Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

In the Beginning

Reverend Darcey Laine
April 4, 2004
Palo Alto, CA

Beginnings are important. Not only do the actual facts of a new beginning shape all that grows from that seed, but the stories we tell also shape the meaning we make and the purpose we claim in response to the real facts of that beginning. For millennia cultures rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition have been shaped by the Genesis story. The story is so familiar that it is referenced in art and entertainment, from Haydn to the Simpsons. But the story parodied on television shows and preached by evangelists is often not faithful to the scriptures themselves.

Not everyone notices that the first and second chapters of Genesis tell two different creation stories. The first, the opening words of the whole Judeo-Christian cannon, was set down by editors from the priestly class. In this version of time's beginning, god speaks creation into being. God says "let there be light" and there is light. Each day God creates a new piece of creation. On the 6th day , when it is time to create humans "God created human kind in his image, in the image of god he created them, male and female he created them." and God says to them "fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over ...every living thing that moves upon the earth." No serpents in this story, no tree of life; on the 7th day when the world is complete God rests, and enjoys his creation.

What are the symbolic implications of this creation story? We have a sense that creation unfolded gradually in stages. We also see that creation had a beginning and an end, because God rested when the whole thing was done. In this story humans are at the top of the hierarchy of creation, a culmination. Of all the creatures we are said to be most like God. Even a progressive Christian scholar like Thomas Sheehan says that our creation on the 6th day shows that "God's primary relationship is, of course, to the humans, and through humans to other animals and other life." Our relationship to the other animals and plants is specifically to "subdue" and "have dominion over." Well, I think we've succeeded. We have most certainly filled the earth and subdued it. I offer the children's desire to save the remaining rainforests as an illustration of the contemporary realization that we have the power to plow under all the wild places of the earth. Unfortunately, this story does not tell us what to do once the earth is subdued, once the rainforests are gone...

But after God rests on the 7th day, at the start of Genesis chapter 2, someone who is reading critically will notice that creation begins all over again. Scholas claim that this is a story from an oral tradition retold by a writer who always refers to God as "Yahweh" and probably lived about 250 years earlier, when the Israelite religion was somewhat more nature-centered. In this story God forms man not from God's words, but from the dust, and breathes life into the first man. God plants a garden in which he places Adam, and there grows "every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food" and a tree of life, and a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flows out of Eden, and the mythical river branches into the rivers which frame of the historic cradle of civilization I learned about in high school. But God says "it is not good that the man should be alone" so God first makes animals, which the man names, but still Adam does not find his helper. Finally God makes the first woman from Adam's rib. The serpent enters the picture almost immediately and Adam and Eve are cast out of the garden for eating the forbidden fruit.

Whereas the first story creates a sequence that overlays a scientific view of creation rather poetically, this second creation story does not. First earth, then water, then Adam, then plants including the 2 special trees, then animals, then Eve are created. Adam is put in the garden "to till it and to keep it" and the animals are made as an attempt to find Adam "a helper as his partner." Finally Eve is made "Flesh of Adam's flesh" and "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh." Adam and Eve are true partners until the fall, after which God says to Eve "he shall rule over you" and God tells Adam that humankind will have to toil to bring forth food from the ground. In this story there is no articulation that humans should subjugate the earth, but it is clear that the earth was made for us. There is also a clear hierarchy of men over women woven into the story. Finally the fact that we are cast out of paradise shows that life as we know it is a punishment, and humanity will always hunger for a return to the garden.

Now I turn to the contemporary retelling from our story time today. "The Blessing Seed" was written by one woman, Caitlin Matthews. It is clearly based on a combination of the Genesis stories but influenced by Jewish Mysticism. In the Author's Note printed at the end of the book, she mentions her concern that the Genesis stories have been used historically to shame people. She says the story has also "Contributed to a high-handed disregard of the natural world and sometimes to a dismaying hatred of life itself." In Matthews' retelling of the story, the gender inequity of the biblical story is gone completely. We are still "more like God" than the other animals, but the animals and plants are said to be our family. We are in charge, but our charge is caring rather than dominion. Matthews says that she was trying to replace the idea of "original sin" with "original blessing" Her story suggests that humans intrinsically feel connected to all other beings, and when we feel separate this is not a punishment, but an awareness of differentiation, and a path of learning. All life is a journey and the journey takes many forms. Adam and Eve are not cast out of their home, but their home becomes the whole world, now larger than before they ate the fruit. God accompanies us on our journey. This God is still conceived as a transcendent God, who is different from creation, but compassionate towards all creation. Humans have a special relationship with God, and a special role in creation, but our responsibility towards other beings is to treat them as family. The author says "how we return to our source when things have gone wrong is an important lesson to learn when we are young. The song of creation in this story reminds us to reconnect with the deep well of life."

Another children's book written in the last decade is called Becoming Me by Martin Boronson. It begins "Once upon a time I was... I played by myself for ages... then I started to get lonely... And then suddenly, in a big burst, I become something else! This was so much fun I did it again and again." The author goes on to describe becoming trees and birds and animals and finally... you. In this creation story everything is God, and God is everything. In time we forget what we are, but sometimes we remember. The progression is similar to the genesis story; God is when nothing else is, and god creates other things one by one. But the radical difference is that the substance of creation here is not different than god, not words, not sound, not dirt, but God's self. Though the author writes the story for "all faiths" the Hindu influence is clear here. The idea that God is the same substance as creation would have been beyond heretical at the council of Nicea, where the 300 year old Christian church decided to tighten up the official Christian theology.

This subtle point makes a huge difference in how we live. We are not here to subdue the earth, we are the earth. We are the animals we are the plants. We are intimately connected to their suffering and pain. Our alienation from the other beings on this earth is actually an alienation not only from God but from our true selves. Our journey then is only to remember who we really are, and this knowledge restores our harmony, our connection. Alienation comes not as a punishment or as a fall, but a forgetting. We return to God simply by remembering our true selves. Think again of the rainforest. How differently would we understand our responsibility to that land if we believed of those plants and animals, of the earth itself "I am that."

I am not claiming that any of the preceding stories are historical fact. I offer them only as stories, with the special power and meaning that stories have.

But I would like to take an example from history to show that even historical stories shape and are shaped by our self-understanding. Because when I say that beginnings are important, I don't just mean the beginning of everything, I mean every beginning. The seed carries the design of the plant.

A couple of years ago a UU minister was asked to present a history of UU at in interfaith cluster gathering. The minister traced our origins back to Origin of Alexandra, a Universalist proclaimed heretical at the Council of Nicea. The minister also traced our roots back to Servetus, the Unitarian who was burned as a heretic by Calvin. One of the progressive Christian clergy in the group asked why it was that we did not trace our roots back to Jesus, as most protestant groups do. I realized that to many Unitarian Universalists, our movement was born in these moments of heresy. The history we tell ourselves and one another is filled with such stories of learned men and women whose reason and study lead them to a theological position that renders them outsiders to organized religion. Our creation myths are usually some variation on our leaving the creedal circle of mainstream religion. The story we tell about the birth of this movement is intimately related to our self understanding.

In a recent Adult Religious Education class I called "Religion for One world or When did we stop being Christian" I asked the question "since we come from Christian roots, are we Christian?"' To which one person responded "We are Christian in the same way that Christians are Jewish." Later someone else asked, "but what came before Judaism?" One story in the bible tells us it was a "Queen of Heaven" we worshiped before Yahweh. Before Judaism, people in that area practiced local religions, bound deeply into their sense of place, grounded in the natural world, and including a powerful sense of both the female and male archetypes of the divine. This is the story of religious origin that our UU pagans and eco-feminists tell about their own religious roots.

One final story. Before Space time was the way it is today, there was a singularity. For some reason we may never know, the singularity exploded with incredible force, sending all the matter and energy in the universe hurling away from that first place. And over thousands and millions of years, the matter collected into things like plants and stars and moons. On one planet circling a small star no place special in the universe, as millions and millions of years past, slowly, slowly conditions became ripe for life to form and grow and change and change and become more and more complex. And this is how you and I came to be. This is a pretty new story, less than 100 years old. It changes over time as we learn more and more about our world and about ourselves. It is a good story, but what does it mean? Why were you and I born, and what is our purpose? This story has no God to tell us our purpose or to lay out a plan for us. It does tell me one thing. Life as we know formed over so many million years we can hardly imagine time on that scale. The conditions for our lives are so unique, they might never be repeated. To me this means that life is unbelievably precious in all its forms. It also means to me that life is not done forming and growing and changing. We are not the last creation, just one link in a long winding chain. That chain, that web is important. More important than anyone of us.

Maybe this is your creation story, and maybe it isn't. Maybe this is what your story means and maybe it isn't. But either way, stories are powerful. We create them and they create us. Wherever you put a 0 on your timeline, and say "this is where my story begins" is important. The story you tell about your beginning informs who you are and who you are becoming. What does your creation myth teach you, and where does it lead?

What is your reaction to this sermon?
Please send comments to Reverend Darcey Laine