Genesis 1:1-2:4

September 7, 2025

 

       Good morning! My name is Drew Willson. It’s a gift to me to serve as pastor here at Common Table, and it’s a gift that we do this work and this life together.

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         We just read the first Creation story in the Bible aloud in its entirety. There are other creation stories in the Bible, including Genesis 2, John 1, and Proverbs 8, but let’s rest at Genesis 1 since today is the Sabbath (…and only I am supposed to be working?). We’ve read it entirely, and let me ask: how was that for you? Would anyone be willing to share a word to describe that experience?

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         I read this aloud last Wednesday on my back porch, under the green trees and blue sky. There are people who would say that scripture is best read and understood outdoors. That’s its proper context. In the book of Acts, the birth of the church occurs on Pentecost when the people are gathered in a closed room, and I guess we church folk have been so inclined ever since. But even then, it was an in-breaking of the Holy Spirit with unexpected wind and fire. So let’s not get too cozy in our confines. Genesis 1 also begins with God’s wind or breath or spirit moving over the waters, which makes Pentecost and the church always something of a callback—and something of a new creation.

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         Yet what is new about hearing this old story? If you’re going to force me to read old stories, tell me the stories of Jesus, as the hymn goes! Tell me the moral tales. Give me the lesson with application. Maybe a little homework assignment (that I can forget as soon as I leave this place!). But don’t bother me with this Sunday School stuff. ‘Cause maybe I spent years believing, debating, defending, deconstructing, deserting, disregarding this stuff. At best, isn’t it for kids? The fairy tales, the mythologies, the simplified stories to make sense of the world before you’re ready for real science? Shouldn’t we stick to stories that are plausibly historical, factual, verifiable? (So we say while we [PAY] hand-over-fist to see the ever-expanding universe of Star Wars and Marvel.)

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         Let’s step back and look: whether or not you believe God created the universe in six 24-hour days, the Bible never demands that you do. Not Moses nor Elijah nor Jesus ever busts out a Scantron or an SOL to find out the true believers who ace Bible Science 101. That is not a thing! No, they seem to be more interested in people being in right relationship with God and each other. And what’s more, we humans tell stories for many purposes. If you only read non-fiction books and you only watch Ken Burns documentaries, you do you. I’m not here to yuck your yum. But if you come out of the latest Avengers movie grumbling, “I don’t think that’s scientifically accurate, and I question its historicity,” let me suggest that just maybe you’re missing the point of the story.

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         Today is the beginning of our journey with the narrative lectionary at Common Table. That means we’re starting from the first page of the Bible, and from September to May we’re making our way through the grand story arc, the meta-narrative of the Bible. We aren’t reading every page, of course, but we are taking one road of many potential routes to get a sense of the big picture and tell the big story. To some people, this may seem a fool’s errand. The Bible is a book with talking animals, for goodness’ sake. And it’s really old. Shouldn’t we ground ourselves in the newest books with the latest scientific facts, especially in a season when fact and truth are under assault? Or might we be missing the point of the story?

 

         There’s some irony here. Scholars believe that the Creation story in Genesis 1 emerged not first but relatively late in Biblical history in a time with some reliable historic witness: 2500 years ago, when the people of God were living in a long season of confusion and danger. It was after the Babylonian empire had come and crushed Jerusalem in 586 BCE. The Babylonians besieged the city. They looted the temple of all the sacred objects and then destroyed it. Then they carried off most of the citizens into exile—the political leaders, the wealthy, the artisans—leaving behind just the poorest of the land to farm the soil and serve the empire. All the exiled people of God had to live in Babylon, in the land of their oppressors, for over a generation. Psalm 137 tells it most powerfully:

“By the rivers of Babylon, we broke down and wept when we remembered the city of God. We hung up our harps on the trees, because our captors demanded we sing for them—our tormentors wanted entertaining, saying, “Sing us a song you sang in the temple!” But how can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

      – Psalm 137:1-4

Some of us who feel like strangers in a strange land may wonder the same today: how can we sing our faith when ICE is rounding up neighbors and the world around us feels so unjust?

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         Scholars say that’s precisely when our ancestors wrote a new song—a new story of what this world is really about. In exile, they first heard the Babylonian story of creation called the Enuma elish. They heard this story of their oppressors and they said, “No. We believe the world works differently.” And they riffed and recreated, developing this story that we know now as Genesis 1:

In Genesis 1, the Hebrew term for “deep waters” (tehom) is related to the name of the mother goddess Tiamat in the Mesopotamian creation myth Enuma elish. Tiamat, the salt waters of chaos, is killed and split like a mussel by the young god Marduk, who builds the world out of her carcass. The Israelite author who has provided the opening chapter of the Bible wants none of the uncertainty of this battle motif. His account of creation by God’s word is as solid and inevitable as his style. If his account lacks a matriarchal goddess, it also does not present the creation of the world as dependent on her death.

      – The Women’s Bible Commentary, 16

In other words, the people in exile—strangers in a strange land—told a story of the world that was not founded on violence or misogyny or the trumping of others. Instead of destruction, good creation. Instead of matricide, gender equality in the image of God. Instead of triumph over, stewardship of creation. And God’s image is found in all humanity—including their tormentors in Babylon. Their enemies. It’s an extraordinary claim. And in this day and age, why do we still tell a creation story? Because we have to push back against the principalities whose story insists that the world conform to them. To their divisiveness and greed and lust for power. When we tell our creation story, we bear witness to the ways they are off base, oblivious, missing the mark. They may have their day today, but in the grand story, they will not last long. They are so out of step with Creation. This world will long outlast them, making food for flowers out of their ancient remains. Grass will grow through the cracks in their stone gardens, trees will split their sacred places, waters will wash away their memory from the earth. They thought this world was all about them; they got their story wrong from the start.

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         But it’s not just them. We, too, can get the story wrong. I can get it wrong! When hopelessness grows in me, and I think it’s all for nothing; when I lose sight of the beauty of the earth and the image of God even in my enemies; when my story about this world is all destruction and demonization and despair; I need us to gather and remember our story again. In the words of Luke Miller and in the spirit of Psalm 19, “It’s like God is shouting into the world what is true, what leads to life, and we are doing our best to drown it out.” We’ve got to listen up and help tell the old, old story.

         So we start afresh with Genesis 1, and we head anew through the scripture story this year. Maybe you’re familiar with the Bible. Maybe it’s a complete mystery. Either way, come with us: let’s tell the story again into a world desperately in need of a different story. Our politics is a mess and we want it fixed. Yet we also remember how Jesus didn’t lead the political insurrection people expected. Instead, he told parables. Stories! Stories whose staying power has far outlasted the oppressive empires. And they will continue as we tell the stories, too. So what are the stories we’re telling ourselves about the world? What are the stories we’re telling the world? If we start with a story of violence like Babylon, how might we tend to see others as enemies to battle and subdue? If we start with a story of God’s goodness and God’s image in everyone, how might we treat the world and each other as more than competition and commodity? Small wonder that author and historian Jemar Tisby’s anti-racist strategy is founded upon the image of God in others. What happens when we start here? What will happen this year at Common Table when we start here? In dangerous times, in dehumanizing times, we are here to tell a different story about the world. Won’t you be a part of the work with us? May God give us courage together to tell the stories we all need to hear. Amen.