Easter 2007<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The wonderful first three chapters of Genesis — two of which we have just read — attempt to grapple with some huge questions: among them where everything that is came from, including but not limited to us; the role of God in bringing about that everything; and our relationship to God on the one hand and to all the rest of everything that is on the other.\u00a0 There\u2019s cosmology, ontology, theology, and ecology thrown in.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There\u2019s been quite a change in the way we\u2019ve read this text since about the 6th<\/sup> Century B.C. when it took final written form.\u00a0 To reduce it to the simplest terms, we humans have been repeatedly demoted.\u00a0 The authors of Genesis saw us being at both the physical and moral center of the universe.\u00a0 Genesis depicts a bubble in the waters, at the bottom of which is planted a flat earth for us to stand on.\u00a0 And over it the sun, moon and stars are posted to give us light and tell us the time.\u00a0 In the very midst of it is planted mankind — us — with dominion \u2013 that\u2019s the exact word \u2013 over all the creatures a benevolent God has put there, apparently for our benefit.\u00a0 In modern parlance, it\u2019s all about us \u2013 well, all about God and us.\u00a0 But we are made in God\u2019s likeness, we are given dominion, and even the power to name the creatures.\u00a0 That naming business is no small matter.\u00a0 In ancient thinking, names were powerful, not mere arbitrary semiotic markers.\u00a0 Think of the mystical air of taboo surrounding the name of God himself in the Old Testament.\u00a0 The person in charge of giving names was powerful indeed.\u00a0 That person was us.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now let\u2019s talk about Genesis Chapter 3, which we didn\u2019t read, but of course we all know intimately.\u00a0 The thrust of that Chapter is explaining why things are wrong in this perfect world.\u00a0 The main thing that ostensibly goes wrong is that death is introduced into the world.\u00a0 We know, of course, that it\u2019s probably bad theology to say we<\/em> introduced death into the world.\u00a0 Death was here millions of years before the first human being drew breath.\u00a0 In fact it was an essential, and if I may use the word, vital part of creation.\u00a0 Death, sad as it is, really isn\u2019t the biggest problem the author of Genesis Chapter 3 is trying to address.\u00a0 The biggest problem is that we humans keep screwing things up, and this has been an open scandal from the moment we looked around and took account of ourselves.\u00a0 Because of that, however, the expulsion from Eden, bad as it is, doesn\u2019t really demote us from the center of creation in our own eyes.\u00a0 In fact, in Genesis Chapter 2 there\u2019s a solid hint of that in the description of the rivers in the Garden of Eden, one of them described in the present tense.\u00a0 In other words, Eden\u2019s rivers are still places we can go.\u00a0 Eden is a blessed state we wish we could be in but aren\u2019t, but geographically and physically it\u2019s part of exactly the same world, with all the good things that God has made for us, and we are in still in the middle of it.\u00a0 And the world and the universe are still really about us.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Since then, however, our views of our position have degraded.\u00a0 The Garden of Eden, set in the center of Asia Minor, is no longer at the center of things when you start taking into account — as our forbears in the Roman empire did, for instance, the entire Mediterranean basin \u2013 let alone when you discover, as our Renaissance forbears did, the rest of our round globe which has no geographic location of greater dignity than any other.\u00a0 Let alone if your point of reckoning and reference is where some other civilization began.\u00a0 It\u2019s worth noting that the Chinese \u2013 similarly — viewed themselves as the Middle Kingdom and have had to accept a similar geographic demotion.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And as for that neat little dome of water snugly bounding our world, it was replaced, even in ancient cosmology, with a series of spheres thought up by the astronomers of the time to explain the complex interplay of stars and planets \u2013 an interplay that was just not compatible with all that snugness.\u00a0 Then as the Renaissance proceeded we assumed the uncomfortable awareness that the planets were in some measure worlds like our own, and then that the stars were suns like our own, but much further away.\u00a0 As more time went by, we began to recognize the vastness of galactic and intergalactic space, and to acknowledge that we were not particularly close even to the heart of our own galaxy, which in turn is only one galaxy among millions if not billions.\u00a0 The universe as we now know it gives no signs of being in any meaningful sense about us, although as yet we have no remotely reliable indication that anything else like us exists out there.\u00a0 Not that we would be surprised to find that there were.\u00a0 And probably, if that were the case, we\u2019d also learn that our extra-terrestrial cousins had their own relationship with God, perhaps even their own redeemer.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Down the rabbit-hole we have gone.\u00a0 Originally confident that we had dominion, we went about altering our world to suit ourselves.\u00a0 Ancient farming practices probably contributed much, for example, to the growth of the deserts of the Middle East, and to the deforestation of Iceland.\u00a0 And that was just a warmup, before the Industrial Revolution.\u00a0 Once we really<\/em> got to work, we set about building the vast interplay of mining, transport, fabrication, and commerce that created our modern world.\u00a0 But we lost self-confidence at every step.\u00a0 The poet William Blake, perhaps the single poet who had most internalized and most thoroughly incorporated the cadences of Biblical style and diction into his own writings, spoke broodingly of the \u201cdark Satanic mills\u201d of the late 18th<\/sup> Century.\u00a0 The labor that went to build this world, far from being mankind\u2019s collaboration with its Creator, was decried by Karl Marx as meaningless, as alienating us from ourselves.\u00a0 Our wars, once viewed as crusades or jihads, touched with divine meaning, came to be viewed by the sophisticated among us as little more than the usual realpolitik tinctured with atavistic bloodlust.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Likewise, we have suddenly become aware of our destructive power in the world, and not only from our weapons of mass destruction.\u00a0 It is our necessary consumption and our unnecessary consumption alike, that we now recognize as the engines of blight.\u00a0 We tear up the landscape, pollute the rivers and the skies, deplete the lands of minerals, and overfish the waters, all in the name of acquiring necessities and comforts.\u00a0 Species are dying off every day, we are told, because of what we do.\u00a0 Can anyone seriously view humanity, the destroyer of planetary resources and balance, as central to the divine plan?\u00a0 Would it not be nearer the truth to view us as the central to some Satanic plan instead?\u00a0 And would it not make greater sense to say that we are not the center but the enemy of the center of creation?\u00a0 How fortunate that we are quarantined here on an insignificant planet in an insignificant galaxy!\u00a0 Think of what we might do with greater scope — with greater importance!\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So, in keeping with the new view, when we read the Genesis story, as we do each Easter vigil, we tend to lapse into a kind of Manichaeanism: God good, the universe good, Nature good \u2013 Mankind bad.\u00a0 We do the Creation Story each year at the vigil, and it seems to call forth the slide show impresario in many of us — as you will see it has in me.\u00a0 And I want to say first of all that those slide shows are always wonderful and moving, and I hope I prove worthy of the tradition tonight.\u00a0 All the same, the other slide shows have not been untouched by the\u00a0 Manichaeanism of which I speak.\u00a0 We see pictures of the glories of nature or of interstellar space or we listen to the creation myths of humans who have shown greater respect for the natural order, like Native Americans.\u00a0 Usually there is little role for humankind in the images.\u00a0 We see oceans without sails, forests without houses, fields without farmers, hillsides without power lines or ski slopes, all manner of creatures unaccompanied by men or women, galactic phenomena infinitely too vast for human scale.\u00a0 Why would it be otherwise?\u00a0 We humans are a blot and an embarrassment on the face of God\u2019s lovely creation.\u00a0 Are we not?\u00a0 Best to keep us offstage.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well, not if we take Genesis seriously.\u00a0 It says: \u201cGod created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them.\u201d\u00a0 We are free to disagree with that, but we can hardly avoid acknowledging its meaning.\u00a0 Our modern views are, to be blunt, on a collision course with the views of the author of Genesis on the critical question of the meaning and value of humanity.\u00a0 Also on the role of humanity as a consumer of the benison of Nature.\u00a0 God says: \u201cBe fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.\u00a0 Have dominion over the fish of he sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth.\u201d\u00a0 And God says: \u201cSee, I give you every seed-bearing plant over all the earth … to be your food.\u201d\u00a0 And to me most telling of all is the business about the naming.\u00a0 The phrasing is important.\u00a0 God brings each of the animals to the man \u201cto see what he would call them.\u201d\u00a0 If the name is part of the essence of a creature, then we have to read this passage as God delegating to mankind part of the role of defining the essence of the beasts.\u00a0 God finds out the fullness of their meaning from us, not the other way around.\u00a0 Think about it: God is handing off the business of creation to mankind, to us.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Let\u2019s think also about what happens after Eden.\u00a0 Adam and Eve go marching out the gate to \u2013 to where?\u00a0 I submit that they go to set up the habitations of humanity.\u00a0 And while there are some indivisibly bad ones like Sodom and Gomorrah, the Bible views most cities as flawed but redeemable.\u00a0 Think of Jonah sent to redeem Nineveh.\u00a0 And think clear from the very beginning to the very end of the Bible.\u00a0 Think about almost the last image in the book of Revelation: the New Jerusalem, gleaming with jewels, actually characterized as the wife of the Lamb.\u00a0 The habitation of men was also the point of union between all creation and its God.\u00a0 In the Biblical view, we began at the center and we remain there to the very end of time.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So in the Biblical view, we belong here.\u00a0 We are not interlopers in Creation.\u00a0 With everything wrong with us, everything allegorized in the story of Adam and Eve\u2019s Fall, we still belong here.\u00a0 And we are still the ones in charge \u2013 in charge of getting to \u2013 in fact in charge of creating the New Jerusalem.\u00a0 And I maintain that you can\u2019t seriously look into your heart and deny it.\u00a0 \u201cWhat a piece of work is a man,\u201d Shakespeare said so truly: \u201chow noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!\u201d\u00a0 Our works are mighty for good as well as bad.\u00a0 And what we do does<\/em> carry on the work God did in those seven great days of Genesis \u2013 as I hope to show you in detail in a few minutes.\u00a0 God\u2019s creation hasn\u2019t stopped at all; we\u2019re in charge of much of the work.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The kind of work we do is what the poet Coleridge called Subcreation.\u00a0 He may have meant something slightly different by the term, but I think it is a useful one for present purposes.\u00a0 It is the taking of the created world and fashioning something else from it \u2013 hopefully something better.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now think about that image of the New Jerusalem.\u00a0 I have been planning this homily for a while. \u00a0Given the events of recent days, I experienced a moment of dismay thinking about what a discordant note the mention of Jerusalem must strike, with all the killing going on there as we speak \u2013 killing for the very possession of Jerusalem.\u00a0 But then I realized it was ever thus.\u00a0 The history of Jerusalem has always<\/em> been one of bloodshed and chaos.\u00a0 And when the author of Revelation set pen to paper, Jerusalem was less than twenty years removed from some of bloodiest destruction in its history.\u00a0 Today\u2019s suicide bombers have nothing on the Roman legions.\u00a0 The choice of Jerusalem as the symbol of the joyous and complete fulfillment of history would have been just as jarring then as it is today.\u00a0 You can almost hear the first readers wondering how the New Jerusalem could ever evolve from that<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The fact is, using that God-given and Godlike creativity, it is our continuing role to take on that huge challenge and to subcreate the New Jerusalem from the present fallen one \u2013 wherever our particular fallen Jerusalem happens to be.\u00a0 For the poet William Blake, the site of the New Jerusalem was England.\u00a0 And he asked himself exactly the same question the readers of Revelation must have asked themselves \u2013 how on earth do we get there from here?\u00a0 Let me read you his answer to himself in his poem, fittingly called The New Jerusalem.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The New Jerusalem, then, will be London, will be Jerusalem itself, will be Baltimore.\u00a0 It will be built in the habitations of men and women as well as in those parts of Nature we do not touch.\u00a0 When we turn to God with all our hearts, we will subcreate it from the elements of this world with which we are already inextricably entwined.\u00a0 That subcreation is in progress, has been in progress for millions of years and may continue for millions more.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For our meditation, then, I would like to present you a series of images showing how Man has carried on the creativeness of the God who largely handed his creation off to us.\u00a0 The seven days of creation continue through us, through our work, through our play, through our exploration and our prayer and our invention and our love for each other.\u00a0 We are not at all perfect, but we are divine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SUBCREATION: FROM EDEN TO THE NEW JERUSALEM: Genesis Chapters 1 through 3\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Easter 2007 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The wonderful first three chapters of Genesis — two of which we have just read — attempt to grapple with some huge questions: among them where everything that is came from, including but not limited to us; the role of 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\nWalk upon England’s mountains green?
\nAnd was the holy Lamb of God
\nOn England’s pleasant pastures seen?<\/address>\n\u00a0<\/address>\nAnd did the Countenance Divine
\nShine forth upon our clouded hills?
\nAnd was Jerusalem builded here
\nAmong these dark Satanic Mills?<\/address>\n\u00a0<\/address>\nBring me my bow of burning gold!
\nBring me my arrows of desire!
\nBring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
\nBring me my charriot of fire!<\/address>\n\u00a0<\/address>\nI will not cease from mental fight,
\nNor shall my sword sleep in my hand
\nTill we have built Jerusalem
\nIn England’s green and pleasant land.<\/address>\n