"I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth..." No surprise. Most church folks would have little difficulty acknowledging God as creator of all that is. There may be some disagreement on HOW creation took place - some want to say it happened in six 24-hour days, others want to say the "days" of which we read in the Genesis account should be understood as meaning thousands or even millions of years, still others say it was the "Big Bang." More about that in due course, but, for the most part, we insist that creation did not JUST HAPPEN - something...someONE...was behind it: God, the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth."
This earth and our life on it is truly fascinating. For example, you science majors know that the earth's relationship to the sun is not perpendicular - it is tilted at a 23-degree angle.(1) An accident? Or by design?
While tilted at this 23-degree angle, our world is rotating on its axis at about 1000 miles per hour. Scientists say if the rotation were only 100 miles per hour, our days and nights would be ten times as long, and whatever survived the incredibly hot days would freeze in the night when temperatures would plummet to something like 240 below zero.
This 23-degree tilt is not absolute - it wobbles off by about 3 degrees with amazing regularity. Our seasons and our climates are affected by it. If the world strayed up or down MORE than the 3-degree tilt, life might perish. Without the tilt to deflect the light and heat, the earth would absorb too much heat. Moisture would be pulled to the north and south poles and build up in tremendous ice caps.
Another thing - the depth of earth's oceans. If they had been much deeper back in the dim and distant beginning, that much more water would have been absorbed or would have dissolved the carbon dioxide and oxygen out of the air. Life could never have begun without an appropriate atmosphere.
Not only are the oceans the right depth, the earth's crust is just the right thickness. If the earth were only ten feet thicker on the outside than it is, that much additional matter would have oxidized all the free oxygen out of the air and life could not have begun.
As we all know, the earth travels around the sun in an elliptical orbit at a fairly constant speed. If our world slowed down, it would be pulled so close to the sun at the shallow or narrow part of that football-like orbit that we would all be burned to a crisp. If we were to slightly more than double our speed, we would be thrown far into space at the long point of the orbit and quickly freeze to death.
Speaking of distance, we are approximately 93-million miles from the sun - just about right to receive neither too much nor too little heat and light to allow us to live. And our moon, while the earth tilts, wobbles, and races around the sun, orbits us at about 240,000 miles, just about perfect for our well-being, controlling the tides and keeping them within livable levels.
Fascinating stuff. Did that all just happen by accident? I would be hard pressed to defend such a view. On top of all that, what we have is beautiful. Halfway up a mountain road from the port of Charlotte Amalie on the island of St. Thomas is a clearing which commands a breathtaking view of the sea and the harbor. A sign posted there to indicate the site had been cleared by the hotel at the peak reads: "Lookout Point--Courtesy of Mountaintop Hotel." Below the lettering is scrawled in angry black pencil, "And a little help from God!"(2)
"I believe in God, the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth." How did it all happen? Despite what some would have us believe, the Bible does not tell us.
That passage we read together from Genesis is one of two stories back-to-back that describe what happened way back when, "In the beginning..." To be honest, it has caused more than a little difficulty for people of faith in recent years. Some folks have interpreted the material as a scientific treatise giving the details of God's process. As we noted a few minutes ago, some want to say that the "days" referred to are the garden-variety 24-hour type with which we are all familiar. Others, influenced by scientific studies that indicate this planet is millions of years old, say the "days" of Genesis One should be understood as simply distinct periods, each of which may have lasted for thousands of years. Some have argued a "gap" theory that suggests a long period, perhaps million of years, between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, a time when dinosaurs and other unexplained ancient creatures could have come and gone from the earth. Until Darwin came along with his theory of evolution, those were the choices for people of faith.
Darwin struck a nerve, of course. Church folk went apoplectic as they heard this "attack" on the Bible. The most famous of the attempts to hold back the tide of science that was threatening to overwhelm traditional belief was the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. National attention was focused on the little town of Dayton, Tennessee as young John Scopes, a 24-year-old high school general science teacher and part-time football coach, was charged with violating state law by teaching Darwin's theory.(3) Defending Mr. Scopes was one of the finest legal minds of the day, Clarence Darrow. Joining the prosecution was one of America's premier orators, a three-time Democratic candidate for President of the United States, the man called the Great Commoner, William Jennings Bryan.
It was a carnival. Banners decorated the streets of Dayton. Lemonade stands were set up. Chimpanzees, said to have been brought to town to testify for the prosecution, performed in a side show on Main Street. Opening statements pictured the trial as a titanic struggle between good and evil or truth and ignorance. Bryan claimed that "If evolution wins, Christianity goes." Darrow argued that "Scopes isn't on trial; civilization is on trial."
The prosecution case, began with the court being asked to take judicial notice of the Book of Genesis, as it appears in the King James version. It did. Seven students in Scope's class were then asked a series of questions about his teachings. They testified that Scopes told them that man and all other mammals had evolved from a one-celled organism. The prosecution rested. It was a simple case, they said.
More witnesses were called, but the highlight of the trial came on the seventh day: according to the New York Times, the most amazing court scene in Anglo-Saxon history. The defense asked that William Jennings Bryan be called to the stand as an expert on the Bible. Bryan agreed, stipulating only that he should have a chance to interrogate the defense lawyers. Dismissing the concerns of his prosecution colleagues, he took a seat on the witness stand, and began fanning himself.
Darrow began his interrogation of Bryan with a quiet question: "You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven't you, Mr. Bryan?"
Bryan replied, "Yes, I have. I have studied the Bible for about fifty years." Thus began a series of questions designed to undermine a literalist interpretation of scripture. Bryan was asked about a whale swallowing Jonah, Joshua making the sun stand still, Noah and the great flood, the temptation of Adam in the garden of Eden, and the creation according to Genesis. After initially contending that "everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there," Bryan finally conceded that the words of the Bible should not always be taken literally. In response to Darrow's questions as to whether the six days of creation, as described in Genesis, were twenty-four hour days, Bryan said, "My impression is that they were periods."
Bryan, who began his testimony calmly, stumbled badly under Darrow's persistent prodding. At one point the exasperated Bryan said, "I do not think about things I don't think about."
Darrow asked, "Do you think about the things you DO think about?"
Bryan responded, to the derisive laughter of spectators, "Well, sometimes."
We know the rest. John Scopes was convicted, given a slap-on-the-wrist $100 fine which was overturned on appeal, not on constitutional grounds, but on a technicality. According to the court, the fine should have been set by the jury, not the judge. Rather than send the case back for further action, however, the court said forget it: "Nothing is to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case."
Yes, there are still folks who say that teaching evolution or the "Big Bang" theory or anything else that does not follow the outline of Genesis, chapter one, is nothing less than a fiendish attack that comes directly from the devil in Hell. I disagree.
Despite what many of us grew up believing, Genesis, chapter one, was never meant to be understood as a scientific explanation of creation; rather, these verses are a worship tool, adaptable for liturgical use in the congregation as we did this morning, reading antiphonally - first the right, then the left, then all together. We use the majestic cadence of wonderful poetry to convey the ultimate truth that "I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth."
Look carefully at the verses again. Day One: "Let there be light." OK. Where does light come from? The sun. But you will notice that sun is not created in this passage until Day Four. And the flora and fauna that we know so depend upon the sun arrive on Day Three. Hmm. No need to press this further. Simply note there is a beautiful poetic parallel:
Day 1: Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Day 4: Sun/Moon/Stars
Day 2: Waters/Sky . . . . . . . . . Day 5: Fish/Birds
Day 3: Dry land/Vegetation . . . Day 6: Land animals/People
Was this science? Of course, not. It was faith. It was the ancient theologian's way of saying, "I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth." How? Big Bang? Little Whimper? We do not know. Let the scientists argue that out.
One brief aside. I mentioned earlier that this account is one of TWO creation stories in Genesis. The second one is just as familiar and is hundreds and hundreds of years older - the story of Adam and Eve. It was the ancient Hebrew parent or grandparent's way of answering a child's question, "Where did we come from?" History? Not any more than the account we have been discussing is science. In story form, it is one more way of saying, "I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth."
What will that affirmation mean in day to day life? After all, we continue to insist, as we believe, so we behave. The most obvious response is that if this is GOD's creation, we ought not to mess it up. The conscious pollution of air and water are No-No's. They do not belong to us. In fact, the opposite is surely true. The Hebrew word that we translate "have dominion" should be understood in terms of care-giving, even nurturing, not exploitation.(4) We must be careful.
One more thing we should not overlook. This creator God in whom we say we believe did not just go through those ancient motions to set this old world spinning on its 23-degree axis and then wander off never to be heard from again. According to the message of scripture, this creator God was busy at the beginning and has been busy ever since.
- Certainly God was still working in the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to establish a special relationship with humanity.
- God was at work in the days of Moses and the Exodus, then the days of the judges and kings, to make a nation out of the inconsistent Israelites.
- God was at work in the days of the Exile, to bring the Jews back to their homeland for a new start.
- God was at work in the time of Jesus and the disciples, in the days of Paul and the early believers, to build a church from which the gospel might be shared.
- God was at work in the Middle Ages, when whole cultures were summarized in the great cathedrals and monasteries, and in the era of the Reformation, when Christianity was revitalized all over Europe.
- God was still working in the time of John and Charles Wesley, when a mood of revivalism spread through Britain and the colonies, and in the days of Vatican II, when the worldwide Roman Catholic Church was shaken by new programs that still cause reverberations on every continent.
- And God is still at work today, working for love and justice and decency, wherever the work for these qualities of life goes on, whether in the churches, in state agencies or even in the halls of Congress. God will always work.(5)
Remember that the next time you look in a mirror, squint at the reflection, and whisper, "God's not done with me yet." YES! You KNOW it! God is STILL at work.
"I believe in God, the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth"...and ME!
Amen!
1. This and the details that follow are from an article by William B. Tolar, Dean of the School of Theology, Southwestern Baptist Seminary, "What Makes Life on Earth Possible?" printed in the Texas Baptist Standard.
2. Irene Corbally Kuhn, "Fun & Laughter," Reader's Digest, 1967, p. 557
3. Further details come from Douglas Linder, via Internet, http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/scopes.htm
4. Walter Brueggemann, "The Book of Genesis," New Interpreter's Bible, CD-ROM, (Nashville: Abingdon, 1997)
5. John Killinger, You Are What You Believe: The Apostles' Creed for Today, (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), pp. 37-38