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I tend to fall on one of two extremes when it comes to making or creating or really doing anything. I either have an overwhelming perfectionism where I must keep working at it until it is right and done and flawless or on the other extreme embracing the fact that it’s good enough. And some of the second the good enough comes from the number of times I have failed at perfection. Sometimes things just need to be done and the number of times I was told if I had just edited my papers I might have gotten an A but the paper was done and I was over it.
I have to believe that when God was creating, when God got to the end of each day that God said something a little different than good enough. Or well, at least that part’s done.
I think it matters and is meaningful that the Bible story begins in a poem. Poems are about invoking feelings, putting reality into a metaphor and painting a picture.
The first image we get really is in verse 2 which I invite you to look at in your bulletin. And the story that was read says God’s love bubbled over. There was nothing else.” The Hebrew there is tobu wu bohu. It’s often translated as a formless void or without shape and form deep darkness. One translation calls it welter and waste which we had to look up in Bible study. Welter is a mass of things in chaos. What was there at the beginning of creation, chaos and formlessness. Like everything you need to build a house in one pile but not sorted, or all the pieces of a Lego set that will someday be a pirate ship, or a teenager’s room that is devolved into chaos.
And God calls forth creation beginning with light and space to breathe, land and plants, the sun, moon and stars, sea creatures and the birds and those that walk on the Earth including humans.
Why do you think this is the order?
You might know or have heard that they are two creation stories. The second one begins right where this one leaves off at Genesis 2. The second half of verse 4. In that second story God makes the Earth creature, humans and we call Adam from Ottawa meaning Earth burst and here humans are made last.
Why do you think that might be?
It could be that humans are created last because we are the pinnacle of creation and thus the most important, but some of the ancient rabbis suggest that it was to keep humans humble. I imagine in the second story that the Earth creature, who is around as God was making all of the animals, the creatures who might be possible companions for the earth creature, I imagine that the Earth creature might have started to have an opinion making commentary on the things that God was making or getting Earth creatures fingers involved in the process. Process. In the story we’re at today. Everything is done. Everything is surveying its purpose and continuing to create with seeds and eggs and other baby creatures before humans even arrive and each part of it is named good.
God took the chaos and void and deep darkness, the welter and waste, and the deep dark Waters that covered everything and separated them to make space to breathe for life to begin in the spaces between and then God called for life abundant and blessed it so it might continue to create. And it was good.
It was only then that God made humans in God’s own image. It’s possible to say that the commandment against idols is there because it’s unnecessary because God is already present and imaged on the Earth in the humans that God made in us.
It was not uncommon in the ancient world for Kings to be named and claimed to be the representatives, those that speak for or in the voice of God in the world. What would be uncommon is to claim that it is all of humanity who bear the image of God, our God’s representative or emissary in this world. We are God’s emissaries and representatives in this world.
But problems of kingship and power are present throughout our scriptures and throughout the centuries of interpretation of scriptures. So when it says that God blessed and commanded the humans to have dominion over to hold sway over to master and subdue to take charge of creation way too often. That has been done first and the ideas of power and control with the assumption that if the Earth is good, it is good for me. Me alone. It has led much of humanity throughout time to use and take to exploit and abuse power over the Earth, its resources and its creatures. They did so without starting with the understanding of the Imago day without understanding that in the context of the rest of the story.
Because if we start with the image of God, the god that is developed within the story and the god that we see within the story there is power. But it’s not a power to destroy to take to use but a power to create life abundance in an interdependent web.
Because if we look every time God created at the end they paused and said it is good. In verse 27, God creates humans. It isn’t until verse 31 when God looks at all they created and it was very supremely. Good. God set the world in motion, connected all things for the living and for the food and for the resourcing of each other and said it was good. Humans are named good in the context of the rest of creation.
How did God know they were done?
What does it mean to you that God rested?
Why did God rest?
The story goes that Leonard Cohen wrote 80 to 180 different or variations of verses for the song. Hallelujah! Over the course of 7 years, often with different verses being performed at each concert, it’s as if the song vexed him so much. It never quite found a place where it was said it was good. In contrast, it said Bob Dylan wrote blowing in the wind in 15 minutes. How does one know when they have completed their work? When it is time to put down the guitar, the pen, the paintbrush and rest?
On the seventh day God finished the work and it says God rested. Was that rest a reward for finishing the work?
Says God looked at everything he had made and clapped his hands together in delight. Isn’t it wonderful and on the seventh day, God laughed and rested and enjoyed his glorious creation.
I like it because it isn’t resting as in just sitting or sleeping or watching some movie. This is delighting and celebrating, reflecting and being present within the work that God had just done.
Now well, well rest was the last thing God did during that first week. It was the first experience of the newly created humans. So in that way rest wasn’t a reward for work, but the very first thing they did, perhaps how they understood their call and purpose for their work, how they understood their blessing and the commands of God.
So what does it mean to be made in God’s image to be God’s image, ambassador, emissary, representative on Earth? Find out in this story of creation as God is revealed as God reveals the kind of God that they call are.
To be made in God’s image is to see that rest is not a reward but who we are to be made in God’s image is to delight and to celebrate all that we see creation that God has made to be made in. God’s image is to cause and observe and discern to be fully present to the world around us.
Because there will be tough when we see or we know chaos and deep waters and welter and waste. We might even know the Waters that threatened to drown us or the chaos of our politics or neighborhoods. Our families, our jobs, our schools. Our school boards. To be Megan in God’s image is to hold that in prayer to see the interconnectedness of all of creation, that web that we are a part of. To be made in God’s image is to live and move in peacemaking and in love and caring for our neighbor, feeding people, supporting the housing vulnerable and those living on the edge. Those in fear or in loneliness being made and God’s image is fine in a way to make space in the chaos and in the deep water to make space for people to breathe. To make space for the opportunity for their flourishing and life abundant.
To be made and God’s image is to help life to grow abundantly in fields and parks in backyards and jungles and classrooms
Because we have the power and calling and the blessing to hold sway over all of creation and we have the power to bring hope and life and abundance or destruction to use it for the benefit of all of the web of creation or for just ourselves.