2023 06 04 Sermon
Creation & New Creation
Holy Trinity Sunday
Genesis 1; Matthew 28:16-20
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
You could say that God is an artist. Hearing the first creation story of the Bible in Genesis chapter 1, there’s such beautiful poetry, with all the amazing creativity filling the earth, full of colors, light and dark, incredibly diversity—this is the work of an artist. And God’s creation has inspired artists for thousands of years, including our Sunday School kids today who provided their artwork based on each day of creation in Genesis chapter 1. Didn’t they do a great job? Chances are, you’ve also seen other artistic depictions of God’s creation, such as pictures of the Sistine Chapel and the frescoes on its ceiling, painted by Michelangelo. It took him four years, from 1508-1512, twisting his neck while standing on scaffolding to paint this stunning 5,000 square-foot masterpiece. Being a sculptor by trade and not primarily a painter, Michelangelo’s paintings almost look like sculptures, with a dynamic sense of movement—especially the most famous section of the Sistine Chapel, known as the “Creation of Adam”.
God is pictured as kind of floating in a vault of heaven, surrounded by heavenly beings, with one arm around a young woman and child (probably representing the Virgin Mary and Jesus), and his other arm reaching out, pointing—you can practically feel the muscles flexing and energy twitching in God’s right arm, hand, and forefinger. God is reaching from heaven towards Adam, who sits, reclining on the ground yet almost on the same level with God. And Adam is looking with longing towards God. Adam’s left arm reaches out towards God’s right arm, but Adam’s hand droops. There’s no energy in it yet, no life. But not for long, because Adam waits, and at any moment (you can sense) that God will bridge the gap between the human and the divine, to give the spark of life to man, and to all of humanity. In this painting, Michelangelo was offering a Renaissance perspective on the nature of God. Whereas in medieval times, people regarded God as powerful but distant, in the Renaissance people sensed that God was still powerful but also close, approachable.
The creation story of Genesis 1, itself, was told in part to offer a different perspective on the nature of God than what most people in the ancient world believed. There were lots of different creation stories floating around the ancient Near East that existed before Genesis 1, from civilizations such as Egypt or Mesopotamia. They told stories of there being many gods, each one responsible for a different aspect of the world. These gods were often fickle, being dissatisfied with the things they had done. They would kill, enslave, and retaliate against one another—and humans would be helplessly caught in the middle of this divine violence. The Babylonians even imagined that a great sea monster created their first gods.
But in Genesis chapter 1, the One God (who revealed his true nature to the Hebrews by liberating them from slavery in Egypt) also revealed his true nature by inspiring the biblical story of creation. This story is a powerful confession of faith about who God is. It’s not a scientific account, it’s not a historical account, but it is a theological account about just what kind of God we have! And it is critiquing the other creation stories that were circulating around the ancient Near East, because it describes a God who is One, yet as One does everything good that the other creation stories claimed their multiple gods did. The God we hear about in Genesis is greater as One God than the sum of all the smaller gods put together. It’s like Genesis 1 is asking: You need a sea monster to make your gods? and answers by saying “the One God created the sea monsters!” (Genesis 1:21). Last Sunday’s Psalm even mentions this (Psalm 104:26): “There go the ships to and fro, and Leviathan [the sea monster] that God formed just for the sport of it!”
And this One God does all of these good things in three ways: by being creative like an artist, by speaking, and by being present over everything everywhere like a mighty wind. We can see the beginnings of our Christian understanding that the One God exists as a Trinity—three in one and one in three (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). We see this right in the first two verses of the Bible.
Genesis 1 describes how God has a purpose for everything he creates. Where the “lesser gods” of Mesopotamia and Egypt sowed chaos, the One God takes whatever chaos that exists and forms it into a wonderful creation with incredible diversity, and gives everything a purpose. This is so important to realize—that you matter to God and your life has a God-given purpose. Your purpose can change over time, but as long as God gives you time to be on this earth, God has a purpose for you. If you find your purpose changing, it can be very disorienting and difficult. This can happen, for example, when you get older and you find you can’t do all the things you used to be able to do. But even if you’re younger, God has created each person with limits; no one can be good at everything. But ultimately, through faith, we actually find that our limits are a gift, because they are God’s invitation to rely more fully on him; to surrender what you can’t do or can no longer do; surrender it in order that you might listen for God speaking into your life and revealing what is next; revealing his purpose for you. This is the dynamic power of God the Creator at work.
And the creation we hear about in Genesis 1 is just a representative sample of God’s handiwork, not the sum total. It gives us a taste, but not the full picture, in order to stir us to praise, and to kindle wonder in our hearts and minds, so that we become curious enough to set our faith toward seeking understanding—including artistic understanding, scientific understanding—realizing there is more to God’s creation than meets the eye. The world God has made is full of mystery, things we cannot fully understand, and things we might come to understand differently over time.
Finally, in a grand burst of creativity, human beings are created “in God’s image and likeness”, and God blesses us, and calls his creation “very good”. Now there’s some responsibility for us to live up to! That we’ve been blessed to be a blessing. Being created in God’s image means that as humans, we are meant to reflect God’s nature into all the world. And as Christians we can most clearly see God’s nature by looking to Jesus.
Just as “in the beginning”, when God formed a wonderful creation out of chaos, and blessed it with love and purposefulness—in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, God initiated a new beginning for creation, making Jesus the firstborn of God’s new creation.
Even though God made his creation including us humans “very good”, we have an unfortunate tendency to not live up to the blessedness God desires for us. As human beings, we sow chaos into the world, in forms like fear, greed, hate, violence, lies, and prejudice. But Jesus shows us an alternative way to begin living into God’s promised new creation today, and he talked about it with his disciples after the resurrection when he said (in Matthew 28), “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
What does this mean? We see throughout the gospel of Matthew that Jesus’ authority relates to his ability to heal and forgive. Authority, in the way of Jesus, is about serving others with mercy and love—not to dominate or force or impose anything on anyone, but to invite others to participate with God in bringing healing and forgiveness into the world and into our relationships; and recognizing that everyone and everything in God’s creation has a purpose, and is not meant to simply be used and discarded, but is meant to be regarded with the dignity and goodness God created it with.
It’s a good thing for us that by grace, through faith, the presence of Jesus is always with us, to guide us by the Holy Spirit, as we offer the world our witness to God’s new creation, where the love of the One God is more powerful than chaos or fear. Amen.