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Saint Michael’s Church

Serving God and Bishop’s Stortford

Sermon 7th February 2010

St Michael's Church

7th February 2010

2nd Sunday before Lent

8.00am and 11.15am

Rev'd Toby Marchand

GENESIS CHAPTER 2

We heard in our Old Testament reading this morning an account of the creation.

Of how God dealt with the earth when as yet there was no plant or herb in it and there was no-one to till the ground.

How he then made Man from the dust of the ground and breathed in to his nostrils the breath of life.

Then he planted the garden of Eden, made all the trees grow. He put the man in it to look after it.

Then he made the animals to keep the man company, and the man names the animals. But in the end there was still no real partner for him so God mad a woman out of the man’s rib.

But wait a minute! Where is the light and darkness? Where is the firmament of heaven? Where are the Sun and the moon and the stars?

They are not there. They are not part of this account of Creation.

You see we were listening to Genesis Chapter 2. Those other things are in Genesis Chapter 1.

What we have to remember is that there are two accounts of Creation in the Bible. And they are rather different from each other.

The one we read today is from Genesis Chapter 2 and is reckoned by the scholars to be the earlier account. It was probably written in the time of the King Solomon,…9th Century BC.

The other account, which actually appears first in the Bible because it takes up Chapter 1 of Genesis, probably dates from later times, after the Exile….6th Century BC.

Let’s just compare the two accounts for a moment.

In the first Chapter, the one we did NOT read today the passage begins with the famous opening sentence of scripture “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…”

And the order is

  1. Light.
  2. Firmament–heaven.
  3. Land and vegetation.
  4. Sun moon and stars.
  5. Birds and fish.
  6. Animals and Man

In the second Chapter, the one we DID read today the order is:

  1. Man….out of the dust
  2. Garden of Eden
  3. Trees, including the tree of knowledge of good and evil
  4. Animals and birds, but interestingly no fish
  5. Woman

Now how do you feel about there being two accounts of Creation in the Bible? There is enough confusion in the world about the subject of Creation without the Bible making it more so surely!  All sorts of Christians don’t know quite how they are meant to feel about the subject of creation because they hear and know what the scientists say, the theory of Darwin and Natural Selection, and yet they somehow feel that maybe that can’t be right because it’s not what the Bible says.

But then if you look at the Bible that is completely contradictory too. If you take the Bible as the literal truth you are in trouble straight away after the first two Chapters!

The accounts of creation are so different that they can’t possibly both be true in a literal sense.  Either it happened in the order and in the manner of chapter 1 or in the order and the manner of Chapter 2……but not both.

And then what is one to make of the continuing discoveries of science?

Listen to this from an article not long ago in the papers:

Quote

“Shining a light on dark matter” From The Week 18th February 2006 page 19.

For the first time ever, astronomers have computed some of the physical properties of dark matter, the “invisible cloak” that surrounds the universe. Dark matter has fascinated experts since 1933 when its existence was proposed by Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky as a way of explaining the missing mass in the universe.  Since it emits no light or radiation, it cannot be seen, but it is thought to make up 23% of the known cosmos.

Normal matter, the stuff that can be seen and felt—makes up 4%.  The rest is believed to be dark energy, another mysterious substance that apparently pushes the galaxies apart.

For years one of the few things that scientists were really sure about was that dark matter existed.: the stars are moving so fast they would fly apart if they were not being held together by the gravitational attraction of some unseen material.

Now a team at Cambridge University has studied the motion of dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way and calculated not only the speed of dark matter—5.6 miles per second---but also the size of its smallest blocks.

The universe, says Professor Gerry Gilmore, appears to be built out of 1,000-light-year-wide bricks of dark matter. It’s the basic unit from which bigger things are made up.

Well happily we don’t have to defend the scientific or historical accuracy of the Bible. It is not that sort of text that we have in Genesis. What we have are two attempts to express profound truths about the relation between the physical universe and its originator, who is assumed to be personal.

Now you could say that the answer to the question  “Is there a purpose to the universe?” admits of three possibilities.

You could say NO. It is all an accident, a random coming together of conditions that can produce human life but that there is no intention behind that….it just has happened…and it has taken millions of years to happen.

Or you could say YES. There is a purpose but it is impossible for us human beings to know what that purpose is, so it’s best if we don’t even try.

Or you could say YES. There is a purpose and somehow we can discern what it is.  If and when you say THAT, you need to take Genesis seriously as an important attempt to understand the truth about our condition.

For the first 11 chapters of Genesis are not, please not, intended as a guide to geology or biology, to psychiatry or to social reform, to women’s liberation or sexual freedom. These early chapters represent an analysis of human existence which was as true in the author’s day as in creation’s dawn; as true of us today as of the inhabitants of the world in the 8th Century BC.

In both Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, the two separate accounts of Creation itself the highest priority is given to Man. In Chapter 1 Man and Woman are the culmination of the process before the 7th day the day of rest.

In Chapter 2 creating Man is the first act of the creating God. Man is shown as being in need of companionship---the animals and the birds are meant to be that for him---but it is only when WOMAN is fashioned out of the same stuff as MAN that the most intimate relationship is established with all its possibilities for good and for evil.

So Genesis asserts that

HUMANS are here for a purpose. God wants them to be here.

AND

Humans have great power given to them. Adam names the animals and has control over them.

But this power can be misused. It is possible to use it selfishly and so to provoke chaos and unhappiness .So we read that Adam and Eve take more power to themselves, by eating of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. That leads to trouble.

There never was a man called Adam and a woman called Eve alone in the world. The names Adam and Eve are not proper names. Adam means simply “man” Eve means “the living one”. Indeed the whole point of the story would be destroyed if they were individual proper names.

They represent the universal experience of mankind. In every home in the land, behind every door, in every suburban garden there dwell an Adam and an Eve tormented with the problems which are common to all people, and seeking often in vain deliverance from them This is our experience—no more no less. We have no experience of the primaeval garden where every prospect pleases and where we have everything we need. This is not something in the past which we have somehow lost; this is something of the future which we have yet to experience.

And the means by which we are to experience it? The audacity of the author of Genesis is staggering; he says that the means by which mankind is to come to a state where people will live in peace and harmony and have sufficient for all their needs, is to be found in the peculiar vocation of the people of Israel.  

Incredible though it sounds these people have been offered an agreement with the Creator-of-all–that-is, God, whereby He will bless them if they obey his laws. Through them God will reveal his purpose for us all and through them he will eventually bring about the state we all long for.

So let us be careful not to confuse the insights of the book of Genesis with a description of the moment of creation. The thousand-light-year-wide bricks of dark matter remain the building blocks of our universe.

But Creation would appear to be a continuous process.  But so also is the process of re-creation.

Re-birth is necessary within the created order, and for human beings that re-birth is to be found in Jesus Christ, the God-made-man, or as we have come to call him the son of God.  Unless a person be born again they can not see the kingdom of God.

So incongruous though it seems to be, reading Genesis Chapter 2 we realise that the Christian claim holds true……that there is a Creator-God, that there is purpose behind the universe, and that in Jesus that purpose, that loving purpose, has been revealed for all to see. Our task is to make that real in our own lives and in so doing to make it real in the lives of others all around us.

Toby Marchand

Office Address:

Saint Michael’s Church 

Windhill 

Bishops Stortford 

Hertfordshire 

CM23 2ND