Chaos and Creation - a sermon for the second Sunday before Lent

Genesis 1.1 - 2.3 & Matthew 6.25-34

In these Sundays before Lent we are given a foretaste of the promise that lies at the far end of the Lenten journey which we will begin together in a little over a week.

Next Sunday we hear the story of the Transfiguration and recognise in it a foretaste of Jesus’ glory of heaven. This week, we are reminded of the power and rhythm of God’s creative love. A story which echoes from the first day of creation into the vision of the creation in the new creation of the Easter garden and the kingdom of heaven. A theme summed up eloquently in our post-communion prayer today:

God our creator,

by your gift the tree of life was set at the heart of the earthly paradise,

and the bread of life at the heart of your Church:

may we who have been nourished at your table on earth

be transformed by the glory of the Saviour’s cross

and enjoy the delights of eternity;

Although we live with the hope of this promise and reflect on the power of that creative love in our prayers, we have all been this last week challenged by a vision of creation which differs from this vision of the loving intentions of God.

On Monday a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck in south central Turkey near the Syrian border followed in the hours that followed by a series of aftershocks of similar magnitude. We have all, I am sure, been shocked by the devastation this has caused, and the enormous death toll in the tens-of-thousands which will only grow. Whole buildings and communities flattened by the unbridled power of creation.

This stark reality stands in sharp relief to a benign vision of creation which we could draw from our readings today. Such a juxtaposition asks us hard questions which we should confront. Do disasters like this call us to question the nature of God’s creation or, even worse, question the nature of God and God’s place in the origins of these natural disasters. Events which insurance underwriters ominously term “acts of God”?

In 1755 an earthquake of similar devastating power to that of last week hit Lisbon causing fires and tsunamis which almost completely destroyed that great city. The shock of Lisbon earthquake echoed through European society and made many call into question their deep assumptions about creation and God’s place in that created order. 

Famously the French Enlightenment writer Voltaire used a focus on that earthquake to question not only the idea of a universal law ordering of creation, but whether there was even a God who benignly and kindly ordered that creation:

To the universal law, all your troubles are for the best. 

To God, you are the same as the vile worms 

[…]

These immutable laws of necessity, 

This chain of bodies, minds, and worlds. 

O dreams of scholars! O profound chimeras! 

God holds the chain but he is not himself chained

As we hold this challenge in our minds we might rightly return to our Old Testament reading today. This is a story and account of creation we know so well. Of God’s ordered and measured process of creation, stopping and reflecting on this work, and seeing that it was good. On first reading this is a vision of creation which is challenged by our experiences of this last week. How can God look on the power of the creation we have seen this last week and say that it is good? Well if we reflect on this great story a little more deeply there are, perhaps two themes which we can draw hope from. 

The first theme is to ask what kind of story this is. Is it, as many think, a story of what God did then in six days beginning, as the Irish Bishop James Ussher calculated, beginning on a Sunday near the autumn equinox in 4004 BC. Or is this, drawing on our more nuanced and modern understanding of creation and cosmology less an historical narrative and more a poetic reflection on the creative power of God’s love in and through all creation. 

We instinctively see this as an origin story, as literally the genesis of our story with God and creation. But when we hear this story in full we find that beguiling rhythm of words and actions which are less an origin story and more the pattern and beat of that creative power that moves through all creation.

The second theme we find is richer understanding of the form of God's creative power. In the opening lines of story of creation we hear that God does not, like the Enlightenment vision of God which Voltaire rejects, create an ordered and benign creation out of nothing like a master craftsman or, to misquote a former Canon of the this Cathedral, a watchmaker. Rather God’s creative love brings order out of the disorder and chaos of the “waters of the great deep”, or as another, more poetic translation of this passage has it:

God began to create heaven and earth and the earth was then welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over the waters, God said, “Let there be light.” And there was Light.

We find these two insights into the creative power of God’s love – of the ongoing rhythm of that creative power which constantly brings order from chaos – come together in the God we encounter in Jesus Christ. 

In Jesus God is not absent from creation, resting after his work was done. Rather in Jesus God is moving through that creation and bringing order to the chaos that he encounters. In Jesus we learn that God’s creative love does not spring from a vacuum or nothing, but is always always bringing order, metaphorically and literally, out of the swirling waters of the chaos that surround us all the time. So, Jesus, echoing the disorder of the waters of great deep, calms the waters of the sea and walks on them.  Out of the destruction and cruelty of humanity revealed at Golgotha – the place of the skull - God brings us to the order and creation of the Easter garden tended by one who we supposed to be the gardener.

So does this deeper and richer account of God’s creative love echoing through history, bringing order out of chaos, help is make sense of the chaos and grief and destruction of these last few days? Well the short answer is that it cannot and nor should it.

In the scale of this suffering and tragedy it would be trite to attempt to tie this all up with a neat theological argument accompanied by some well-placed platitudes. In the face of this destruction, we should confront and challenge God with the enormity of this unfolding reality. Some problems, some issues, are too big too complex for a quick answer. Even Voltaire knew that.

But this deeper reading of God’s creative love which we are invited to reflect on today can help us order our response to this tragedy. How, we might ask ourselves, can we help reveal God’s creative love out of this chaos and destruction? Well, we can put our money where our mouth is and support the international aid through the Disasters Emergency Committee which brings the range and experience of over fifteen charities to offer immediate help where it is most needed. 

Secondly, we can recognise that through human ingenuity it is possible to protect against some of the worst excesses of these natural disasters and ensure a greater share of the resources of creation are available to protect the poorest communities. Making these protections available to others in our world in a way we would expect were we to find ourselves living on the lines of seismic activity, rather than turn our eyes away.

And finally, we can pray deeply that the creative power of God’s love - which echoes from the garden of creation, which illuminated the power of the cross, and which will transform the bread and wine of the altar into the presence of God’s love with us - might be known and might work gently and surely to bring order from the chaos for the countless lives and homes and communities devastated in this last week.