“The
destiny of the human creatures is to live
in God’s world, not a world of his/her own making.”
–Walter Brueggemann
There
is no story to catch up on, only blackness, darkness, nothingness, formlessness,
and chaos. There is nothing, no order,
no stuff only God. God is the only
character. Really, if we are honest, God
is the only character that matters, the only character that has ever
mattered. So, in God’s goodness, in
God’s nature of love and relationship, in the Holy Trinity, God decides to
bring life out of nothingness.
Everything
that follows in this story of God and creation is an account of our development
and sometimes our undoing as characters in the story that begins now. Even though it is our natural inclination to
focus our attention on our own development as characters in the Story of God,
we must not begin to think that we are the center of the story or that we are
the main character. No, we are the
supporting cast, and we are quite insignificant. We are taking our cues from the guy playing
the lead, from Jesus Christ, and from God the Father who has formed the plot,
written the script, and now directs the play – ever mindful of the
improvisation that takes place on stage by his actors and actresses. God the Father, through the guiding and
correcting presence of the Holy Spirit, works our miscues, our attempts to
hijack the story, and weaves a new story line, but always the ending remains
the same.
So,
now we must turn our attention to the beginning, because that is where every
story starts, the beginning. And so it
begins, the Story of God, the story of creation…
There
once was nothing, nothing but God. But
God shatters the nothingness and the chaos and begins to bring order to the tohu vabohu.
God creates out of nothing; by simply speaking things into
existence, the world is formed. Earth
and sky, land and sea, swimming things and walking things, God creates it. And it’s all good. Pristine, unspoiled, pure, and
undamaged. These were the first
characters, the earth and sky, land and sea, swimming and walking things. But God wasn’t done. Then, God took a clump of dirt, dust really,
and formed a man. Out of nothing comes
dirt, out of dust we are made. Into our
nostrils God breathes his breath, his spirit; man becomes a living, breathing
being. From man’s own flesh and blood
and bone comes woman, forever linked as one with man. And it’s very good. We are now set as characters in this story
that is just beginning.
The
stage has been set too. It is a garden,
a special garden that God has planted just for this first human. The garden is in the east, and in it every
kind of tree grows, trees that give good, life-sustaining fruit. God took the man and placed him there and gave
him a job, to take care of the garden, to till the ground so that things might
grow, to help it produce fruit.
In
the garden, there are also two special trees, the tree of life and the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil. A
curious thing happens. God instructs this new character not to eat of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil. Only
death will come as a result of eating of that tree. The character is not told why he should
refrain from this tree when all of the other trees in the garden are fair
game. All the same, this stage, the
stage in which these beginning characters are now set, is pure
graciousness. It is grace from the
Master Scriptwriter. It is gift, the
gift of boundaries.
Now,
we have already mentioned these boundaries.
These new characters are given a job to do, a vocation. They are tasked with tilling and keeping the
land. Work, it seems, has always been a part
of the plan. But it is not work for work’s
sake, like the kind of work a boss gives you just to keep you busy because you’re
on the clock. No, it is work that helps
bring life. It is in this work, working
alongside the Director and Scriptwriter that the second boundary is given. It is permission to use the fruit of their
co-labors with God for the sustaining of life.
These characters are given the trees of the forest, the fruit of the
land for their nourishment. They are
given almost everything to eat.
Everything, that is, except the fruit of one tree. That’s the third boundary, a prohibition of
eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Why?
Who knows? God does. And that’s the point. This story, the story of Creation, the story
of God and you and me quickly becomes about trust, trust that the story is
going somewhere good, trust that boundaries that the Director sets are good
ones.
As
Charlie Brown, in It’s a Charlie Brown Christmas, puts it, “One of the first things to ensure a good performance
is strict attention to the director…it’s the spirit of the actors that counts,
the interest that they show in their director.
Am I right? I said am I
right!?” For a play or any kind of
performance to go well, there must be one who sets the stage, which provides
direction, cues, props…one who knows how the story must end.
Our place in this story, in this great play,
is not that of director or stage setter.
It is one of actor and actresses, characters. And at this moment in the story, we must
remember that these characters, of whom you and I are closely related, are
exactly as they should be; yet complete and fully developed they are not. And so, as the story begins, we must pay
close and special attention to boundaries and directions set by the Director,
trusting that if we do, we will become great characters in this story, and the
show, our performance, will be a good one.
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