This was another of those rare weeks when the sermon just wouldn’t coalesce. Ideas swirled around my head in a tangled mess for days. One thought would come and I would begin to develop it – but then I’d read something else – that seemed to tie in, but I couldn’t make it fit. Various things I had been reading and a few conversations I had over the week seemed to have a similar theme, but I just couldn’t bring it all together. Finding the appropriate scripture texts and hymns which would support the sermon became a daunting task – mainly because I couldn’t find a clear way forward.

Then on Friday afternoon I once again remembered that there is something significant in the struggle. Over time, as I’m sure you have too, I have realized the value in struggling with various thoughts and concepts and ideas from different sources –  because the struggle itself causes us to ask deep questions – and if we will let it, the struggle enables us to catch ever increasing glimpses into the deeper wonders, mysteries and marvels of life - and when I remembered that, the struggle
to write the sermon slowly transitioned from being something of increased frustration, to being something rather exciting.

We don’t have to read very far into the Bible before we are confronted with a struggle – a struggle to answer the question of how creation happened. It’s a question that humans have been pondering for millennia – because the question summons us to look behind and beyond what we see and experience – to consider the source of it all - in order that we might find a deeper meaning to what might otherwise be nothing but chaos, coincidence, and happenstance.

Those who hold the Hebrew scripture sacred, look to the book of Genesis to search for answers – but in the opening chapters we find two very different versions of how the world and its inhabitants were created. There are numerous variations in these two accounts, and yet they are both contained within one text which is believed to be the Word of God. One could wonder how that is possible. Which one is the way it really happened? Which account is ‘right’? Which one is “true”?

However it is well accepted within the realm of biblical studies, that these two accounts are each valuable – each are ‘right’ and ‘true’ in their own way – each account written by different sets of authors, in different centuries, for different purposes – both of which have something to say to us in our time – primarily, that God is responsible for creation – the details don’t really matter.

Richard Boyce, Associate Professor of Preaching and Pastoral Leadership at Union Theological Seminary at Charlotte, North Carolina writes about the historical context of the authors of these two accounts of creation. He suggests that the authors of Genesis 1 most likely wrote their account of creation sometimes around 587 BCE – the time of Jewish captivity - when all the earlier order of Israel’s life and worship in Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Babylonians who led them away into exile.

He writes, “Where does one look in order to trust the ongoing ordering of the Lord when the temple is destroyed, one’s power has been shattered, and one’s captors follow a different calendar and worship different gods? Shackled in a prison cell, with only a slender slice of sky visible…the ongoing division between day and night may be your only sign that the Lord is yet creating order out of chaos, the wind or spirit of the Lord yet moving over the waters. This (account in Genesis 1) is a story of creation for our weak days when we are tempted to despair."

Genesis 2 is believed to have been written around 1,000 BCE –about 500 years earlier than Genesis 1. It was written during the days of the united monarchy - the days of Kings Saul, David and Solomon.

It is therefore understandable, writes Richard Boyce, why this account of creation would be remembered as God creating a creature out of dust in order tangibly to tend a garden under the guidance of the Lord. Genesis 2 is a story where we “dust creatures” are invited into the story of this ordering God, but quickly reminded that without due humility, we will fall. This is a story of creation for our strong days, when we may be tempted to overreach.
(from Feasting on the Word, Year B. Volume 1 – David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, Editors. Westminster John Knox Press 2008 – pg 221)

When wondering about the creation of the world, it is appropriate for people of faith to look to their sacred scriptures first – and there are numerous sacred texts from various faith traditions that span the ages, each of which contain creation accounts. And then, of course, there is the vast realm of scientific research and discovery. The theme song for the popular television sitcom The Big Bang Theory puts it quite succinctly:

Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started, wait
The earth began to cool, the autotrophs began to drool
Neanderthals developed tools
We built a wall (we built the pyramids)
Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries
That all started with the big bang!
 
Australopithecus would really have been sick of us
Debating how we're here, they're catching deer (we're catching viruses)
Religion or astronomy (Descartes or Deuteronomy)
It all started with the big bang!
 
One might wonder if it permissible for people of faith to hold onto both accounts in Genesis and the Big Bang Theory – or is it necessary to hold only one of them to be true? Is there room in faithful theology to hold religion and science together?

I believe so.

It is more than appropriate that people of faith look to scripture AND experience AND reason AND research – because all of these are the domains where the Divine resides. We do God a disservice when we attempt to contain God – in any way – but particularly to the words of scripture alone – as if God stopped interacting with the world when the final book of the Bible was written.

John Scotus Eriugena was a theologian, Neo-Platonist philosopher, and poet of the 9 th century who taught that God speaks to us through two books. He said,

“One is the little book – scripture, physically little - and the other is the book of creation, vast as the universe.Just as God speaks to us through the words of scripture, God speaks to us through the elements of creation. The cosmos is like a living, sacred text that we can learn to read and interpret. Just as we prayerfully ponder the words of the Bible in Christian practice, and as other traditions study their sacred texts, so we are invited to listen to the life of creation as an ongoing, living utterance of God.”
(Phillip Newell “Christ of the Celts” - pg. 52ff)    
                               
Are there simple answers to the big questions of life? I don’t think so; nor should there be. Big questions demand big answers. And it is important that we keep asking the big questions – and it is equally important that we keep looking for even bigger answers.

As people of faith, let us continue to examine scripture carefully to see what it says in all its complexity – and be mindful also about what it doesn’t say – and let us also remember that our God and the mysteries of faith are so much larger than we can ever imagine.

Richard Rohr, in yesterday’s morning devotion, wrote this:
"I believe that many of the world’s religious, political, and cultural divisions happen because our view is too narrow. For Christians, it’s important to realize that Christ is so much bigger and more inclusive than we’ve envisioned. Christ is universal and beyond time, indwelling all creation, anointing all matter with Spirit. Because of this, Christ’s people aren’t just Christians or some select group. Christ is too big to be encompassed or enclosed by any organization. If there’s going to be any hope for this world, we’ve got to start seeing God and Christ on this much bigger scale… “For in Christ all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. Christ is before all things, and in Christ all things hold together”
(Colossians 1:16-17).

I’ll close with this final thought - at Anam Cara on Wednesday evening, we chatted briefly about how the role of clergy has changed since we were children – and while it may not be the case with every minister today, it is certainly true of this minister today:

I am not here to teach you what to think and believe, but I am here to teach you to think about what you think and believe.

Amen – and to the God of all creation – the God who is beyond time and space – the God who embraces the enormity of the cosmos and the tiniest of creatures – the God in whom we live and move and have our being – to God be all the glory now and always.