January 12, 2003

First Sunday of Epiphany

Mark 1:4-11

Genesis 1:1-5

 What Is on God’s Mind?

     And God called the light Day, and the darkness Night and there was evening and morning, the first day.  Imagine - the first day of creation, no past, just future, the threshold of the universe.  What do you think God was thinking that day?  What was on God’s mind as the whole creative process began?

     Mere mortals like us probably can’t even come close to imagining such a thing - the depth and breadth of God’s imagination is unimaginable.  Even so, as we look around this world God created and out into the ever-expanding universe, how can we help but wonder if God had some master plan for all this at the very beginning?  Well, believe it or not, scientists (and not especially religious ones at that) have begun wondering the very same thing.

     Within the last few years, more and more scientists from a wide range of scientific fields have begun to postulate what are called “Anthropic Principals”.  In other words, they’ve begun to believe there just might be a creative mind behind the universe.  They came up with this theory through numbers crunching technology that has only recently been available.  Basically, by calculating rates of physical reactions they have discovered that there simply hasn’t been enough time since the Big Bang for our incredibly complex universe to evolve.  Hence, there had to be some pre-Big Bang design, some pattern laid out by a creative mind.

     Isn’t it nice of them to finally come around to our side after claiming for so many years that science proves there isn’t any God?

     I’ve always marveled at the first chapter of Genesis because its day-by-day unfolding story so closely parallels what science tells us about evolution.  It‘s really uncanny how similar the scientific and biblical versions appear to be, especially considering that the biblical version predates science by several thousand years.  (We’re going to do an in-depth study of this at Tuesday evening’s Spiritual Journey, by-the-way.)

     But of all versions of the creation story, the one I like best is Bill Cosby’s.  He says that after each day God looked at what he created and said, “It is good - the sun and stars and rocks and plants and fish and birds!”  That is, until he got to the sixth day when he created people.  God didn’t have anything good to say after that!

     Well, Mr. Cosby is good at being funny but I have to say, he isn’t a very good Bible student.  In verses 26 through 31, the first chapter of Genesis tells us that God created people in the divine image, male and female they were created.  The story goes on to say that these men and women are to be good stewards of the creation and finally concludes with God seeing everything, including people, and proclaiming it all more than just good, but very good.

     No, it isn’t possible for mere mortals like us to really get inside the mind of God, but we can see the results of God’s creativity.  There, we can see the pattern the Mind Behind the Universe intended.  And what the first chapter of Genesis tells us is that faithful people looking to God for thousands of years have seen God’s goodness in it all.  Whether we believe each stage of creation took 24 hours or 24 billion years, day-by-day, goodness runs through it all and in the end it is all very good.

     Now, one might argue it’s not nearly as good now as it was at the beginning, that sin has often overcome good with evil, that the creation has been marred by pollution and war and human fallibility so that God’s goodness has all but been lost.  But such arguments make the mistake of assuming mere mortals have the capacity to undo what God has done.  God proclaimed it all good, every bit of it and in spite of us, our sinfulness, our evil, any “axis of evil“, goodness still overcomes all else because that’s God‘s plan.

     Consider today’s Gospel story, for example.  Here is smelly old, camel hair covered John the Baptist with locusts in his teeth growling at all the sinners standing in the mud on the bank of the Jordan River - “Repent!”  He condemns their evil ways with fire and brimstone, proclaiming that God’s awful winnowing fork is ready to cut them down at the roots like straw to be cast in a fire.  But then along comes Jesus.  The moment of the Messiah‘s arrival.  The moment John had been warning about for so long.  But the Son of God just steps into the water along with the sinners and waits his turn.  No fire comes blasting down from a wrathful God.  Instead, a little white bird descends, a dove, a sign of peace, a sign of the Holy Spirit.  And Jesus steps out of the water and leaves poor John waist deep and probably with a puzzled look on his face to go out into that sinful, wretched crowd to touch and heal and teach them and when at last it becomes necessary, to die for them as well. 

     Is it any wonder that not long after this John sent a messenger to Jesus asking if he really was the Messiah or whether he should look for another?  Jesus made much too gentle of an entrance for a fire-breather like John.  But that was God’s way because God is good and God sees everything as very good.  As Paul said in the eighth chapter of Romans, all things work for good for those that love the Lord.

     Dare we allow ourselves to also see things this way?  Dare we allow ourselves to share God’s unconditional optimism for the creation?  Dare we allow ourselves to see in this universe what God sees in it, in other people what God sees in them - precious, redeemable, worth dying for, in the end very good?  What a different world this would be if we would but allow ourselves such insight!

     When I was in the eighth grade I began developing something of a bad attitude.  I wasn’t happy with myself, I was having problems with the basketball coach and I didn’t feel like trying very hard with my school work and got myself into something of an unproductive rut.  One day my English teacher took me aside, put her face right up to mine and looked me straight in the eyes and said, “I know you can do better.  You can be a great student if you want to be.”  She saw something in me I didn’t see and it turned me around. 

     She saw possibilities, untapped potential, something good.  Isn’t this what God sees in each of us?  How else can we possibly explain the gift of Jesus for our salvation? 

     The Mind Behind the Universe continues to create, offering each of us sinful folk forgiveness, renewal, a new day.  And God sees goodness there.  God sees the possibilities, the potential and proclaims it is very good indeed.