Thursday, June 12, 2014

In the beginning

http://youtu.be/dqeqNsfzbNs     is the video of this sermon




A Homily for Trinity Sunday                         All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Southern Shores, NC June 15, 2014                                                   Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
Last week I mentioned that the stories from the Book of Genesis are best understood as myths. We have this unfortunate habit of thinking that myths are lies, but myths are more than that. Myths are cultural stories - which may or may not be factually correct – that we use to explain our understanding of what might be the deeper truth of the fundamental nature of things.  The themes for these stories come from our connections to the layers of personal and cultural and collective unconscious. As I explained last week, myths are public dreams and dreams are private myths. Each night we dream, and our personal, cultural, and collective unconscious speak to us in symbols in order to help us understand ourselves and our relationship to our true selves, our souls, our God, and the world in which we live.  



In a dream group, we give a title to each dream we share and the title gives us a clue to the theme. The name “Genesis” comes from the Greek translation of the first word of the first book of the Bible. In Hebrew there is the letter “bayit”, which we tend to pronounce as Beth, and when the Hebrews used the letter for a word, it meant “house” – that which contains – or “household” or “Temple” as in Beth-lehem, the “house of bread”. However, when only the letter is written, it is a preposition meaning “in”. The next word in the book of Genesis is “raysheeth” which means first, beginning, most importantly, so therefore, when the word and preposition are combined, the word is “b-raysheeth”, “In the beginning” or “First and foremost” or “Most importantly” God created the heavens and the earth, everything that ever was and will be. 

The myth that follows gives the Hebrew understanding of the nature of all creation. In the other 
cultures around them, like the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the creation myths were tied into a struggling encounter between two or more Gods, like the Canaanite Ba’al, the storm God, struggling with Yam the Sea Goddess, dragon, or the Babylonian Marduk, the hero God, and Tiamat the Sea Dragon, or the God of light and God of Darkness. Out of that battle (or sexual encounter, since both are symbols of struggles), then the earth is formed and life begins as both a resolution of one battle and the first act of the continuing struggle of life. The Hebrew myth aims to explain that most importantly there is only one God, and everything that is our understanding comes from the expression of that one God, whose spirit brooded over the void and whose expression, breath of that brooding spirit, gives life. God is the God of dark and light, of sea and sky, God of both male and female, giving life to everything we know, even to the things we fear, like the sea monsters, which the Psalmist declares that God made for the sport of it.

If you try to make this story literal, you miss the point, so we are urged to see each part of the myth as symbolic pointing to a deeper truth. My way of understanding it is that the myth tells me that science tells us that the Cosmic clock begins when 24 Billion years ago there was an explosion, a burst of being; the burst of energy hurling outwards within the tension of the allurement of gravity drawing it back in. The myth tells us that God spoke the breath of energy that begins this whole process and that every atom of all creation contains the spirit of God. If we look at the Cosmic clock as divided into 12 portions of 1.25 Billion years, galaxies start forming in February, with our Galaxy forming in September, a galaxy so wide that if one traveled at the speed of light  in order to get to the other side, it would take 100,000 years. On October 1st, the words “Let there be light” reaches here as our sun begins to form. On October 10th the earth is formed. On October 20th single cell organisms start to appear, and on December 31st of the Cosmic clock at 10:54 PM, the mammals of the genus homo and subspecies sapiens or humans with wisdom start to appear. Humans are last to be made in this myth to remind us that God makes us in God’s image; the image is not physical but rather, at the core of our being, the true self which has the three-fold ability to create, to care, and to love as God creates, cares and loves. At December 31st at 11:59 and 51 seconds the Homo sapiens begin to write down thoughts and record dreams and imagination; five seconds later Jesus comes into the last four seconds of this cosmic clock to point us again to God, to remind us of the Divine Word spoken at the beginning calling us to create, care, and love.

The Genesis myth of creation, that public dream speaking a deeper truth to our true selves is meant to fill us with wonder that this whole creation is filled with God, and our task in these last nine seconds of creation is to pay attention to the whole of creation. We are not to rise above matter but to go deeply into all of the spirit-filled matter. The Spirit is not separate from matter but infuses all of matter. Jerry Wright, a former Presbyterian Minister and current Jungian analyst and one of my instructors for dream encounters (and from whom I have stolen this whole Cosmic Clock analogy) warns us of the attempt to split spirit and matter saying, “When we don’t deal with the things that really matter, it becomes the matter with us.”

First and foremost, “In the beginning”, “Most importantly”, “b-raysheeth”: we are called to live into that wonder of all creation as we listen to that initial creative word resonating with those homo sapiens, humans who, in their wisdom given by God, create, care, and love. Jeff Edwards told us about care which is what stewardship is, the care for all of what we have as a gift from the loving God. We are stewards of the continuing creation which is still evolving. This is also what our Sunday School teachers do with our younger children, as they pass on the stories, dreams, and myths about what it means to be humans in relationship with God - humans with the ability to create, care, and love in the image of God as God creates, cares and loves. It is what we do when the Preacher calls us to pay attention to what is first and foremost. We have to listen. 

Paul in his letter to the Corinthians ends with a call to them and to us to listen and, in listening, create a Shalom peace in our communities. He says:
Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell. Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. 

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