“With Elation”
Genesis 1:1-4; 2 Corinthians 5:16-18
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
September 18, 2016
Deep Blue Kids. That’s the name of the new curriculum our Sunday School is using this year. The name suggests an invitation to dive deep into the stories of our faith. Rather than starting a new topic each week, this curriculum delves into a single Bible Story for several weeks, exploring it through art, music, drama, science experiments, mission, even cooking.
The year begins with a 5-week series on creation. It’s a great place to start. The creation stories in the book of Genesis are beautiful, evocative, and inspiring. I imagine our young people reveling in the glory of trees and skies and oceans, expressing their gratitude at the miracle of frogs and cells and human bodies.
I know our kids. They are kind, creative, thoughtful, smart and very inquisitive. So as our church school dives deep into creation, I find myself appreciating the courage of our teachers. I can’t wait to hear how they will help our youth explore the many questions the creation stories raise.
Of course there are the questions prompted by science class. How does the biblical story fit with what our kids are learning in school about evolution? How do we help our children—and our adults—read the first chapter of the Bible as poetry, not as historical record?
Harder than those questions are the ones that may emerge from our kids’ own experiences of loss. If God created the world and declared that it was good, then why is there suffering? Why do people we love die?
These are heart and soul questions, not intellectual debates. They are not questions to be answered but rather to be explored. I trust these heart and soul questions will stir heart and soul conversations in our classrooms.
As I explore these questions for myself, as I try to make sense of God’s good creation and the reality of loss, I find insights from other faith traditions helpful. At the center of Buddhism is the recognition that everything is always changing. One of the causes of suffering, as Buddhists understand it, is our human tendency to deny that reality, our instinct to hold on to what we cherish as though we could keep it with us forever. Enlightenment and freedom come when we cease our grasping, when we accept the truth that everything changes.
The deep wisdom of this Buddhist principle helps me hear our own scripture story in a slightly different way. God’s creation is not a single event, not a static, fixed product. God’s creation is dynamic—always growing, always changing, always something new. And that means it always involves loss, for what existed a moment ago doesn’t exist in the same way anymore.
Some of the loss embedded in this dynamic creation is poignant—leaves fall in autumn to preserve a tree’s energy in winter so new leaves can emerge in the spring. Some of the loss is painful: the limitations of our bodies as we age, the reality that we will all die. Some is excruciating: the death of a child, families torn apart by war, natural disasters that destroy entire communities.
Recognizing that creation is always changing doesn’t bring me any closer to an answer to those unanswerable questions–certainly not about why one person get cancer and another lives with chronic pain. It does help me frame a different question. How can we live well in a dynamic creation, in a world that is constantly changing? What do we hold on to?
Today’s scriptures give us guidance. Our first reading, from the book of Genesis, makes a profound assertion: “God saw that it was good.” In the rest of the chapter, the assertion is repeated six more times. Goodness is the central message of the first chapter of the Bible.
In this ever-changing creation, there is loss–sometimes poignant, sometime painful, sometimes excruciating. There is also birth, beauty, joy, new life. The devastation of a forest fire opens space for a new ecosystem. Decaying matter becomes rich soil that nourishes a seed dropped by a bird. The creation poem in Genesis proclaims that the new possibilities ultimately balance the losses. Creation is good.
During a time of devastation and despair, when the Jewish people were exiled in Babylon, the prophet Isaiah lifted up the goodness of creation with the words we quoted in our Call to Worship. Isaiah heard the voice of God saying “Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?” In the midst of pain and loss, Isaiah promised, God is at work, creating something new, something wonderful–a way in the wilderness, streams in the desert. There is new creation, God’s goodness expressed in a way never before seen or even imagined.
The apostle Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians, personalized the promise Isaiah made: “If anyone is in Christ,” he wrote, “there is a new creation.” The goodness of God’s always-renewing creation is made manifest in our own lives. God is at work making us new.
“If anyone is in Christ,” Paul writes. What does that mean? For me, to be “in Christ” is to allow the story of Jesus to shape how I live in this world of constant change. In his teachings, Jesus assures us that there is more to this changing world than we can see, that the realm of God is breaking through in ways we cannot yet imagine, that God is at work shaping change in the service of love. Jesus lives out that assurance through his ministry–healing people trapped by illness, eating with the ostracized, challenging the status quo, bringing strangers together.
Jesus’ bold ministry finds its ultimate expression in the end of his life. When we remember his brutal death, we honor the reality of suffering and grief. When we proclaim his resurrection–whether we understand it literally or metaphorically–we hear anew the promise of Genesis I. This creation, with its constant change, is good, for out of death comes new life. There is new possibility, new hope. There is new creation.
To be “in Christ” is to dare to believe that good news, to dare to proclaim the ultimate goodness of this ever-changing creation. To be in Christ is to choose to live the promise that God’s love is more powerful than loss. When we make that choice–or when we even try to make that choice–we are changed. We become, in Paul’s words, a new creation.
Even more, we become part of something larger than ourselves, for we are are called to help bring the possibilities for new life to fulfillment. We are called to be channels of God’s healing love–knitting prayer shawls, making phone calls, lobbying for just laws. We are called to build bridges, to make connections, to open windows and doors for the Spirit to move.
These three scriptures speak powerfully to where we find ourselves today. As individuals, we face constant change in our lives–sometimes grief over the loss of loved ones, uncertainty as we wonder about jobs and homes and family configurations, possibility as we try new things.
As a church community, we find ourselves in a time of dramatic change. Some of the change involves loss–the retirement of Don Buell after 25 years as our pianist-organist, the recognition that as we come together with Grace Church our community will be different. We know that for some of our friends at Grace, this change stirs deep grief–as they let go of beloved traditions, places, identities and roles.
Some of the changes we face as a church involve uncertainty. How will our Christian Education and Music programs evolve in the next year, with new staff and new needs? What will it be like to offer an evening service? There are so many unknowns.
There is also possibility. We can already see some emerging: new choir members, potential for vital youth programming, great energy for mission and outreach and a strengthened commitment to care for our earth.
The promise of our faith is that there are possibilities we cannot even begin to imagine. God is at work–in and through and beyond us–doing a new thing. We are a new creation. The assurance of the first chapter of Genesis–“and God saw that it was good.”– applies to us: And God sees that it is good.
When we wrote our 185th Anniversary hymn a few years ago, I struggled with rhyme scheme. What rhymes with creation? “Elation” was just about the only option.
Fortunately, elation is a perfect word to describe how we are called to respond to the promise of our faith. With elation, we hear the good news. This ever-changing creation is imbued with the goodness of God’s healing, loving spirit. In the face of loss, God is at work planting seeds for new life. There is possibility beyond our imaginings. With elation, we claim our calling–to be God’s new creation, to work together with God to bring hope and healing to our world.
“With elation, new creation.” Amen.