Temple Talk About Creation

I've been invited by Rabbi Erica Asch to sit on a panel at the Jewish Temple in Augusta with a scientist and an artist, talking about our different views about  Creation as they prepare for the High Holy Days.  This is the text of that talk.  

Thank you for asking me to be a part of this panel.  To start, I’d like to make a couple of disclaimers.  I will not be attempting to represent the sum total of Christian thought on Creation.  There are some very much louder, angrier voices in Christianity that see Creation and the whole of Christianity very, VERY differently than I do.  I won’t try to explain how they think, because frankly, I can’t begin to figure out how they think.  What I can attempt to do tonight is give you a little snapshot of how I approach the texts and share one little tidbit I see God trying to tell me through it.  My methods are not unique in Christianity but it isn’t as loud or angry and therefore doesn’t often make the news.  My second disclaimer is that I started my professional life in the sciences and I still think of myself as a scientist.  My Bachelor’s is in Biochemistry and my Master’s is in Food Science and I have NEVER had a moment of conflict between my faith and science.  So, if you were looking for a Scientist vs. Christian vs. Artist Battle Royal over Creation, well, then you asked the wrong Christian!  

So, with that said, you get what you get, so here we go… I want to start by reading you a poem.  

The Road Not Taken

BY ROBERT FROST

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

When Robert Frost wrote this poem he wrote something that communicated deep truths.  He wrote something that had pattern, meter and rhythm.  He wrote something that connects with people deeply, powerfully and even spiritually.  What he didn’t write were literal directions to be followed when walking in a wood, yellow, or otherwise.  He wasn’t trying to be Google Maps and he wasn’t trying to define human body mechanics around walking at the molecular level, the muscular/skeletal level or any other level.  If we were able to get Robert Frost to sit here today and say to him, “OH, Mr. Frost, thank you for giving me the directions to find my way home through the woods from Temple tonight.”  I imagine he might look at us with quite a puzzled face.  

HOWEVER.  Just because Frost’s poem makes for TERRIBLE directions to your house and does an AWEFUL job of explaining the biomechanics of human motion over a slightly improved path through a wooded environment, that doesn’t make it without value.  It doesn’t make his poem un-true.  This poem has deep, deep truths in it.  It doesn’t make it less powerful, transformative or insightful either.  In a similar way, when I come to the Biblical texts the first question I ask is what were the authors trying to do with these texts?  So when I look at Genesis, Chapter one, I see a text I understand was written by priests during the exile in Babylon.  I see patterns, rhythms and meter that suggests that this was likely liturgical… it was worship material.  It was the sort of thing the people might have said over and over and over again, every time they gathered.  

So, the next question I ask, is what were they trying to accomplish with this liturgy back then?  Were they trying to do astrophysics, geology or paleontology?  I don't think so, and not just because those ancient people didn't get that stuff either.  When I look at the historical setting in which they were written and the context, to me it seems that the people of Israel were in a bad spot.  They had been defeated and marched out of Israel and now were stuck in Babylon.  According to the wisdom of the day, back then, if your army beat my army that means that your god is stronger, bigger, badder and more powerful than my god.  So when I look at this text, I don’t see the author's goals as trying to define some scientific process.  What I see is a situation where the Babylonians were likely telling the people of Israel over and over again, day after day that they were weak and beaten and so was their God!  So, this liturgy was written, I believe in part as pastoral care.  This was written to be the Jewish community’s reply to the Babylonians… The people of Israel are standing up and shouting over and over and over again back at the Babylonians and proclaiming the timeless, powerful, wonderful truth which is… “NUH UH!”  NUH UH!  Your Babylonian gods are NOT as powerful as our God!  NUH UH!  Our God has NOT left us alone, abandoned in a foreign land.  NUH UH!  We will not forget our faith!  NUH UH!!!

Now, the reason it had to be written as liturgy and the reason it had to be repeated week after week, Sabbath after Sabbath is that frankly, if they were honest, the actual situation out the window looked very much like what the Babylonians were saying was true.  They were in captivity.  They had been defeated in battle.  There didn’t look like there was any hope.   The kids were even going off and starting a life with people outside of the faith!  So to push back against what looked for all the world to be their reality, they had to speak the deeper truth over and over and over again, until that time when what was spoken became what was real, so every week they said, “Let there be!  And there was!  And it was Good!  Let there be!  And there was!  And it was Good!  Let there be!  And there was!  And it was Good!” until what they said for all those years FINALLY and ACTUALLY came into being, just like it had when God first spoke those words at the beginning of all things. 

For me this points to an additional tragedy for the people who insist that this is a scientific text.  They don’t just miss the point of the truth the authors were really trying to teach back THEN, but they also cut off the possibility that the deep, powerful truth of this text from way back then CONTINUES to be a deep and powerful truth for us today.  Because if you bind up this text with literalism, it can’t be anything for you except a terrible description of an ancient event.  BUT, if you see this text as it was intended… as a poem, a liturgy, a powerful, transformational truth for a people in need of a powerful word from Adoni Elohim, then it is FREE to be the same for us today.  

Now, you and I might not be captive in Babylon, but the truth here transcends time, situation and geography.  We all have times where we feel hopelessly bound…  by cancer, addiction, a crummy boss, a racist system, economic injustice or anything else.  This liturgy calls us together as a community to proclaim together at the top of our lungs, NUH UH!  NOT, NEVER, NO WAY are we ever HOPELESSLY bound, because we have a life giving, over flowing WORD of abundant creation and new life from the God of all Creation!!

NEVER stuck, NEVER in short supply, NEVER without hope… EVER!  Because remember, this is the God who creates with such abundance, that the seventh day can be a day off!  HOPE is always in stock!  Wait, there's ALWAYS more!  SO, even when all the world around you is telling you, showing you and taunting you, saying that you are impossibly stuck, and there is no hope…there is THIS DEEPER truth that says… NUH UH!  

I hope that was OK.  It’s obviously not all there is to be said about Creation but I hope it helped as you prepare for the High Holy Days.  Rabbi Erica, all of you… you are a real gift to me and I continually give thanks for our relationship.  Shalom!