Mark 1:29-39
There are many stories of creation,
coming from a variety of different cultural and religious traditions. We know
best the two creation stories in Genesis. And we know them in a different way
than we might know others, outside our religious tradition. But they are
stories, like the others. And the reason we need such stories is simply because
a story can contain greater, deeper truth sometimes than a whole pile of
factual statements. There’s the old
saying, a picture paints a thousand words. I think of stories as word pictures.
They use words imaginatively to paint pictures that help us understand who we
are and where we came from, and why we are here.
The two stories in Genesis about how
the world came into being, the story in chapter one, about the seven days of
creation, and the story in chapter 2, about Adam and Eve, both come from Jewish
tradition. But they are not the only creation stories in Jewish tradition.
There is another one I want to tell you.
You could start this story the same
way such stories often start: In the
beginning … When God began creating
the heavens and the earth,
But here is where it begins to differ,
in that before it can tell us about the world that God created it needs to tell
us something about the God who created it; the God who existed before the
creation of the world.
Where was God before the creation of the
world? God was everywhere. God was infinitely expansive, there was no place
where God was not. God was so much in everyplace that there was no place for
God to create. So God had to sort of withdraw God’s self, make a little space.
God drew in God’s vast girth, and used that new empty space to create a world.
God created something new in the empty
space God had cleared out. It was a new thing, but God put something of God’s
self into it. A stream of the divine light poured into this new thing God made
– the earth itself and the first human God made, called Adam, which means man,
or human. The divine light shone through them.
But the divine light was too strong,
too powerful, for these creations, and it destroyed them. A violent explosion
occurred. Everything shattered apart in a million pieces, bits of the divine
light, sparks, scattered everywhere. And this shattering, this separation,
created an opportunity for evil to move into the world God created. It did,
swarming everywhere.
Evil, however, didn’t have a
life-force of its own. It was a parasite, in a sense. To survive, evil needed
to capture some of the divine light, and so it did. With the divine light
shattered into millions of tiny pieces it wasn’t that hard for evil to grab
hold of a piece, borrowing its life energy. It is how evil continues to survive
in the world even today, by attaching itself to good.
We might end this story the same way
so many stories end, saying, “So that is how it came to be that evil co-exists
in the world with good.” Or “That is how God’s good creation got spoiled,
broken.” We can say that, but of course this is not the end of the story. It is
only the beginning.
The story goes on to talk about the
work of repairing this broken world, tikkun
olam. The way this world will be
repaired is for all the fragments of goodness that are scattered around the
world to be gathered back together. When all the God-pieces are put back
together, evil will be gone, goodness and light will be restored. The world
will, once again, be whole. Shalom.
According to the tradition, every time
a human being performs a mitzvah, an act of obedience to God, a spark of divine
light is restored to its place. Every good deed is like a stitch in the cosmic
mending. Each act of love brings some healing to the world. Hence we seek to be
obedient to God’s word not just for ourselves, but for the sake of God’s world.
It’s a story that speaks profoundly to
the notion that we are co-creators, partners, with God in this world. God
depends on us to do our part. And, of course, we cannot do it without God. God
shows us the direction to go, and gives us the means with which to act.
The scriptures today are both kinds of
healing stories, words of hope and encouragement to a people in exile. For all
the people who have ever lived who felt like they are somehow separated from
God, for everyone who ever felt like they had been abandoned by God, these
stories say no – that is not true. God is always with you.
As the prophet Isaiah said, “The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the
ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is
unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless…those
who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.” God is always with you; God
will never leave you.
As the gospel of Mark tells us, Jesus went throughout Galilee,
proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out evil; bearing the message:
God is always with you. God will never leave you. God is at work, even now,
repairing the world.
This is what I tell the
children in our preschool more than anything else: God is always with you. God
will never leave you. They need to hear it; you need to hear it; the whole
world needs to hear it.
The world is broken. The
goodness of God has been shattered, scattered in pieces all over, pieces so
small it is sometimes hard to recognize them. But they are there, because God
is there, ready to do mending and caring and healing work wherever it is
needed. And God calls us to be a part of that work too.
Wait. As the prophet
Isaiah says, wait. Listen. Devote yourself to prayer and good deeds, as Jesus himself
did. Speak words of hope, sharing the message of Jesus Christ wherever you are.
Be a part of the work of restoring the world. Tikkun Olam.
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