Some parts of a week, in the life of God’s people here in Dunedin:
Monday, 2.20pm tremors felt from an earthquake 6.3 on the Richter scale, 9km deep, 10km south east of Christchurch
And can we say: ‘God created … and it was good’?
Tuesday, 8.40am, the barely-visibly pregnant young woman has her first scan and sees her 12 week-old fetus bouncing, swallowing – a tiny new life living and growing within her.
And we might say: ‘God created … and it was good’!
Wednesday, hundreds of people’s travel plans in New Zealand and Australia are disrupted because of ash spewing from a volcano thousands of kilometers away.
And would we say: ‘God created … and it was good’?
Thursday, a long and full lunar eclipse seen in the skies – even as school choirs moved, sang and delighted in the local Big Sing.
And we say: ‘God created … and it was good.’
Friday, a teenager’s funeral is held, attended by some of those same singing, vibrant young people from the previous day’s Big Sing.
And how could we say: ‘God created … and it was good.’
Saturday, a large group of friends gather to celebrate life in what is described as a somewhat riotous 60th birthday party .
Would we bother to say: ‘And God created … and it was good’?
And here now on Sunday, the people gather, on this the day our tradition says God rested. Here we are, gathered to make sense of the week – to seek meaning – to explore wonder – to face fear – to find strength – to worship the mystery that takes us beyond the tight confines of our singular selves into the joys and possibilities of love, healing and peace.
Here we take a breath to see a wider perspective than the immediate.
We know how difficult it is to affirm the good in life, when we zoom in on problems and tragedies, whether they be in Christchurch or Chile, or in our own lives. We also know that if we ignore the pain and celebrate only the joy and delight, we may fall into the trap of Pollyannaism, with all its associated unreality. What can we say about this life and its goodness, which our tradition affirms?
Here, we know that when we enter that wider perspective – that Ultimate Reality, which we name as God, our assumptions about life and death will be challenged and broken open. Here, in this wider perspective, we know that
Or, in the more traditional language of Christianity: here we know, through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit, that death has been overcome. “without the death of stars, there would be no planets and no life. Without the death of creatures, there would be no evolution… without the death of mountains, there would be no sand or soil …without the death of plants and animals, there would be no food. Without the death of old ways of thinking, there would be no room for the new …[Here we know that] the gifts of death are Mars and Mercury, Saturn and Earth…[and] the atoms of stardust within our bodies … The gifts of death are [forests] and soils, [mountains] and lakes [and food that sustains us.] The gifts of death are seeing, hearing, feeling… wisdom, creativity and the flow of cultural change. The gifts of death are the urgency to act, the desire to fully be and become … The gifts of death are lives that are fully and exuberantly lived, and then graciously and gratefully given up, for now and forevermore.”[1]
In his book Thank God for Evolution, Michael Dowd reminds us of the different ways in which we can use language. “Humans” he writes, swim in a sea of meaning no less than fish swim in water. We cannot avoid it. Problems arise when we fail to distinguish the factual, objectively real from the meaningful subjectively real – when we mistake our interpretations for [the facts or account of an event].”[2] Dowd differentiates these two by using the highly evocative language of day and night. Day language is used to describe events and facts; it’s the usual everyday discourse of our lives: Monday, earthquake; Tuesday, scan; Wednesday, travel disruptions; Thursday, lunar eclipse, Big Sing; Friday, funeral; Saturday birthday party. Night language explores the meaning of our experience through story, image and poetry, creating a world of possibility, mystery and hope. Night language tells the story of creation in Genesis 1. Here sweeping metaphor, poetry and vibrant images resound as our ancestors seek to explain the source of ultimate reality – the source of life. And God created … and it was good.
We destroy the wonder and mystery if we attempt to turn this night language into day language – suggesting it provides facts and reasons about events. Today we borrow from the night language of our ancestors – adding nuance from our day experiences of a very different time – a time when God is no less active, no less known, no less experienced. For we now know, in a way our ancestors did not know, “that the Universe can be counted on over time – it can be trusted, deeply trusted – [not to remain the same but] to move in the direction of more diversity, more complexity, more awareness more transformation and growth… we know that our Universe can be counted on – deeply trusted – to provide every creature and every age with all sorts of problems and breakdowns, stresses and difficulties, and occasionally even full-scale cataclysms to deal with. What we’ve recently discovered … [and what our night language must now take into account] is that problems and breakdowns are normal, natural, even healthy for an evolving, maturing Cosmos. Indeed, they seem to be essential for creativity. As it turns out, every evolutionary advance and every creative breakthrough in the history of the Universe, as best as we can tell, was preceded by some difficulty, often of great severity.”
And so now we say – “Nothing is lost on the breath of God”. Now we say: We believe in God who has created and is creating … and it is good.
Michael Dowd reminds us of the story of the dinosaurs that “ruled the continents for more than 150 million years (much longer than us). During this time … mammals were small scruffy creatures who stayed in burrows and mostly came out just at night, because … they were terrified of big, ugly, carnivorous dinosaurs. Then one spring day, a terrible catastrophe struck. An asteroid 10 miles across, travelling at a speed of 50,000 miles per hour, crashed into our planet just off … what is today Mexico, punching out a crater 100 miles wide. Imagine all the nuclear weapons that our species has ever created being launched and arriving at the same destination at exactly the same moment … and then multiply that by a thousand….the sky turned into a cauldron of sulphuric acid. It also triggered a magnitude 12 earthquake, which is a million times more powerful than a magnitude 6 earthquake. This, in turn, unleashed at least six mega tsunamis, several of which were more than 100 metres high. … [The result of all this was that] three out of every four species alive at the time went extinct. The biggest creatures were hit the hardest and thus each and every species of what we loosely call ‘dinosaurs” went extinct….All in all, it was not one of Earth’s better days. But thankfully, from our perspective, it was precisely this catastrophe that allowed those mammals who survived in their burrows to flourish and diversify, culminating in all the amazing mammals of the world today, including ourselves. So: no catastrophe, no whales or dolphins, no dogs or cats, no giraffes or elephants, no lions and tigers …and of course, no me, no you."
So the next time a comet crashes into your psyche” Dowd writes “or your life feels like sulphuric acid is raining on your head, or the next time a magnitude 12 earthquake rocks your world and you feel like you want to hide away in a dark hole for several months, just remember: in a few million years, things will be fine. Seriously, though, the next time you’re greeted by a [100 metre high] tsunami” in your life, the next time your travel plans are disrupted by volcanic ash, or liquefaction appears in someone’s – or even your own backyard – difficult as it may be for the moment, it may be helpful to place it all in that much bigger perspective – remembering we are all “part of an amazing, creative Universe that turns chaos and catastrophes into new growth and opportunities as regularly as day follows night.”[1] Thanks be to God who has created and is creating. Amen.
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