched furniture, unused pews, and a shag green carpet. Since then, I’ve been reclaiming one space at a time: my office, AKA the Bogert Library; the former Kiddie Kollege downstairs, now serving as our thrift store; the sexton’s closet; the former choir room; and most recently, the storage area in the back of the basement, behind where we host the monthly giveaway.
Then of course there is the hillside behind the parking lot, the scene of my unending battle against the forces of chaos in the form of that invasive species known as Japanese knotweed, a battle in which victory has thus far proven elusive but in which my forces are advancing.
Creating order out of chaos is not a chore, it is a divine activity. As we heard in the reading from Genesis 1, God creates the world and all that is in it by bringing order to chaos. “When God began to create the heavens and the earth,” Genesis 1:1 begins, “the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep.” The earth was complete chaos. That wording may not sound familiar. “The earth was a formless void” is how many Bible translations render that same phrase, including the old version of the NRSV, published in 1989, which you might find in your pew with a blue hard cover.
But I read from the updated version of the NRSV, which was published in 2021. I like what the updated NRSV has done because it more accurately reflects the Hebrew way of understanding how God creates. God does not create from a formless void, i.e., from sheer nothingness; God creates by giving form and shape to chaos the way a potter shapes a formless blob of clay into something recognizable—a bowl, perhaps, or a pitcher.
There are even hints within that opening verse that the so-called “formless void” is not truly void of all form. Darkness is said to cover “the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” Those two phrases, “the face of the deep” and “the face of the waters,” suggest a kind of watery, primordial chaos that is present with God before creation. In creating, God orders that chaos into the coherent world that we recognize.
Interesting, you might think, but who cares? Why does this matter? What difference does it make whether God creates from true nothingness or by bringing order to chaos? It matters because of what it says about God and what it says about us.
Are you familiar with the concept of entropy in physics? In far too simplistic terms—but terms that this English major can understand—entropy is the degree of disorder or randomness in a closed system. Beyond the realm of physics, entropy refers to a gradual decline into disorder. For example, a church building, if not regularly maintained, tends toward disorder. Over time brick mortar disintegrates, allowing water to seep in and mold to grow. The paint on window frames cracks and flakes, exposing the wood to rot. Roof shingles separate and fall to the ground, exposing the roof to water leaks. Asphalt cracks, creating debris and leaving space for weeds to grow. I could go on. Believe me, I could.
Human sin is an entropy machine. Our sin—both our individual sins and our collective sins—manufacture disorder. We create chaos. When we gossip, when we deceive others, when we lie to ourselves to justify our wrongs, when we hold grudges, when we take what isn’t ours, when we treat others as a means to an end or as unworthy of consideration, when we cut off aid to the world’s poor while building gilded ballrooms we disorder the world as God intended. God has neatly set the table and invited us to sit down, and we’ve said, “No thank you” and swept our arm across the table knocking every plate, every glass, every utensil to the floor. Chaos!
Yet our universe is not a closed system. God does not stand at a distance merely watching as things deteriorate…as distrust, bitterness, cynicism, and selfishness fester and spread. God reorders the world once and for all by sending Jesus, the Son of God, not to put everything back as it was, but to establish God’s new creation. In Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, he reveals to us the world as God intends and he makes that world a reality. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead turns the world on its axis, so that life triumphs over death, hope triumphs over despair, and love triumphs over hatred and apathy.
God reorders the world once and for all by sending Jesus, the Son of God, not to put everything back as it was, but to establish God’s new creation.
You may have noticed on the cover of the bulletin that today is Trinity Sunday. And yet nobody sent me a Trinity Sunday card! And if there was a Trinity Sunday sales event, I must have missed it. While Trinity Sunday may not be the most wonderful time of the year, it is a real thing. It comes every year on the Sunday following Pentecost. The Lectionary does no favors to those preaching on this day, first in asking pastors to preach on the Trinity, a doctrine that the greatest minds of the Church have struggled to explain, and second in assigning an Old Testament passage that’s more than a full chapter in length. Are you buckled up for a two-hour sermon? Fear not. We’re on track for the usual 20 minutes.
Even though the word “Trinity” never appears in this passage, or indeed, in the entire Bible, the concept is implicit in the Gospels, in the letters of the New Testament, and even as far back as here in Genesis 1. We hear mention of all three persons of the Trinity in the first three verses, beginning at the very beginning with the words, “When God began to create.” There, in the very first clause of the entire Bible, is our Creator God, the first person of the Trinity.
And what is the first thing that God does? God says, “Let there be light.” But wait! Isn’t light created on Day 4? That’s when God says, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night.” According to Genesis 1, God creates the sun and the moon on the fourth day. Not to mention that the sky doesn’t appear until Day 2. So, if God doesn’t create the sky until Day 2, and the sun and moon until Day 4, how is there light on Day 1?
God is not creating light, God is revealing the light of the world that has always been…not the light of the sun (s-u-n) but the light of the Son (s-o-n), the second person of the Trinity. The Son, who is the Word of God, is present with God from the very beginning in God’s speaking. The God of creation is a God of words…of the spoken word and also of the Word made flesh, i.e., Jesus.
And finally there is the Holy Spirit. In verse 2 we’re told that “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” The Hebrew word for wind, also sometimes translated as “breath,” also means “spirit.” Thus the Spirit of God is present with the Creator and the Son before the dawn of creation.
These three persons of the Trinity are present together from the very beginning, existing in an eternal relationship of mutual, self-giving love. God creates, the Son speaks, the Spirit breathes. It is a relationship of equals, not a hierarchy. The Trinity is not a corporate ladder with a CEO at the top directing two senior vice-presidents. It is one being but three persons, each of whom exists for the sake of the other. One in being, one in thought, one in will. And that being, that thought, and that will is grounded in and governed by love. God creates in love; the Son speaks in love; the Spirit moves in love. Love is the order of the day.
All things were designed to follow that order. That is why at each day of creation God looks upon what God has created and sees that it is good. The sky is good; the land is good, the water is good; the sun, moon, stars, and planets are good; the trees and all vegetation are good; fish, birds and animals of all kinds are good (even mosquitos?). And finally human beings are good. From the crown of our heads to the soles of our feet we are good. We are good because we are created in the image of a loving God, a God who loves us unto death—not our death but the death of God’s beloved Son whom God sends in love to rescue us from our brokenness.
Because when we rebel against the rule of love that God has ordained for all things, chaos ensues. Grudges are held. Scores are kept. Relationships fail. Families divide. Foreigners are scapegoated. The poor are pitied. Prisoners are forgotten. And we are held captive by our fears, by our anxieties, by our most self-seeking impulses. Entropy. Disorder. Chaos.
Against such forces of chaos, whether they come within or from without, we can do but one thing. “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” So said the 20th century Swiss theologian Karl Barth. Let me say that again. “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”
Man! That makes prayer sound exciting, doesn't it? Participating in an uprising?! Are Christians allowed to do that? Not only are we allowed to, the Jesus calls us to do just that. Every time we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we join Jesus in praying for the reordering of the world in line with God’s good plan.