Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information. We are starting a new series, and more than that, we are gonna start all the way back at the start.

Because today we are actually going to start a new series going all the way back to the beginning, All the way back to Genesis and all the way back to the primeval stories of the first 11 chapters of Genesis, in fact. However, before all of that, let's look back at where we have been recently as a community because last week, we finished our Eastertide series called The Old Songs. And I hope you enjoyed that series as much as I did. Granted, I do think that part of the reason I like that series It's because I got to smuggle in conversations about the music that I like. I mean, we talked about Pearl Jam, and we talked about Kendrick Lamar, and beyond that though.

I think this series was helpful in that it can be eye opening to see just how dynamic the New Testament is. To realize that very early in our story, before we even had scriptures, certainly before the Gospels had been written down for us, The Christian community was writing songs about what they had encountered in Jesus. The earliest followers of the Way, They decided that Christ was the word or the logos of God or the image or the icon of God or the exact representation or Character of God. These are not fully formed theological ideas, but they are an expression of Trust in the fact that in Jesus, you have seen something special. The divine revealed to us like never before.

And all of that reached a climax last week as Scott walked us through the Philippian Hymn. And this is one of, I think, probably the most important passages anywhere in the New Testament. Jesus being in very nature God Did not see power as something to grasp for, but instead humbled himself, emptied himself and gave himself away for us. I think this is the heart of what the Christian faith tells us about who God is. That God isn't Grasping for power.

God isn't hungry for control. God empties. God surrenders. God gives God's self away. And I think this is one of the most important and also probably one of the hardest things for us to wrap our minds around when it comes to the divine.

Any conception of a desperate, needy, greedy God who rages when you don't give him his due, That is a projection of our own inadequacies, not a reflection of a self giving God that's revealed to us in Jesus. And it's our oldest songs that lead us all the way back to this beautiful image, and I love that. Now if you missed any of that series, you can catch up online. It's available on our podcast and on our YouTube channel. Today we are going back to the beginning for the first of 2 creation narratives.

First though, let's pray. God, we know that all good stories find their origins in you. And as we are drawn to the old songs, the poetry that revealed you to us in Jesus. We trust that we come to see you more clearly, more fully each day as we sing together. But today as we turn our attention to origins, to beginnings, even older, even earlier tales of Creation and formation, stories that give root to our place in the world.

May we look Not for answers that you never intended to offer, explanations or evidence, but instead, help us to listen for your heart And your care and your concern and your investment in this world. All the ways that you have been Ready to steward the human story from the very beginning. May we see ourselves in these earliest encounters and tales, And may they turn us back toward our world, our earth and our neighbor. Toward all of the cosmos with your love. In the strong name, the risen Christ we pray.

Amen. Okay. Today we have the first of 2 of the creation narratives in Genesis. Next week we're actually gonna look at creation all over again from a second perspective. But today, we will focus on the 2 tales, who wrote what in the beginning and out of the chaos.

But even before we get started today, you may be surprised to hear that there are actually two beginnings in your Bible. In Genesis 1:1 we read, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. And then a little while later in Genesis 2:4 we read again, This is the account of the heavens and the Earth and when they were created. And this is important to get right from the get go Because it has some implications for us. First of all, you may have heard along the line somewhere that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch called Torah by our Jewish friends.

But this is the first five books of your Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. The reason you may have been told that these books were written by Moses is because these first five books are also called the books of Moses. In fact, in John 4, Jesus himself says, If you believed Moses, you would believe me, For he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I might say? So There you go.

Pretty conclusive evidence that Jesus thinks Moses wrote the Torah. Done deal, except not quite. Because in the Hebrew language Torah means law, and it also refers to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. So in Deuteronomy 4, for example, we read, This is the law or the Torah in Hebrew that Moses set before the Israelites. These are the stipulations, the decrees, and the laws Moses gave them when they came out of Egypt.

So In one sense, Moses absolutely wrote Torah, the Law came through Moses. But is Moses the one who wrote down the story of Moses receiving the Law? Well, that has been up Divid bait for centuries. Now even Jewish rabbis who took the view that Moses wrote down most of Torah Still acknowledge that at least a few lines in there must have come from someone else. Lines like this one in Numbers 12.

Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth. So humble in fact that he decided to write that down, In the 3rd person no less, just for a fact, who knows? But this question of authorship really comes to a head In 17th 18th centuries where primarily German scholars start looking at these stories critically, and they realize a couple things. First of all, like we're gonna see today, that there are often two accounts of major moments in Torah. And generally those accounts will use 2 different names for God.

And you can actually see this in your English Bible. In Genesis chapter 1, God is always God. That's the word Elohim. That's a generic Hebrew term for God. But then in Genesis 2, when the story starts again, God is now LORD, all caps in your Bible and that's a very specific Hebrew name for God Yahweh.

So it's likely that what we have here are 2 different authors who prefer to use 2 different, although both very common names for God, And to each tell a different version of creation that emphasizes different aspects of that same God. Now later When the oral traditions of the Hebrew people were gathered up and written down, the sages realized how distinct, But how important both of these tellings were, and so they preserved both of them for us. The funny thing is, at least here in Genesis, is that never seemed to appear to cause anyone a problem. They certainly aren't trying to pull a fast one on you or any funny business here, hide anything from you. They just plunk down Two creation stories with 2 different names for God side by side, and I actually think that's pretty important.

See ancient peoples knew that stories could illuminate the world, but they also knew that stories Point us toward the truth, they don't monopolize it. And so for those Who gathered up the book of Genesis for us. The fact that Chapter 1 was true did not necessitate for them the rejection of Chapter 2. Both are telling us something important about God. Now, did God create humanity on the 6th The day after everything else as we read in Genesis 126.

Or did the Lord form a man from the dust of the Earth before any Shrub or plant had appeared on the earth as we read in Genesis 2:7. Well, the answer it seems to be was it doesn't matter, Because that's not the question that these stories were written to answer. And this is the second implication of our 2 creation narratives. If it's not one person that's writing these stories for us, then who exactly is speaking to us when we read our Bible? Let's pretend our authors have some names here to help illustrate.

Let's pretend Genesis 1 was written by Zipporah and Genesis 2 by Salome. When we read the text, who is talking? Is it Zipporah and then Salome or is it somehow all God? Well, that's a good question because this is actually one of the really complex realities in trusting a text like the Bible to guide us. Because the answer is of course somewhere along the lines of yes.

Of course we trust that God is speaking to us through the Bible And we call the Bible the word of God in fact, but at the same time it's unhelpful. We actually risk Securing the meaning of a story unless we acknowledge the voice of the author who wrote and preserved these words for us. Because the simple truth is this, the writers of Genesis are fictional Zipporah and Salome. They had no conception of the universe in mind when they wrote. No ability to imagine a big bang, no ability to grasp the scope and scale of galaxies or rotating planets orbiting burning stars, These concepts were completely meaningless to them.

Remember that scene in The Lion King where Simba and Pumbaa and Timon are all lying in the grass Talking about the scars, and Simba suggests that his father once told him that the stars are the kings of old looking down on them, caring for them. That seems reasonable, and Timon suggests that they're fireflies that somehow got stuck up in the big bluish black thing up there, and everyone thinks that's pretty reasonable. And then Puma says, Oh, I always thought those were balls of burning gas, billions of miles away. And everyone laughs at the absurdity of the concept. I mean, That's the ancient world, right?

And it's not that they're dumb. In fact, at a purely evolutionary level our brains have advanced Precisely none since the time of Genesis. We simply have centuries, millennia of incremental knowledge to stand on, and so Of course we see the cosmos differently than they did, but that also means that we bring with us a different set of questions about the cosmos. We tend to ask how it all works, for which stories are ill suited. They're far too prone to exaggeration and interpretation, but ancient people were asking, Why?

Why are we here? Who did all of this? What does any of it mean? And for those types of questions, stories are profoundly helpful because they tend to orient us in a direction rather than dictate to us. My kids are adopted, and increasingly my son wants to know his story.

What is my culture? He asks My daughter who's indigenous is also going to want to know her story as she grows as well. But it's not the details of what hospital they were born in and when it all happened that they're looking for. Right? I mean, we have Photographic evidence of all of that.

We can pull out the proverbial slideshow and put it up on the TV. But they want to know The stories that give shape and texture and meaning to their place in the world. Where do I fit? Now thankfully as a family, we have both of the birth mothers of our kids available to us in our lives to help us with that. And not every adoptive family has the gift that we've been offered.

But these are the types of questions that sit behind the stories of Genesis. Not the how that we're Been looking for as modern readers, but the why that all of us need to search out for ourselves at some point. And as soon as you start to ask, Why? As soon as you shift from looking for facts to listening for a story, at that point It has to become the voice of the storyteller that you are listening for. Because stories are told within a particular time and place To a specific people that have a shared experience of the world.

And for Genesis to have Even made its way to us 1000 of years later, it first had to be deeply meaningful for a people who told and held on to that story. It had to answer questions for them in order for them to pass it to us. Now, that doesn't mean God isn't speaking to us in the Bible. Of course God is. But the way to think about it is this, that God is the one who is telling the Whole story of the whole Bible that leads us to the word of God in Jesus.

On a story by story scale It is particular human beings that are inspired to write by God. It is particular human communities inspired by God to Hold on to those words. It is particular human cultures inspired by God to collate and juxtapose and pass down the most meaningful stories that Eyes From Within. And so when we look at Genesis, particularly Those first 11 chapters that are more mythic in their scope. What we wanna do is do our best to set aside our modern assumptions of the world and to read these stories as best we can through ancient eyes.

That's what we're gonna try to do in this series. But today, let's start at the start. In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. Yeah, the Earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Now right here, there's already some really neat stuff that's going on that's going to influence how we make sense of this tale. And first off, I've said this before, but in the beginning, that's a bad translation. Now, it's funny because everyone knows this, But in the beginning is just so deeply ingrained and absolutely iconic that no one wants to risk changing it in a Bible. I totally get that. I don't think I'd change it either.

But in my Bible for example, there is a little asterisk, and now and at the bottom of the page it then says, or When God began to form the Heavens and the Earth. And the reason for this is that the ancient Hebrews or Ancient cultures in general, in fact, didn't really have a conception of things just springing into existence. They saw things change and grow in front of them. They saw things give birth and create and die in front of them. But They didn't really conceptualize something coming out of nothing the way that we can today.

For them, perhaps the most incredible thing that God could do was not to Create out of nothing per se, but instead to mold the chaos of the world around them into something better. And what an interesting way to think about the world. Right? Like I'm a modern thinker. I can't help but wonder about how the universe came to be.

So of course I trust that God is creator, but what if I could expand my thinking to encompass the idea that perhaps God is most creative, Not simply in starting from scratch or starting over, but also somehow in the repair and the healing and the calming of the chaos that surrounds me. I mean, would that kind of ancient perspective and wisdom change the way that I saw my relationships, or my career, or The environment, I think it might. What if a God that shapes and molds my circumstances Slowly into something healthier is more not less powerful than a God who changes everything for me in an instant. I think that might radically change my commitment to the kind of slow incremental growth in the areas that I need transformation. And Let's be honest here.

It might be a healthier way to think about change as well. But again, we're conditioned to ask questions that are shaped by our modern experiences. And I mean, look at everything that we can do. Look at what we can create. Almost, it Seems out of nothing, and so we say, Well, for God to be bigger, better than us, God must be able to do things we can't to create out of nothing incredible.

Ancient people looked at the world around them overwhelmed by forces they didn't understand, and they said, Look how God heals and calms and repairs and brings flourishing out of our confusion and fear. This is the height of creative goodness. Amazing. No. One question is not better than the other, but when we try to force our questions onto ancient stories, We risk missing their intent.

That's what I'm saying. Because the ancient question was not how did the Universe come to be? It was how do we survive and thrive in the chaos of this world that surrounds us. So, let's talk about chaos And how God responds in this opening story. We read this, And the earth was formless and void.

In Hebrew, these are the words tohuvabohu. Now, 2 things are going on here. 1st, notice how empty and hollow those words sound when I say them tovuvabohu. That's not an accident, that's onomatopoeia. Now the Hebrews didn't call it that, we do.

But they absolutely understood the ability of sounds to evoke emotion. And tofuvabohu It's about the state of the world when God began to create, but it's also it's designed, it's shaped to get you at some deep, instinctive level To remember the feeling of being overwhelmed or losing your footing in the world. And that was Particularly powerful for ancient readers because Tovu Vavohu was also a corruption of the name Tiamat. Now, Tiamat was the Babylonian god that represented chaos. And in the Babylonian story, Tiamat was this Monstrous serpent like creature that ruled over our world, covered in swirling chaotic water.

Sounds familiar, right? Except in this story it was only when the hero Marduk challenged her and defeated her, killed her and used her body to create the land that Humans could occupy that chaotic world. So chaos or Tiamat or tovuwabohu, All of this is about the ancient conviction that the world is a scary and a violent place. And given that these are some of our earliest human stories, that makes a lot of sense. Right?

I mean the world is a pretty hard place without much of what we have come to depend on today. Let's be honest here. All of us, we live in a part of the world where most of us would not survive a winter unshielded. I still wonder sometimes why I choose to live in a place where the air literally hurts for months at a time. It's insane.

But let's try to assume that ancient perspective of the mo world for a moment. One that is Fearful of chaos and Tiamat and tohu wabohu, and let's read Genesis 1 again. Yes, the world is chaotic. Yes, the water swirls and swells as we expect, but this time there is no battle. There's no chaos monster to defeat.

There is only the Spirit of God that hovers above the storm. In fact, the word chosen here is the image of a bird in flight, But it's not a bird flapping their wings, frantic activity like a hummingbird here. This is very specifically the image of a bird tracing out the thermals. The way that an eagle might circle and hover without seeming to need any effort to stay aloft. The image here in Genesis is very specifically not a battle between God and chaos, but instead The merging of divine calm into the chaos of the world.

And this is what happens. God said, Let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good and separated light from the darkness the 1st day. God said, Let there be a vault between the waters to separate them. So God made the sky and separated the water under the sky from the water above it the 2nd Day.

God said, Let the water under the sky be gathered into one place and let dry ground appear, and so it was the 3rd day. So From the swirling and swelling of a primordial oceanic world, we now have day and night, earth and sky, land and water. In other words, there's a world that we can inhabit. And all it took was the presence of Spirit. And so what do you do with a hospitable world?

Well the next thing you got to do We gotta fill it with something. So look what happens in the second half of the week. Then God said, Let there be lights in the vault of the Sky to separate the day from the night and let them serve as signs to mark the sacred times and days years. We've got a sun and a moon to fill the sky now, day 4. Let the water teem with living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.

The air and the water are filled with life, day 5. But the land produce living creatures according to their kinds, the livestock, The creatures that move along the ground, the wild animals, each according to its kind, and so it was. And then God created humanity in God's image. In the image of God, they were created. Male and female, God created them.

Finally, we have life to fill the Earth, day 6. Then of course there's a Day 7. God had finished the work God had been doing, and so on the 7th day God rested from all Work. Now, try to set aside modern questions of how you can have day and night 3 days before you have a sun and a moon. And forget the fact that an Earth existing before is at least a little problematic and the math doesn't work very well.

And instead, think about what this story holds for an ancient reader. First, the story is as we might expect, a chaotic mess of storm and water, all of our fears expressed in mythic form. But then right from the drop it's all different, isn't it? There is no warrior god, there is no Chaos Serpent, there's only a brooding mother hovering calmly above the chaos. Remembering that Babylonian story, Tiamat is presented as feminine?

Here, the first description of God in your Bible is The feminine Hebrew Ruach or spirit that floats gently above the chaos of your world. And when that gentle spirit meets the waters, we see 3 things. Not a conflict like we might expect, but we see a forming and then a filling and then a You see, this is not an ancient attempt to communicate the science of creation. This is counter programming designed to subvert the narrative of violent domination and bring hope to a frightened world. Yes, the world is big, says Genesis, but God is closer than you can imagine.

And yes, The world is scary at times, says Genesis, but the answer to your fears is not more violence and war. And yes, the work is hard, says Genesis, but you can shape a life for yourself. You can cultivate a corner of your world and fill it with life in order to Find rest. And look, I get it. We're modern people.

We face different challenges and we have different questions, but we're not overwhelmed by storms and afraid of lightning the way that they were. But if we let it, this story is still profoundly formative for all of us in our place in the world. What do you and I do? What what do we do when we're overwhelmed? What do we believe sits at the foundation of our story?

Will we give in to the idea that life is an endless fight against the force of chaos? Or will we settle into the trust that life itself is the product of a generous God that meets us with gentle welcome and Found strength in the midst of our anxieties. Will we despair the inevitable challenges we face in the world? Or Will we enter the divine pattern of cultivating a better world slowly, filling it with our creativity, and then resting regularly to enjoy the fruits of our Labor. Where we see the world through the lens of competition and battle, our success Only at the expense of another.

Or can we imagine that all those we encounter, not just those like us, But everyone is formed in the image of God and realize the implication that for us to truly rest We must partner with God to cultivate a world where everyone can flourish. Because that's what this story is about. It's not about how the world came to be, It's about the story that sits behind our concept of the Universe. A reminder of the Calm and gentle presence that longs to bring peace and flourishing into every moment of worry that you encounter. And who invites you to see yourself reflected back in that divine image of calm and peace.

That is a story that is just as relevant today as it was In the Beginning When God Began to Create. Let's pray. God who is the origin of all of our stories. We come to your word and your text today Doing our best to set aside our modern questions and assumptions is simply to allow you to speak to us. To remind us that you are near, that you are calm in the midst of our storms, that you are peace surrounded by our anxieties.

And that when we allow your presence that was there hovering above the waters of creation, that was there at Pentecost Flooding the world with your love, we allow that same Spirit to come near to us, to touch us, And it can transform the ways that we see everything. God, might you begin to let go of stories of Competition and war and battle. Replace those with stories of calm, gentle presence. Generosity and care and investment, forming and filling and resting. And when these stories Sit at the origin of our stories.

Might we finally see ourselves as you intended us. The good creation of a generous God that longs to be near to each of us. God, we invite you. We welcome your presence. We ask for your peace today.

In a strong name, the risen Christ we pray. Amen.