“What’s The Point?”

A sermon based upon Genesis 1: 24-31

Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, Pastor

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Disciple Series, Sermon 2 of 15, August 26, 2012

My first pastorate was less than ten miles from my home, where my parents were still living.   The road we frequented to my parent’s house would take us through a heavily wooded area known as Allison’s woods.   When we traveled the road late in the evening we would often see deer, even before deer became prominent most everywhere.  One night, I hit one.  It was a large doe and the impact did quite a bit of damage to the front of the car.  To verify to the insurance company that that I hit a deer, I called the Highway Patrol to make an accident report.  The next day, I asked my whether or not my insurance would cover the damages.  The agent answered, “Why of course.  This is covered as an “Act of God”.

That was the first time I had ever heard an insurance agent using religious language.   As I reflected upon the matter, I thought it quite interesting that insurance companies would invoke such religious language about God for an accident.   But really, when you think about it, by invoking the name of God the insurance company declared that it wasn’t “just” an accident.   In their language, the insurance company had a need to find a reason and cause for the crash.   They said what some people want to believe.  Even accidents are not accidents.  Everything happens for a reason.   

I can’t say whether or not my crashing into that deer was an “act of God”.   Today it would probably just be called a “no fault” accident.  But I’m glad the insurance company could say whatever it needed to say in order to pay for the repair of my car.   I don’t believe that God caused that deer to hit my car, and I also can’t simply believe that everything happens “for a reason”.  As a preacher, I just can’t say that.   I think you can understand why.  I just can’t tell you that God took your baby.   I just can’t tell you that God gave you cancer.   I even can’t tell you that God made you healthy.  You can thank God for it.  You can pray for God’s help when bad things happen.  But I just can’t declare that I know everything that God is up to.  Ever since I came to fully understand what Isaiah the prophet uttered in the 8^th century BC, my words and ideas about God become have much more humbled: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isa 55:8-9 NRS).  Words like that are powerful enough to shut the mouth of any loud mouth preacher or person who says they know exactly what God is doing in this world.

However, there is something we should think about when Insurance companies call accidents “acts of God” and when people declare their faith by saying “everything happens for a reason.”   The theology in such expressions would surely be matter of fierce debate in most seminaries today, both so called conservative or liberal ones, but behind these words is something that faith believes is true, not only about God, but also about ourselves.  I believe that the “reason” or the “cause” of everything is what the very first words of the Bible declare with most impressive words: “In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth….”  

WITH GOD AS OUR CREATOR, THERE IS PURPOSE
These very first words of the Bible are words of faith, not “provable” facts.   Facts are something you can prove, put in a book and store away on a shelf and then forget.   Faith is something you have to keep alive, struggle with, wonder about, ponder again and again, even question or doubt, and then you must decide, not just once, but every day in your heart (Remember how Mary, upon the birth of Jesus, “kept and pondered these things in her heart.” Luke 2.19).   It is surely no accident that the Bible does not open by arguing whether or not God exists or by giving us proofs.  The Bible assumes and affirms who God is because of what God does---He creates the world and he created us.  Theologians, philosophers and even many Scientist marvel at such words.  Listen to what agnostic and scientist Dr. Robert Jastrow wrote way back in 1982, not long after the “Big Bang Theory” became a proven, scientific fact.  In his book, God and the Astronomers, Jastrow wrote:   “Now we see how the astronomical evidence supports the biblical view of the origin of the world….  Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth.  And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot ever hope to discover (by scientific methods). For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason (alone), the story ends like a bad dream.  He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Jastrow).

The Bible is not science nor scientific.  Science is human knowledge.  The Bible must put its words into human ideas and thoughts, but the Bible is also the written Word of God.  The Bible takes us where no Science can ever hope to take us; to answer the most fundamental human question of all: “Why are we here?” and “Why is there something and not nothing?” What’s the point?  In this opening word of the Bible, “In the Beginning God….” we have this dramatic assertion that the world was created by God on purpose and for his purposes.  These words come to us by faith, through the heart, not only in the head, as a mere fact of science.  As the writer of Hebrews confirmed much later, “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible (Heb 11:3 NRS).  

Right now, on the planet Mars, an unmanned spacecraft is conducting experiments, taking pictures and even shooting laser beams.   That spaceship was sent there by NASA not only to learn more about Mars, but it was sent because humans want to know more about life.  Even with the Bible in our hands, even after landing on the moon, and even after telescopes can show us more than we’ve ever seen, people are still not satisfied with what they know, and are still wondering why, as well as, how life happened.

This question of “Why” is a powerful and motivating.  It not only asks hard questions, but the question of “why” gives a definitive answer about who we are in this world.   “Why” is one the very first questions a child will ask.  Parents know all too well, children don’t just start with the easy questions, but they like to ask the hardest ones.  “Why is the sky blue?”  “Why do you have to shave?  “Why do you always leave your socks on the floor, Dad?”  Why? Why? Why?   Isn’t it very interesting that humans are the only living creatures who ask this question of purpose about our lives?  “My God, why is the question Jesus asked on the cross and is the question every reasonable person will ask in their heart.  Why are we here? What’s the point?

This story of creation would rather show us “why” than tell us.  In this story of “why” it is the Spirit or Wind of God that is hovering over the deep, dark waters of chaos and nothingness.  In the midst of all that darkness, God speaks and calls for light.   Then God divides the waters and makes what we would call the atmosphere so he can command the seas and the earth to “bring forth life”  (vs. 11, 20, etc).  It’s as if God gives his creation the “why” of his “Word” and the earth itself allowed to work out the “how”.  The point of this story is not meteorological, astronomical, geological nor biological.  As Galileo rightly said long ago, “Science tells us how the heavens go, but only God can tell us how to go to heaven.”   The point of this story of creation is not to tell us exactly “how”, but “why” so it will answer our deepest, most fundamental question, which no human can ever answer: “What’s the point?”  The answer in Genesis is that God is the point, or there is no point at all.   And this picture of creation much more than God created the world, but it is a picture of God creating the world as his natural temple, so that “the whole earth can be full of his glory”(Is. 6.3).  God creates his world, not just so we can live in it, but so his presence can live in us and in this world which is his great temple.

WITHOUT GOD AS OUR CREATOR, THERE IS A GOODNESS

Not only does Genesis creation story tell us God is the purpose for life, which is the only purpose which can ever be known through faith, but this creation story gives something else to wonder about.   When God creates the world, he is the only one who can call it “good”.   “And God said, let there be….” quickly gives way to the next foundational word, “God saw that it was good.”  How can we call life “good”?  How do we even know what good is?   That’s not as easy of a question as it sounds. 

Saying that “life is good” does not mean that life is “fun”, nor does it mean that everything that happens in this world is good, nor is life always way it is supposed to be.   There is pain in this world.  There is suffering.  There are earthquakes, storms, floods, fires and many other tragic, life stealing events.   Even the innocent suffer.  Good people have bad things happen to them and bad people have good things happen to them.  How can anyone, even the writer of Genesis, look at this world as it is, and still call it “good?”  On a good day, we might consider it and be thankful, but on a bad day, even on some normal days, if we look around long enough and see how things really are, and how bad things can become, it can seem impossible for us to say that “life is good.”  That wealthy Film maker who made the movie Top Gun and recently jumped off a bridge to his death, made his point about how bad life can seem.   We may not want to admit it, but if we been around long enough, we too can understand how people can lose faith and say to themselves “life is not worth living”.  How can the Bible say that life is good?

But this is exactly what the creation story declares, isn’t it.  “And God made the land and seas…and saw that it was good (v. 10)  “And God brought forth grass, whose seed was in itself…and saw it was good” (12).  “And God made to great lights…to rule over the day and the night….and saw it was good” (18).  “And God made every living thing in the sea, air, and on land…and saw that it was good (vs. 21,25).  Finally, God made “humans”, and we are told that he made them “in his own image” and saw “everything he had made” and “behold, it was very good” (31).  Life may not always look good, we may not always look so good ourselves, but the Biblical word says, in spite of how things seem, at least at the beginning, “God saw…everything” and “it was good!” 

 This biblical word does make you wonder, doesn’t it?  It makes you wonder how everything that looked and worked so good, could get so quickly messed up.  That’s another story, we’ll get to in our next message.  But for now let’s just consider this one:  What does it mean that God calls this world “good”?

Last week comedian Phillis Diller died.  She was 95 years old.  Her family said: “she died during the night in her sleep with a smile on her face”.  God rest her soul.  But Mrs. Diller, wouldn’t appreciate me saying that.  If you know anything about Mrs. Diller, she did not believe in God.  Sometimes, in her comedy, she was quite vocal about it. Once she said, “There is no God, you idiot!” and another time she quipped, “So, God made man in his image… No,” she continued, “we made God in our image.”  That’s the problem.   Diller was right about one thing, if we make God in our image, we are all in trouble.  I can appreciate Diller’s humor and how she used her humor to make a living and feed her family.  But what did you ever do beside make people laugh.  Laughing is certainly a good thing.  It is good, but is it good enough?

Unless God has the final word on what is good, and what good is, there is no moral foundation for life now, nor is there any hope of justice to come.  This would is unfair and it will not only stay that way, you will die and no ultimate good will come out of anything you or I have done.   Oh, yes, people can be good, live longer, help others, but unless God’s goodness and value comes into play, Shakesphere was right: “life is but a tale told by an idiot, full of fury and signifying nothing.”  For you see unless there is a God who created life to be good, and will one day “put this world to rights” in the world that is still to come, we are all idiots.  Phillis Diller was funny, but if her word is the last laugh, we all should be crying: “Unless God has given life its value and unless he made us good for his own good, then, Phillis Diller at least half right, you and I are idiots.”

In this book, The Brothers Karamazov, one of Dostoevsky’s characters, Aloysha has a brother who does not believe in God, nor that life is good, nor even that he should do or be good.  In one moment of their discussion, Alyosha tells his brother his greatest fear; “If there is no God, then everything is permissible.”   That childhood prayer which says, “God is good”, is the hope of our world.  Even if we can’t explain exactly, precisely what God’s goodness means, just aiming for it changes everything, but without aiming for God’s goodness, changes nothing.   Several years ago, a school in Germany, which had once been a catholic school that survived communism, was now closed and was taken over by German state schools.  In this area of Germany, Brandenburg, they were following the American form of education, and not teaching religion in the schools, but trying to teach ethics and morals without Jesus.  I asked one of the teachers how the new experiment was going.  “It’s not going, he told me.”  Ethics just doesn’t work without a personal example.  Jesus was our best human example of the kind of human being we should be.  Without him, without the personal dimension of faith and religion, teaching ethics in school is simply a waste of time.  The students don’t care and the students don’t get it.”

WITH GOD AS OUR CREATOR, THERE IS RESPONSIBILITY, CARE AND EVEN MORE

 This brings us to our final word of word of wonder about creation.  With God, there is purpose and with God there is goodness, but without God, there is no ultimate foundation for either.   But we finally put the spotlight on us: What are we here for?  What’s the point of us?  If God creates the world, holds the ultimate purpose for the world and also gives the world its goodness and moral value, then, what is human life about?   Why did God make us “in his image”?

In the “creation stories”, humans are created by God to be both “free” and “responsible.”  Humans are given “dominion”, but they are not given “free reign” over the earth, but are given freedom within God’s limits of responsibility.   Even this word “responsibility” implies that humans must “respond” properly to life as a gift from God.   What is the most basic human responsibility?  In the second version of the creation story, we are told that humans are put here for even a bigger reason than to “rule, have dominion” or to “multiply and fill the earth”.  Humans are put on this earth to take “care” for life, as if it were our very own garden.  This is why it was called “the Garden of Eden”.

And if I’m reading Genesis right, the point of life is not just that we learn how to “care” for the earth, but the story means that we are created to grow up and learn how to care, period.   Maybe this is why later, the forbidden fruit will kill humans, but it’s not all bad.  It’s the fruit of the “knowledge of both good and evil.”   It is this knowledge of “good and evil”, this learning how to live and learning how to care that can also kill us, but it also makes us very much alive in this world.   We are given life by God to learn how to care, even if it hurts.   Caring for this earth means that we are not to misuse or abuse this earth for our own sake, but we are to care for it and become stewards or managers of it, both for God’s sake and for our sake, and also, for the sake of those who come after us.  We are to care, even if it hurts and kills us.  And of course, this caring includes God’s most important creation; humanity, us, each other.  We are to care and be responsible for the world and how we rule over it, and we are to learn to be responsible for each other, and how we serve each other.   “No greater love has anyone, than to lay down his life for his friends.”   This could just be the main point.  Caring and learning to care, just could be the greatest purpose, the greatest good, and it may be exactly what it means to become the responsible human person who has been given life in God’s world.  

Last Sunday evening, I told the discipleship class about the story of a man in the small town of Corbett, Oregon, who was featured on CBS’s Sunday Morning program.  The man, they called “Woody”, who was not wealthy, but he always was doing the things to care for the people in his community.  He helped people all his life. Whenever people offered him money, he wouldn’t take, even when he needed it.  He wasn’t rich.  His life was simple.  But this was the kind of man he was.  A few months ago, Woody discovered that he had ALS, Lu Gary disease.   He was dying.  But this man still rode around in the community, visiting people, doing whatever he could, always waving at everyone he met on the road.  Just before he died, he wiped away tears, saying how he was glad he was dying slow, so he could say farewell to all the people he had helped.   When he did die, they laid him in a simple wooden box, covered with the signatures of the people he cared about, who also cared about him.  As they brought his body through town for burial, people lined the streets to wave farewell, mimicking his signature wave.  His son Clint said, Bill Gates could have come to this town and had not been able to have outpouring of love people repaid to him.   “You just can’t buy the love they’ve poured out for Dad.”   http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57495803/oregon-town-says-goodbye-to-man-who-spent-life-helping-neighbors/.  Amen.