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I was asked recently: “Where is it that you know you consistently sense
the presence of God?” Without hesitation I answered the beach. Even now,
I can transport myself in my imagination and I feel the air on my skin, smell
the salty spray in the air, feel my feet sinking into the sand and hear the
wondrous sound of the waves. My arms almost have a will of their own as they
open up before such beauty. Here I find a renewed openness to the presence
of God.
Creation gives witness to us about God’s character. God loves variety
and loves color. God can move mountains. God shapes the seas and the land.
God creates large and small. God goes big, with wide sweeping expanses and
small in the smallest most intricate flower. The few times that I have been
near the Rocky Mountains I have been in awe of their majesty. Last year when
I was in Colorado, I had the hardest time driving because I couldn’t
keep my eyes off those mountains.
Recently Wesley brought home some guinea pigs from school. As my husband and
I looked at these tiny little fluffy creatures, we found ourselves wondering
how they survived in the wild? God does amazing work.
When we hear this passage from Genesis it, in some way, should be similar
in experience to viewing the Rockies for the first time or standing on the
beach at dawn. The creation account is a poetic description of God’s
promise to his people and a vision about what God can create in us, through
us and around us. We are invited to open our arms wide and receive anew the
grace and hope of a God who loves to create.
In gathering to worship God in the name of Jesus and by calling upon the Spirit
we enter fully into the presence of a God who is the master creator. Ours
is a God who can bring about beauty from the most unlikely of sources, including
our broken lives. God does amazing work! A God who creates the heavens and
the earth out of “formless and empty darkness” is a God who can
enter any life, any situation and do a new thing. Creation is a letter from
God to all people. If we listen to these messages there are important words
of redemption. These words are; “Here I am,” “this is the kind
of work that I do,” “I am not finished,” and “what seems
to be dead can be made alive.”
We come to this hour of worship, with our praise of joy and our laments of
pain, with our hope and our despair and God meets us and invites us to enter
into this place of creation. This is a place of God’s creation. God is
at work in seen and unseen ways. God’s spirit is blowing across your
heart and mine that we might receive healing and greater hope than we can
imagine. To worship is to be open to the fullness of God’s presence.
The amazing part is that God is not content that we be created in beauty like
the majestic mountains or intricate flowers. God wants us to join in the wonder
of this creation. God wants us to know the joy and gladness and delight of
being participants in this creation. Therefore, from the very beginning he
creates us in relationship. Male and female he created us. We are all called,
married or not, to be participants in relationship. We can be creators with
God in these relationships or destroyers who work against the ways of God.
The word of God is reassuring. In troubled times we understand the desperate
need for God’s creating touch and in the Genesis account we are vividly
reminded of the power behind that touch. Whether our need is personal or the
broader needs of church and world, we can boldly engage in the situation as
we are called and rest our troubled spirits as we trust God with the ultimate
outcome. As we hear the phrases of creation, they speak of the surety of God’s
work. They are: “And God said,” “Let there be,” “And
it was so,” “And God saw that it was good,” “And it was
evening”. While we still live in a time in which God’s creation
is not complete we are called to rest in the knowledge that God who is at
work now, is more than able to bring his creation to completion. In the mean
time God is creating in us, through us, and around us.
God is fully present as Creator, Savior and Sustainer. This means that God
is bringing the fullness of his presence into every situation. When Paul calls
the people of Corinth to aim for perfection, to be of one mind, and to live
in peace, his prayer is for the fullness of God’s presence to be at work
in their lives to bring this about. He says; “May the grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be
with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14). When we baptize and celebrate the
work of grace in this sacrament it is in the name of the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. We are calling on the fullness of God to be at work in the life of
this disciple.
Being open to God … being radically open to God, is to be open to receive
the creating presence of God, the saving presence of God and the sustaining
presence of God. These are all evident in the Creation account as well. For
here we see God creating, we see God saving as he makes “good” out
of disorder and we see God sustaining in the way the creation is upheld. We
also see his calling us to join in these acts. God calls us to be a people
about creation, salvation and sustenance as well. This is evident as our lives
are poured out into children, students, and new Christians.
ILLUSTRATION
Share a story of someone who you have had the privilege of discipling and
who now in turn disciples others. This is a great illustration of your calling
to be part of Gods creation, salvation and sustenance in others.
This is evident when our lives are poured out into undertakings in behalf
of community or world concerns.
ILLUSTRATION
I was reading about a group that felt called to create an alternative community
for the urban elderly poor. They had come quite far but were at the edge of
despair. They realized the amount of money they would need to raise to accomplish
their goals was beyond their natural abilities. Their pastor sat with them
and gave them some challenging words regarding their fear of money and asking
for it:“Really believe that God has called you. The resources will come
through your efforts, but they are not rooted in your efforts. The power to
create the new comes only through God. You must make solitude part of your
days, and let your action flow out of your contemplation and God’s care
for the poor. This does not mean shifting onto God what does not belong to
him. Too much sickness goes under the name of trusting in God. Be responsible
co-creators” (O’Conner. 154).
We who are made in God’s own image are called to this kind of life work.
Yet it is not our power to create anything new, it is God’s power working
through us. What a privilege that calling is! To receive the creating, saving,
sustaining touch of God and pour it out to others. This begins with coming
to worship in a radical openness to God’s mysterious transforming touch,
that means prayerfully listening to God’s call to action, to be about
bringing justice, offering peace, living in love and participating in the
good work of God’s creation.
God creates through your life. This creation happens when you invest your
resources into the life of a new Christian, healing broken relationships,
a group effort to respond to a community or world problem, or whatever action
to which God calls you that would birth a new creation.
Whatever obstacles we might see to God’s creation in us, around us and
through us, we need to hear the word of God: “In the beginning God created
the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty darkness was
over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters”(Genesis
1:1-2). Remember, our God is the Master Creator and that same Spirit is hovering
over each situation we bring before him. God, the Master Creator, is more
than able to do good work in you and through you.
It is God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – God, Creator, Redeemer and
Sustainer, who made the majestic Rockies and the vast oceans out of chaos.
It is this same God who touches your life and mine and makes us new creations.
It is this God who can take whatever you bring this day in radical openness
and make a new creation.
Praise be to God!
Craddock, F., Hayes, J., Holladay, C., Tucker, G. Preaching the New Common
Lectionary: Year C: After Pentecost. Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1986.
Kidner, D. Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove:
Intervarsity Press, 1967.
Saliers, D. Worship As Theology: Foretaste of Glory Divine. Nashville,
Abingdon Press, 1994.
Soards, M., Dozeman, T., McCabe, K. Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary:
Year A: After Pentecost 1. Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1992.
