Meditations on Christ's Death, burial, and Resurrection

Good Friday, Holy Saturday & Easter Sunday

“Musings on His and Our Death, Burial, and Resurrection”

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            I leave off my series on self-identity for this greatest of Christian holy seasons.  But in reality I do not so much leave off the series as jump to the climax from where I had left off with some thoughts on the six days of creation.  The Christian’s self-identity is focused upon and derived from the Christian’s connection to the events of Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday.  The truth of these three days is that Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures under Pontius Pilate, was buried, and according to witnesses and Apostolic teaching rose from the dead on the first day of the week.  It must be admitted that many have regarded the evidence to be shallow and more than a few have deemed the testimony as lacking true historical credentials.  So perhaps God has closed up the events of these days so that this greatest of historical events is available only to those who receive the truth of these days by faith.  The disciples themselves found the idea that Jesus had risen from the dead difficult to believe when a few women associated with Jesus’ followers had found the tomb empty and reported the words of an angel wondering why they sought Jesus with the dead.  The disciples, according to Luke 24:11 viewed the initial testimony of the women as “idle tales.”  During the next forty days Jesus, according to the Scriptures lingered on the earth and revealed himself to his witnesses, to a total of five hundred or so all in all, according to St. Paul’s historical account found in I Corinthians 15:1-8.  But Jesus did not choose to reveal himself to the world, but to his chosen disciples, his followers, his appointed witnesses.  We perhaps are given the best explanation when Jesus revealed himself to Thomas, “doubting Thomas” we call him, but they all doubted, he was simply the last one to whom Jesus revealed himself of the eleven who remained after Judas betrayed him.  Upon seeing Jesus arisen with the wounds upon his hand and side, Thomas bowed to him and worshipped him, saying, “My Lord and my God.”  Jesus then said to him, “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”  (John 20:29)

Jesus had selected his multitude of witnesses and had called upon his apostles and his early church to carry the message of his life, teachings, death, burial, and resurrection to the ends of the earth.  He promised that the Holy Spirit would be present in their proclamation so as to convince men of sin, of Christ’s righteousness, and of the judgment to come.  From this time on, with very few exceptions those who would come to believe upon the name of Jesus Christ would come as those who had not seen and yet had believed.  It seemed to please the Father and the Son and the Spirit that this was to be how the church of the firstborn was to be built upon the earth.  It was a gospel to be hidden from the wise and granted to the foolish, hidden from the strong and granted to the weak.  It would especially be hidden from those who were wise in and of themselves, and those who were strong in and of themselves.  But to the weak, and the foolish would be given the wisdom and strength hidden from this world’s sight.  So is the death, burial, and resurrection historical?  It is for those to whom it has been revealed.  But it has been obscured from the sight of those who need no physician, who need no salvation, who are already righteous in themselves, who are already strong in themselves, who are already wise in themselves.  But to those who cry out in their weakness saying “Lord, have mercy on me, the sinner” then to them this death, this burial, and this resurrection is true although everything else in life is as a flower that blooms in the morning and fades away in a day and shrivels up and blows away before the next week.

However a Christian, in this day of a severely fractured and fragmented church of our Lord Jesus Christ, might believe about the sacraments; there is little doubt that the focus of each of our understanding of the sacraments, especially the two taught by our Lord, are connected to his death, burial, and resurrection.  We are baptized into his death, burial, and resurrection.  (Romans 6:1-10)  In the partaking of the bread and cup of the Lord’s Supper, Eucharist, Holy Communion, or the Divine Liturgy; whatever you might call the Supper we recognize that we partake of this remembering of his death until he comes again.  For those of us, who believe upon the Lord; we are the Lord’s body.  We partake of the Lord in the bread and cup.  I will not diminish the meaning of the bread and cup by giving my personal viewpoint on the mystery, but will simply encourage every believer in Christ within any of the traditions coming to faith in Christ to partake of Him and to see Him in the brother and sister who partakes with you remembering his death even until he returns to bless those who have not seen, yet have believed.  Our identity in the faith we believe and experience in the holy sacraments, or the ordinances if you so prefer, is in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The importance of the sacraments seems to have been prefigured in Christ’s appearance to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus described in Luke 24.  He appeared to the two disciples and they discussed the events of Jesus’ death.  They did not realize to whom they were speaking.  He set before them an understanding of the death of the Christ according to the Scriptures.  He expressed these truths beginning with Moses and all the prophets.  Even so they did not realize that it was he, the Christ, who was speaking to them.  Then “he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and broke, and gave to them.  And their eyes were opened, and they knew him, and he vanished out of their sight.” (Luke 24:30-31.)  This would set forth a pattern for the church from henceforth.  The Scriptures would be proclaimed and the Lord would be presented in the giving of the bread and cup of the Holy Communion.  So it would be until he comes again.

Have you ever wondered what it was the Lord said to the disciples as he taught them on the Road to Emmaus about what the Scriptures said of his death, burial, and resurrection?  We know that the disciples spoke of how when he told these things they said of the experience to one another, “Did not our hearts burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the Scriptures?”  That is what the Church ought to be praying takes place when our Lord calls us to worship him.  For as he has appointed ministers to proclaim the Scriptures and present the holy sacraments or ordinances, it is for the purpose that our Lord shall stand in our presence, speak through the minister in the proclamation of the Scriptures and come to life in the sacraments so that we who gather in the Lord’s presence wherever two or three might come together might find that he is in our midst proclaiming himself to us in the Scriptures and the sacraments.

I will conclude this writing with a few Psalms which Jesus might have spoken of on the road to Emmaus so that his disciples would understand how the Scriptures had spoken of his sufferings in death and burial and his glory of his resurrection.

Of his death on the cross he may have pointed to a Psalm he referenced even on the cross.  Psalm 22 begins with the famous words he spoke on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”  It then gives this description surely brought to fulfillment in Christ’s death on the cross.  The Psalm says, “They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.  I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax, it is melted in the midst of my bowels.  My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaves to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.  For dogs have encompassed me: the assembly of the wicked has enclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.  I may tell all my bones:  they look and stare upon me.  They part my garments among them, and cast lots for my vestments.”  (Psalm 22:13-18)  Yet the end of the Psalm looks forward to when this same one would declare God’s faithfulness to the brethren in the midst of the congregation.  The ends of the world would remember and turn unto the Lord, for the kingdom is the Lord’s, the meek would eat and be satisfied and a seed would serve him and declare his righteousness. (Read Psalm 22:22-31 for context and exact wording.)

Jesus would not only suffer death on the cross but would be buried in the tomb, in the pit and would not arise until day 3 of the ordeal.  If it seems confusing to readers that Jesus was crucified on Friday and rose on the third day, being Sunday; then the confusion rises from the different ways we count days in English as compared to the manner of the Hebrews.  In the creation account the world was created in six days.  There was day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, day 5, and day 6; followed by the Lord resting from his work of creation on day 7.  In the passion and resurrection the same sort of counting is done.  On day 1 Christ is crucified.  On day 2 Christ is in the tomb.  On day 3 Christ rises from the dead.

Jesus towards the end of his ordeal on the cross, just before his last breath is expired commends his spirit to the Lord.  Perhaps his death and his committing of his soul into the hands of his Father can be seen in the familiar words of the 23^rd Psalm.  Our Lord looked to experience the grave in the hope of his restoration.  “He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me: thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.  Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies: thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over.  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”  (Psalm 23:3-6)  In John’s account of the woman who anointed Jesus feet with the expensive ointment, Jesus described her act as an anointment unto the day of his burial. (John 12:1-7)  That was six days before his Passover crucifixion.  He commits his soul to the Lord with enemies surrounding him, seeing beyond the grief of his suffering that the Lord prepares a table for him, anoints his head with oil, and that beyond his suffering is his resurrection and exaltation.  Still even in hope there is real suffering in the death on the cross.

We come to Holy Saturday – the day Jesus spends in the darkness of the tomb.  It is his Sabbath rest, a day where he experienced the pit and darkness, described by the ancient creed as if a descent into hell.  It was surely prefigured in the 88^th Psalm.  This Psalm surely described his prayer:  “O Lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee.  Let my prayer come before thee: incline thy ear unto my cry.  For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave.  I am counted with them that go down into the pit: I am as a man that hath no strength: free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou remembers no more: and they are cut off from thy hand.  Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps.  Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Selah. 
     Thou hast put away my acquaintance far from me: thou hast made me an abomination unto them: I am shut up, and I cannot come forth.  My eye mourneth by reason of affliction, Lord, I have called daily upon thee:  I have stretched out my hands unto thee.  Wilt thou show wonders to the dead?  Shall the dead arise and praise thee?  Selah.
     Shall thy loving-kindness be declared in the grave or thy faithfulness in destruction?  Shall thy wonders be known in the dark and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
     But unto thee have I cried, O Lord; and in the morning shall my prayer prevent (come before) thee.”  (Psalm 88:1-13)

In all of Psalm 88 there is but one glimmer of hope.  The Psalmist describes an experience of a day in the pit but hopes for one slight moment that in the morning his prayer will prevent (prevent is literally a compounded Latin word joining “pre” meaning before with “vent” a form of the Latin verb “veni” meaning to come.  So after this one day in the pit where men are forgotten, the Psalmist looks towards the morning when his prayer shall ascend to the Lord.  So there would be for Christ one day in the pit and in the morning afterwards his prayer would ascend to the Lord and his body would arise from the pit.

If the 22^nd Psalm described Christ’s death on the cross, and the 23^rd Psalm along with the 88^th Psalm described his day in the pit awaiting his resurrection, then the 24^th Psalm has been described and associated with his resurrection.  This has especially been used to express the glory and joy of Christ’s resurrection in the Resurrection Day worship of the Eastern Orthodox churches.  I found attending an Eastern Orthodox celebration of Easter especially powerful.  Many Eastern Orthodox churches have thick doors where one enters.  On the night before Easter Sunday, near midnight the Eastern Orthodox Church gathers to celebrate the resurrection of Christ.  They come to greet the Lord in the middle of the night as Holy Saturday morphs into Easter Sunday.  The entire congregation meets outside of the church and proceeds behind the clergy towards the door of the church.  There is a recitation of the 24^th Psalm.  The 24^th Psalm declares:  “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.  He hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods.”(Psalm 24:1-2)  The church door is closed.  The congregation waits outside.  The clergy knock on the door loudly.  A voice from within the church building answers in reply, “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?  And who shall stand in his holy place?” (Psalm 24:3)  This is emphasized as the clergy continues to knock.  The clergy proclaims “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be lifted up, ye everlasting doors; and the king of glory shall come in.”  (Psalm 24:7)  From within the church building a voice can be heard replying, “Who is this king of glory?”  (Psalm 24:8)  The reply is given “The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.  Lift up your heads, O ye gates, even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.”  (Psalm 24:8-9)  One last time the voice from within the church building is heard, “Who is this king of glory?”  (Psalm 24:10)  The reply from the congregation comes once more, “The Lord of hosts, he is the king of glory.”  (Psalm 24:10)  At last, it is now Easter Sunday, a new day has arrived.  He has risen.  He has risen indeed.  The doors are flung open, heaven receives its king of glory and those who have believed upon him enter behind him in the procession.  “The Lord of hosts, He is the king of glory.”  He has risen!!!  He has risen indeed!!! Alleluia!!!  We may now enter the gates.  Heaven’s gates have been opened to receive her king and all those in his holy procession.

Ah surely this is not a break from our consideration of the Christian’s self-identity but rather this is ultimately the source and destiny of our Christian self-identity.  This is the Apha and the Omega, the beginning and the final destination of our Christian self-identity.  We have been baptized into his death, burial, and resurrection; and we partake of his body and blood remembering his death until he comes again.  In his life, death, burial and resurrection; our lives have been hidden and in him they shall be revealed.  This is surely our Christian self-identity.  Amen.

Self-Identity #5 - A liturgical creation; faith and works

Essay #5 on Self-Identity

God’s Liturgical Relationship to His Creation

Liturgical Implications for the Relationship of Faith and Good Works

Written by Dan McDonald

 

          I have long believed that some portions of the modern debate, especially in the United States, between evolution and creation, needed re-focusing.  Before I became a Christian I treated the teaching of creation as a myth.  After I became a Christian I largely learned to accept a “creationist” viewpoint.  My view was similar to what was believed in the most fundamentalist of circles.  The earth was very young, and that any changes within a given species, was quite small.  More often than not I felt no need for scientific support to my theological viewpoint drawn from the Scriptures.  The first crack in my armor was reading E. J. Young’s work on the first three chapters of Genesis.  Young was a recognized expert on Hebrew and he painstakingly pointed out how several uses of the Hebrew word for “day” were used in the first three chapters of Genesis.  He had no difficulty accepting the possibility of a figurative use of days in the creation account.  Let it be said, that acceptance of the possibility of the use of figurative days in the creation account does not mean that the days were or were not figurative in the account.  I have no basis for declaring either the literalist or figurative view as the truth of the matter.  I look forward to seeing these things discussed and debated in a healthy matter.

          The second consideration to become foremost in my mind as I dealt with the creation account was God’s dealing with Job and his friends.  God treated Job and his friends as if they were not privileged to know how God did the work of his creation.  He treated them as if they needed to realize that God’s work both in creating and governing the universe was beyond the expertise of man’s attempts to understand in fullness.  That led me to believe that the study of creation should lead us to humility and guarded comments regarding what we believe was the method of how God created the earth.

I work within a refinery and it gradually seemed to be somewhat clear that the Genesis account of creation, while being a true account given to man by God, was a sort of newsprint public account of a great event and not a fully scientific or technical account.  I respect and to some degree agree with those who will respond, “Yes but the Bible is correct when it touches on matters dealt with by science.”  I believe as a Christian that the Scriptures are inspired by God in every word and therefore accurate in that which they seek to explain.  But here is where we must be careful and I will illustrate the need for care by distinguishing the difference between a refinery’s newsprint explaining of an event, with a more technical explanation.  If an explosion occurs, resulting in public interest, the company will issue a report of what took place.  The public audience will have only a few people who are technically expert in regards to the operations of a refinery.  The report will therefore be not extremely technical but accurate in its expression with an emphasis on explaining in a simple manner so the public could understand necessary facts of what happened.  There will be other reports where engineers and manufacturers and construction experts describe the same event, but they will focus on the technical aspects.  There is enough of a difference between the two different reports of the same event that even if the first report was accurate it cannot be used to extrapolate what happened.  Imagine a refinery manager asking a group of engineers and refinery experts to give a report to corporate headquarters on what happened and how steps might be taken to assure that this might be avoided in the future.  What would you think of an engineer who said in reply to the refinery manager’s request for a new report, “We have the public report given to the newspapers, it is an honest report, why don’t we just extrapolate what happened from that report and send it on to headquarters, wouldn’t that suffice?  We could finish the report much more quickly.”  I don’t know about you, but if the engineer worked for a company I owned that engineer would probably be looking for a new job.  The newsprint variety of the report simply would not suffice to establish a foundation for the technical report.

I believe that the agenda between well-meaning Biblical theologians and well-meaning scientists have the same sort of issues separating them.  The Bible gives us an account of creation less than five pages long.  We can accept it as an honest document without concluding that it is sufficient for a scientist’s desire to understand the complete technical explanation of the creation.  From a theological perspective we might even conclude that an entire technical explanation is not possible because God alone is privileged to know exactly how he created the various aspects of creation.  There remains however the human curiosity to try to figure things out, and this is as much an interest for the scientist as the theologian and it would be all the better if the two camps were in dialogue rather than acting as sworn enemies.  But the first step towards such a dialogue would be to accept humbly that there are many variables known to neither the theologian nor the scientist.  Both the theologian and the scientist works using hypothetical theories they feel fit within their considerations.  Scientists and theologians both should be sensitive to the realization that sometimes hypotheses that are followed at first with great promise later have to be discarded because they fail to allow for circumstances that fail to be explained by the scientific or theological expectations.  So the scientist or the theologian has to go back to the creation of a new hypothesis to explain an event.  Whether we are working from a scientific or theological angle, our understanding of life and the explanations we derive from our considerations are always presented with an understanding that if too much of life supposedly explained by our hypothesis isn’t explained by it, then there is likely something wrong with our hypothesis and no matter how much work has been done pursuing the hypothesis honesty demands that the hypothesis be critiqued as either insufficient or as a failure.  That will be discouraging but it is as much a gain in understanding as the proving of a hypothesis would be a gain in knowledge.

Then one day as I read the Genesis account of creation I noticed something that it did not seem was hardly ever discussed in the creation versus evolution debates with which I had familiarized myself.  It was how on each day of the work of creation, God spoke to the creation, and the creation responded in accord with God’s call, and then God evaluated that response.  You could miss it, because it wasn’t always evident in each day’s work of creation, but the universe responded to God’s spoken word.  The universe was not just matter being acted upon, but was matter responding actively to the calling forth of God’s word.  This was especially described in Genesis 1:11-12 when God spoke to the earth to bring forth vegetation and the earth brought forth vegetation.  This shows a liturgical relationship between God and his creation.  God speaks and directs the work of creation in what he speaks; the universe responds to what God has spoken and brings forth what God has directed in his word.  God then evaluates what creation has done, and throughout the six days of creation God speaks of what has happened and gives his benediction that this was “good.”  It is not until man violates the commandment of God given to him in the Garden that there is no benediction describing the response to God’s work as “good.”

If we accept that the creation involves a liturgical relationship between God and his creation, then we can begin to see important implications for how we as human beings relate to God.  For we, as human beings, are not separate from the general work of creation, but are rather distinct members of the creation intended to stand as representatives of God to the creation and as representatives of creation to God.  We are created especially in God’s image and as such are given dominion over creation.  We are given the capacity to create, to investigate, explore, and explain.  There is no other creature on earth capable of being scientist, philosopher, theologian, writer, sage, or prophet capable of understanding the future based on the present and the past.  We are a unique creature within the creation, an animal yes, but the only animal bearing in his being the unique image of God.  The importance of the emphasis of the creation account on how God relates to his creation liturgically is therefore also and uniquely even more essential to be understood in God’s relationship to mankind.  God speaks, creation responds, and at the end of the day God evaluates.  Man as creation created in God’s image is capable of responding for both good and ill to God’s call.  I find the words of Sophie Scholl, not a great theologian, but just a young woman grieved in her soul at events around her to describe the human situation so well when she wrote to a friend.  She imagined the whole of creation singing a beautiful hymn to its creator, but then of man she said, “Only man can be truly ugly, because he has the free will to estrange himself from this song of praise.” (Taken from Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, page 19, written by Annette Dumbach and Jud Newborn)

Here then is perhaps one of the most important lessons of the creation account to aid modern man’s search for meaning and self-identity.  God deals with the creation liturgically.  He deals with humankind liturgically.  God speaks and calls, creation and also man within creation responds, and God evaluates the response.

There are few Biblical instructions more essential for you and me to begin to understand our own self-identities from a Biblical perspective, than that we live in a creation where God speaks, we respond, and God evaluates.  There are few things more important to be understood of this liturgical relationship than that our response is active and not merely passive.  We are not merely direct objects being acted upon by the Word of God as if the Word of God is meant to absorb us intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, and in the exercise of our wills all as if by osmosis.  Rather, we are created and called to respond actively in a process of creation; and of call and response, a process that is intended to lead to the implementation of God’s will.  But this is not done in a fatalistic manner by a sovereign God without human activity.  Rather we, as human beings, are both the objects addressed by the Word of God, and the subjects who then actively make a reply to the Word of God’s instruction.

Such a view of the work of creation and the relationship between God and man will have a great impact on how we understand the Biblical relationship of faith and works.  As a Protestant Christian, one hypothesis which seems to have failed in theological understandings of an issue is how we Protestants tend to explain the relationship of faith and works.  All too often the Protestant yearning to say that we are saved by faith, and not by works, imagines that it is not biblical to insist that faith must be set forth in human experience by works that express that faith.  Many Protestants regard a statement declaring that faith must be expressed through works to be heretical.  But if we look at the creation account we can begin to understand how faith is the basis for a right relationship to God, and also how faith can and must be expressed by works one does by faith.  The relationship between God and his creation is liturgical.  That liturgy is characterized both by men being called as objects to hear the Word of God, and being called as subjects who must actively respond to the Word of God.  All that is accomplished in God’s creation revolves around God’s speaking of his word into the creation and the creation responding to his word thus moving the whole of creation from darkness, and chaos without life to light and order, beauty and life.  In the Christian this is not essentially different from what took place in the rest of the created order.  God speaks, and when man believes he responds with faith and the result is that man is drawn into the power of the word to transform life through an active faith.

We will explain the relationship of faith and works to the word of God by considering various expressions of the relationship of faith and works spoken of in the New Testament.  First there is nothing accomplished apart from the word of God.  Paul writes “So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God (some translations, Christ).”  God speaks in his word with directives.  The faith with which we believe the word of God is not something wholly independent of the word of God.  The Word of God informs and instructs man so that the faith with which men respond to the Word of God is itself a faith energized and brought to life by the precepts of the word of God.  No one would think of believing on Christ for salvation except the word of God had shown those hearing the word of God that Christ’s life, death, burial, and resurrection was unique from other lives, deaths, and burials.  The Word of God instructs us that Christ died for our sins and rose from death for our justification and salvation.  We are called to believe and respond to this message of the word of God.  We as such do not bring our works to add to Christ to make his life, death, burial, and resurrection satisfactory for salvation.  Our works add nothing to the finished work of Christ.  When we consider ourselves before God, we can be saved only because the works of Christ have sufficed to remove the burden of our debt unto God.  No amount of good works done by us could atone for our works of sin and unbelief that had created a barrier between us and God.  God however provided the cure and the way of salvation for us to enter into a life of faith and salvation.  God has placed his promise of life and offer of salvation into the call of his gospel and there is ultimately nothing we can add to what Christ has done to grant us the entrance into that life of faith and salvation.

So faith comes by hearing.  Faith is directed, informed, instructed and takes shape as the Word of God is spoken to us and directs our understanding leading to the issuing of a call to respond through the faith into which we have been instructed by the Word of God.  All of that is caused by the word of God.  But that doesn’t mean there is not an active response to be done by man.  The Word of God calls upon us and by faith we respond.  We hear the duties of man according to the word of God in a manner that is in accord with faith.  We are brought by the redemptive work of Christ into a new relationship with the laws and commandments of God.  The sinner, apart from the redemptive message of the Gospel, is reminded by the law that he has sinned and broken the law of God.  His sin has created an unresolved enmity between God and man.  That enmity can only be resolved in what Christ came to do on our behalf.  Because Christ has died for our sins and has been raised for our justification, we have the basis for understanding our relationship to God’s commandments differently.  No longer do they simply describe the nature of our enmity as transgressors.  Rather the commandments of God now can be understood to be an expression of a Father’s love guiding his children into good behavior while teaching them to avoid wrong behavior.

Thus writes St. John to the Christian of his day, “But this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments.  For this is the love of God: that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not grievous.”  (I John 5:2-3)  When the commandments of God are no longer showing our enmity against God, but are expressing the will of God who has forgiven our sins through the work of Christ, then God’s commandments are no longer grievous.  The commandments of God are instead the directives of a loving Father to his children, and wise informed children will gradually hopefully come to realize that his father’s commands are meant to protect the child from harm and not to limit the child's freedom to do that which is good or wonderful.  That was the great the issue which the serpent used to create a wedge between God and our first parents in the Garden.  God had told them not to eat of a certain tree for it would bring death upon them.  The Serpent told them they would not die, that God was just trying to withhold something good from them.  Through faith we recognize that God’s commands are not given with the intention of limiting our freedoms but of keeping us out of harm.  As our faith and trust of God grows in our lives, we begin to grow aware that God’s commands are not grievous.  God does not prohibit us from freedom of spirit but rather from harmful behavior that leads to ill consequences.  We begin to understand that God’s law is intended to lead us into a true spirit of liberty, and to preserve us from a misuse of liberty that leads only to our harm and destruction.

So faith which comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God ultimately leads to faithful obedience to the commands of God.  The Word of God comes into our lives and redirects our thoughts and tends towards faith as men receive this word and begin to believe upon it and then reshape their actions by that word.  So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God; and faith is shown forth in our learning to see that God’s commandments are good and not grievous.

To a large degree the Christian develops his life in conjunction with what the Word of God tells him of life.  This word of God comes to us in our varied life situations and as it instructs us it shapes our perspectives about life, our self-perceptions, our goals, our ways of dealing with others.  The Word of God does this by entering our minds, shaping our passions, and instructing us in the goals we will by our own individual natures be pursuing.  The Apostle James in the New Testament Book of James described the word of God as a mirror into which we look and see ourselves and by which upon seeing ourselves in relationship to the Word of God we move towards a life more guided by the Word of God.  This is all related to the fact that we as human beings live in a creation where God speaks to his creation, his creation responds to the Word of God, and God evaluates the response which is made.

Self-Identity # 4 Six days of Creation

Essay #4 on Self-Identity

God Introduced to His Universe:

The Genesis Six Day Creation Account

Written by Dan McDonald

 

          In this series of essays, we have come to the Bible because it describes itself as a book written from a different vantage point.  Most of us write from the vantage point that we share insights drawn from our observations, thoughts, beliefs and conclusions.  That is true for every human being.  But the Bible is set forth as a book written from a different vantage point.  The Bible's self-professed vantage point is summed up nicely by a book title in a book written on the message of Judaism by twentieth century Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and Philosopher, who entitled his book “God in search of man.”  We are drawn to the Bible for the possibility that as we seek meaning in life, a sliver of hope begins to wonder if at the same time as we seek meaning there is a God in the heavens seeking us.  That is why we turn to the Bible. 
          The moment we open up the Bible to the first verse of the Bible we read, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)  Then in the following verses, the Bible describes what is commonly called the six day account of creation.  Then in the second chapter, some would argue that a different creation account is set forth not wholly in agreement with the first chapter.  I will speak mostly about the first chapter, but will say that I see no reason why the two chapters may not be seen telling the same story.  Chapter two definitely seems to move from the first chapter’s expression of how God created everything in the six day creation, to chapter two’s beginning of exploring man’s place in the creation.  If we recognize that man never existed in the first five days of creation spoken of in Genesis 1, then we can understand that for man he entered the whole of the creation on just one of the creation days.  We were not created until the sixth day, which was for humankind the one day of creation.  So from the perspective of the human experience of creation there was but one day and the whole finished work of the previous five days were brought forth into the human experience also on that one day of creation.  The sixth day is for humanity the one day on which all of creation is brought forth as we are created within the created universe, and as the whole of creation is at first brought into our view and experience.  This seems to me to remain a plausible explanation of the differing perspectives of the first two chapters of Genesis.  No human existed in the first five days of creation, but the scope of the whole six day creation was brought into our human view on the one day in which we were present during the six day creation.

          I will not pretend to be able to present answers to every aspect of the creation account.  I will not even try to do so.  I am writing this essay not so much to explain the whole of the creation account, but to express how I believe the creation account does have something to say to mankind in our modern search for self-identity.  For I believe that the chief purpose of the Bible’s inclusion of the creation account is not so much to answer all our questions about how the universe was created, as much as this creation account was meant to be our first glimpse and introduction to the God who created the universe.  The primary purpose of the creation account is not necessarily to tell us how God created the universe as it is to introduce us to the one who did create the universe.  I will go so far as to say I believe I have a Biblical basis for making that assertion.

          That is not to say that God does not tell us anything about how he created heaven and earth in the six days of creation.  Clearly the Bible is setting forth that God is telling us some things.  But the purpose for which God tells us these things is not so much that we might have a comprehensive understanding of the mechanics and scientific principles regarding the creation event, but rather that we might understand as created beings within a universe that has been created how we relate to the God who created the heavens and the earth, and all things visible and invisible.  I am quite comfortable with asserting that the purpose of the Genesis creation account is more to introduce us to God than to lead us to any sort of scientific summarization of how God created the universe.

          The reason that I am comfortable with such an assertion is because this perspective seems agreeable with other Biblical texts dealing with creation.  In Job 38 God asks Job and his friends, who all seem to be trying to explain God to one another, for them to describe how God created the universe.  He asks them to explain how God laid the foundations or how he kept the waters in their place - - an even more remarkable question for those of us who understand the shape of our globe.  How does the water on the bottom side of the earth stay put?  Yes gravity - - of course, but is that an answer or a term to define the fact that it does stay in place?  So why gravity and when you have answered that, like a little boy I will ask once more “why” to that and then to the next thing, and eventually you will run out of answers for the “why” before I run out or reasons to wonder why.  The child, who has asked to learn why, always has one more legitimate question of why than any of us can ever answer about anything.  Perhaps this comes under that scope of human understanding St. Paul described when he said that “we know in part.”  Perhaps this is an essential truth to be understood when we try to understand the whole of creation.  Perhaps the creation account was never meant to enable us to understand everything.  Perhaps it was meant to be given to those who were meant to live knowing “in part.”  But perhaps it was given to introduce us to a creator who loves us.  For the mystic who has come most to know God always comes down from that mountain where he encountered the high and holy one, having learned not that we ever fully know God, but that we may take comfort for He who is God fully knows us.  Perhaps almost as dramatically the mystic report that we know in part, including that part of the creation that is summed up as “ourselves.”  We know who we are, like all other things only in part.  We live life not only to explore the universe but to discover ourselves.  We are not fully cognizant with complete and perfect knowledge even of ourselves.  But our comfort, at least the Christian comfort is that God does know us in such a manner.  So we read about the creation account not to understand everything there is to know about the creation, but rather to be introduced to the God who knows everything about us for he has created us and placed us in our lives within creation.

          Admittedly there are many Biblical scholars who believe that the book of Job was written before the Book of Genesis, and therefore Job and his friends weren’t privileged to understand the Book of Genesis when God addressed them about their understanding of creation.  But you and I both know that is a red herring.  If you and I were having a hot and heavy discussion about the nature of God and the why of suffering like Job and his friends were having and all of a sudden God spoke out of a whirlwind and said, “Hey boys, why don’t you explain to me how I laid the foundations of earth?”  Does either of us really believe we would want to stand up real straight and say, “God, I just read about that in the opening chapters of Genesis . . . This is how it says you laid the foundations of the earth?”  I think we would rather do what Job and his friends did.  We’d get real quiet real fast and think we had just – how shall we say it – “screwed up big time pretending to think we knew all the reasons and ways God did things.  This would be our religious equivalent of getting to take our place in the “time out” program.

          I doubt very much that the first purpose of the Genesis creation account is to tell us exactly how God created the universe.  It just doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the teaching of Holy Scriptures.  But what if the reason was to remind us who God was, to introduce us to who God is?  Would that be a Biblical reason that fit in with other passages of the Bible regarding creation?  For example, how about what St. Paul taught about the creation teaching man?  St. Paul said that because of the creation, every man is without excuse in his sinfulness.  He says that the invisible things of God, “from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.”  (Romans 1:20)

          That is quite a statement regarding the knowledge of man regarding God.  The Apostle Paul seems to be saying a lot more than that philosophically you and I can and should be able to deduce from the creation that there must have been some sort of maker and prime-mover of this world in which we live.  He is saying that because of the creation we understand who God is.  We may seek to quiet this knowledge within ourselves, and he says we do this by refusing to be thankful, and by actually seeking alternative focal points for our worship rather than the God who freely created us in such a manner as to enable us to know instinctively who it was who created us.  Then our knowledge that we knew instinctively became obscured even, and perhaps especially to us.  St. Paul describes how as we became unthankful and unwilling to give God the praise and honor he deserved, God gave us over to fall into our own foolish ways and since we became unwilling to honor him or given him thanks as God, he allowed us to be darkened in our minds so that the knowledge we originally had; now became obscured to us.

          St. Paul has a Hebraic or Biblical perspective in this regard.  It is one that is clearly not liked in some quarters by modern man.  But we may explain something of it.  Hebrew language is not ordered in the same way as most modern European based languages.  Hebrew is a Semitic language, not a European language.  In most European languages, the first word in an ordinary sentence is a noun.  In Hebrew, the first word in an ordinary sentence is a verb.  Language experts, or philologists, might well be able to explain how this would affect the way people put together and relate their thoughts.  Language historians recognize that a language form affects a culture as well as a culture shaping a language.  In our ordinary usage of European languages we begin to think of creating sentences by first coming up with a subject for our sentence and then telling others of what the subject does.  But in Hebrew one began a sentence with a verb, and so the tendency by one speaking Hebrew would be to think in terms of verbs and then describe the subject of a sentence by connecting them to the relationship they had with the verb.  There is little doubt that these two different ways of thinking and creating sentences has led to emphases connected to the way we make our sentences.  Every student of New Testament Greek, for example, has to jump the hurdle of St. Paul’s use of participles, which are a combination of nouns and verbs.  St. Paul’s Greek is full of them.  He is writing in a Greek language the thoughts rooted in a Hebrew form.  He is not writing in a language that builds its sentences around a verb, but he is thinking Biblically in thoughts that are rooted to a Hebrew Old Testament worldview, where the verbal action is the beginning focus of a sentence.

          An example, of how this impacts our thinking, might be drawn from what Jesus says about the disciples love for one another.  Jesus said to his disciples “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love, one for another.”  That sentence seems to take on even more impact we imagine a person looking at a group of Christian disciples and noticing their love for one another.  There is a verbal picture that is conjured up of “loving” taking place.  Men and women are looking at a certain kind of love in action, and this kind of love stands out as unique.  They see the participants of this "love in action" taking place.  They then learn that Jesus taught them, and that what Jesus taught them is being set forth in how they love one another.  If this were expressed in Hebrew we would perhaps be reading a sentence that was saying; “Loving you one another, others will see this and understand that you are my disciples.”

          Now if we understand the Hebrew roots of Genesis, we can begin to see what the Bible is doing in telling us the story of the creation.  The creation account in Hebrew reads something like this, “created God the heaven and earth in the beginning.”  That is not the most proper or preferred way to structure the same sentence expressed in Greek by the translators of the Septuagint, or in Latin by the translators of the Vulgate, or by the various translators of our English written versions of the Scriptures.  But if we understand that background then perhaps we can see more of what was taking place in the giving of the creation account.  Just as Jesus was describing the deduction about what men would see when they saw loving between the disciples, as they traced that loving one another back to Jesus’ teaching; so we look at the story of creation found in Genesis and understand who the God is who created the universe.  Both of these statements are most fully understood when we understand the principle of “by their fruits you shall know them.”  The Bible’s creation account is a story of creation as the fruits of God.  By the fruits of God you shall know him.  By his creation you shall know him.  This is essentially, Biblically speaking, the main purpose of the creation account.  I firmly believe this is essential to understanding God’s purpose in telling us of the creation.

          This makes this creation account very essential to our human quest for understanding the meaning of our lives.  The creation account tells us about the God who created us so that we might understand who he is.  This should resonate with the general goal of a Christian understanding of eternal life, for Jesus taught us that this is eternal life, “that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.”  (John 17:3)  We know God partly at least, by knowing his fruits and his works, and one of the venues by which we understand the fruit or work of God, is through his work of creation.

          I sometimes wonder if some of these lessons have not been forgotten in the debates between creationists and evolutionists; which often are set forth in relationship to the opening chapters of Genesis.  It should be understood by both sides that if God did speak to us from the whirlwind and ask us to tell him how exactly he laid the foundations of the earth, we would neither side; whether the creationist or the evolutionist, be ready to speak to God.  I suspect that whatever view we favored, we would become silent real fast the moment God asked us to instruct him.  There are so many assumptions used by both sides in this debate.  The evolutionist assumes that everything that looks like it took millions of years must have taken millions of years.  But who is to say that God could not have compressed what looks like millions of years for those of us looking at the creation from our perspective in a finished creation into a single day of his creative work?  Imagine a big boom taking place and then the pieces of the universe are strewn across galaxies.  How quickly would the natural laws now in place have themselves been organized into natural laws, and do we have such a full knowledge of such laws as to assert that we have a flawless understanding of creation that could not be seriously modified given the right information to discredit or enlighten our understanding of the history of the universe?

          The same must likewise be spoken to the creationist regarding his assumptions.  The Bible itself does not require us to state or not state the length of the days of creation.  Could the days be figurative days or must they be literal days?  If the days were literal days, what logical necessity would there be that the days of creation would be the same length during the forming of the creation as in the finished creation?  Why would twenty-four hour days be essential in a process of creation in which the universe as we know it progressed from disorder and chaos to the order of a finished creation?  Why ought we to imagine that somewhere in the middle or late period of those six days of creation did the twenty-four hour creation day come into existence?  From a philosophical perspective, one might ask, "Is God the creator and Lord of time, or is God himself subject to time so that time and not God is God?"  We have no actual basis for asserting that the days of creation were the same length as our days, or even the same length from one day to the next day in the creation.  It is a reasonable assumption that even in the framework of time the universal order was emerging and not something already fully brought into existence so that we could assert that from day one the days spoken of in creation were twenty-four hour days.  One of the philosophical necessities for believing in creation is that we assume that the era of God's work of creation was different from the outworkings of his finished work of creation.  The idea that creation's days were exactly like ours is a principle that a creationist might consider to be a uniformitarian imposition on the very work of creation.  The creationist that would not allow the natural historian to build a theory on uniformitarian principles argues for such a principle in declaring that we must believe that these were literal days just like we have today. To force the days of creation to be literal days such as are the case in the finished creation seems to deny that our framework of time governing the creation today was being instituted in the very six days of creation that took place according to the Scriptures.  Who truly knows when the twenty-four days became the established day of God here upon the earth?  Was it with the separating of light and darkness, with the creation or appearance in the earthly skies of the sun, moon, and all the planets and stars, or was it perhaps at a time unidisclosed by the creation account?  To hold otherwise is merely an assumption and not an expressly revealed truth.

          I am not sure it is even good Biblical exegesis to demand that every portion of a truth-telling statement be literal.  Could we have basically a literal account of creation with a figurative use of days?  Would there be any Biblical reasons that this could not be done by Moses, who according to a Scriptural introduction to the ninetieth Psalm wrote of how to God a thousand years was as if a day.  If it is not possible for Scripture to mix figurative speech with a literal record, then can we scripturally make use of what the writer of Hebrews says when he describes “today” in various references pointing to the idea that today is the day of salvation.  Does that mean that no one can believe the gospel in our days because our days are not literally the same day in which the writer of Hebrews presented his epistle?  Actually the emphasis he placed on "today" was a timeless emphasis to be placed on the preaching, receiving, and faithfully obeying the word of God for as long as the Gospel was to be proclaimed in the world.  A figurative use of day was essential to understanding the message of the literal words of the writer of Hebrews.  What would we think if someone reading one of the writer's exhortations for acting faithfully today in response to the Gospel, upon finishing that reading said, "I'm sorry but we are literalists here and for the book of Hebrews to be literally true there can be no figurative relativistic truths, so we believe that the today of salvation was a twenty-four day in the time of the writing of the Book of Hebrews, so that blue light special on the proclamation of the Gospel is over.  You can all go home, church is dismissed, but the literal truth of the Bible is preserved.  What sort of exegesis is that and how different would that be from demanding literal twenty-four hour days to be necessarily imposed on the Genesis creation account?  Most of us by nature read about the work of God and wonder are these days the same as our days, or do the days of the creation refer more to God's days in his work of creation in a figurative sense than the literal days we experience each time the earth makes one full rotation on its axis.  It is true that such questions became more necessarily asked only after the rise of evolutionary thought, but the reality that the question was asked mostly after the rise of Darwinian thought does not necessarily mean the question is illegitimate.

          Am I thus dismissing the Biblical account of creation?  I believe that there is something very real and concrete and supported by other statements in the Scriptures that is presented within the creation account.  There is a phenomenon highlighted in each and every day of the six day creation account.  This phenomenon is essential to the Bible’s message to men and women about their relationship to God, to the rest of creation, and even to themselves.  This one phenomenon is related, I suggest to presenting us with the something, the hole that has been left out of the story of who we are as modern men and women looking for our way in the wilderness of creation and society.

          There is a pattern in the days of creation.  At first God creates the heaven and earth and according to Genesis 1:2 “the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”  Here is the earth in its initial condition when the earth was without form.  It had no order.  It was void.  There was no meaning to it, no shape, and no beauty.  Darkness was upon it.  There was no light.  There was no light, no order, no beauty, and no life except the life of the creator who had created this existence.

          But then God began to act for six days to bring this shapeless void of darkness into existence as a place of order, light, beauty, and life.  He acted by speaking.  He spoke “Let there be light and there was light.”  Each time God spoke, something took place in creation and then God addressed what had happened and God called it “good.”

          The Bible, the ancient Jewish religion, all the earliest Christian forms of worship drew near to God in a liturgical manner of expressing the faith.  God spoke, man replied, and God responded favorably to man’s faithful reply.  This is what we see in the Genesis account of creation.  The Genesis account of creation is less than four pages in length.  It doesn’t tell us everything about creation.  I work in the oil industry.  A refinery has lots of engineers, technicians, that is, people with expertise.  A refinery might have what is called an event.  An event might be the building of a new unit or the accidental blowing up of an old one.  Invariably, refineries will release a news story telling about an event, whether good or bad.  The press release gives general information, hopefully in a truthful manner.  But if there is an explosion in a refinery and the company asks a team of engineers to assess what exactly happened they will give a much more full account of the event with much greater detail than initially expressed through the press release.  The press release could not be used to arrive at the conclusions made by the engineers upon a full investigation.  The engineers are trying to arrive at a detailed understanding of the event, whereas the initial press report was simply an honest attempt to make the public aware of what took place.

          So as we look at the six days of creation we have a lot of unanswered questions.  But there is this pattern.  God speaks, something happens, and God gives his approval of what takes place.  It will not be until man disobeys a command of God that God does not express his pleasure with what took place following his speaking and something taking place in creation.  If God gave to us a press release form of his creation of the universe, then this matter of his repeated speaking to creation, something taking place, and his subsequent approval of what took place must be something very important indeed.  The Book of Genesis would suggest to us that the universe was created through a dynamic liturgical relationship between God and the universe.

          We can see this perhaps especially in Genesis 1:11-12.  Here is what it says: “And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth and it was so.  And the earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.”  Genesis 1:11-12)

          It seems like we are let in on how God related to the creation during the work of creation.  He spoke to the creation, and then the creation responded and God responded to the creation’s response.  This is a creation activated within a liturgical relationship.  We might picture such a relationship in Christian worship.  The priest gives a call to prayer, saying “Let us pray.”  He then begins to recite: “Our Father who . . . and then the congregation responds by responding to the invitation to pray by joining in to the praying of the “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name”, etc.  It is understood that as God, through the minister, issues the call to pray that the instructed congregation will respond in expressing the replying prayer, and then ultimately God will likewise respond favorably to the faithfully prayed liturgical prayer.

          The creation is thus described as a work done cooperatively between God who speaks, the creation which faithfully responds and this brings forth in its conclusion a God who gives his approval to that which has been rendered in faithful reply to the call of God.  In Genesis 1:11-12 what first looks like in verse 11 as a completely wrought out work of God is shown in verse 12 to also have a dynamic of creation’s entrance into the work of God as governed by God’s call.  The earth cannot be said to evolving completely on its own, but neither is the earth a passive element being acted upon without any activity on its own part.  The earth is said to bring forth grass, herb yielding seed, and the tree yielding fruit.  Earth evidently does this in an active manner in an active response to the word of God.  If this is the case, then what does this have to say about the debate between creation and evolution?  What does this have to say about the relationship between theology and science?  Could the natural scientist be seeing the evidence that nature has indeed responded to the call of God in creation as nature itself progressed from a world empty, void and covered in darkness; without shape, order, light, or life until we look about ourselves today and see a creation that has order, light, beauty, and life?

          It would seem to me that the shape of the relationship between God as creator and the creation itself is similar in pattern to that of God as Redeemer and man as responder to the call of redemption in the present “day” of salvation.  God speaks, instructs, calls upon us to believe, to trust, to obey, to repent, etc.  We then act in response to the call.  Our actions are not independent of the grace of the word which commands and calls.  Our way is instructed, encouraged, stimulated, initiated and brought to completion all in this relationship between God as the one who calls, and us who believe and respond.  That our salvation is entirely by grace does not conflict with the reality that our salvation is active in our expression of faith, in our obedience, in our hearing the word of God with fear and trembling, and in our actively seeking to work out our salvation in fear and trembling.  God speaks and calls us to redemption and we reply by and through faith.  There is finally the promise of the final word spoken in regards to the story of this present day of salvation.  We read of Christ’s words to the faithful servant on the final day of judgment, wherein our Lord will say, “Well done thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of the Lord.”  (Matthew 25: 21, 23)

          As we have been addressing, in this series of essays, the concern of discovering our own human self-identities nothing from a Biblical perspective can be any more essential to our discovery of our own self-identities than to understand that within the creation and within Christ’s redemption we were created for and need a relationship in redemption that is worked out between the God who calls and we who respond to his call.  If we have been created to answer and make reply to the call of God who created the heavens and the earth, and all things visible and invisible; and we haven't even a clue that such a call is being addressed to us then there is something dramatically essential to the understanding of our lives that has been left out of the story being told to modern men and women.

          There seems to be one reason for the creation to have the strange inclusion of Genesis 1:2 where after God has created the initial heaven and earth, earth is described as: without form, void and covered in darkness.  That is the picture of a creation separated from the dynamics of the liturgical relationship between God and the creation.  Then God began to speak and the universe began to respond and the creation began moving towards order, light, life and beauty.  But with man came the possibility of a creature which would choose to say “no” to the voice of God. What are the consequences of saying no to the dialogue between God and man?  What sort of world would we inherit if we were to say “no” to the dialogue between God and man?  That world is, I believe, illustrated for us in the second verse of Genesis.  It is a world that is without form, void, and covered in darkness.  This is the Bible’s frightening presentation of a hellish existence.  Hell is a place where the human being will be deconstructed, broken down as a worm that does not die, and as a fire that is not quenched to take place in the outer darkness.  We see this frightening scene and think of it as an evil created by some evil God.  But the reality presented in the Scriptures is that there is in man’s sinful rebellion some sort of desire to not give thanks to God, nor to honor God, and to wish for a universe where we existed apart from the call of God; but that universe is one separated from the dynamics of the liturgy of creation.  So there is this frightening view in the Scriptures that if we get to separate ourselves from the call of God like we sometimes imagine to be freedom, then everything created in the world through God’s relationship to the creation is something from which we must be separated until we are left with our own little island in the outer darkness where the earth is without form, void, and covered in darkness.  Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the ancient Christian creed spoke of Jesus descending into hell.  For on the cross, for three hours on Good Friday as mankind put to death the Son of God, “darkness covered the earth.”  Was this the darkness of Genesis 1:2, of existence separated from the voice of God set forth in the call of God to which creation replied and took on order, light, beauty, and life?  If that is at least partially the intended understanding of the Apostolic account of Good Friday's darkness, then let us take encouragement that it did not triumph, for on the third day the Son of God, the Light of the world, arose from the tomb and busted loose from the bands of sin and death and claimed triumph for all who would follow him from that day forward.

          If this story of creation, is the story of a liturgy, or dialogue between God and his creation then it sheds light on the true nature of man's need to be in relationship to God for even a partial knowing of God's will for our lives, or even for an understanding of who we are as men and women created by God.  For if we understand the creation, then we will begin to understand that there is also a word of redemption, a call of salvation being issued by God in the call of redemption to sinners who have stumbled, fallen short, and are in need of being called into a liturgical creation of a new heavens and earth wherein dwells righteousness.  If this is all true, then surely this is an essential part of our understanding who we are, and what role and place we are meant to play in our lives within society, within creation, even how we are to understand ourselves.  If this understanding of the creation is basically correct, then to not understand that we are being called to life, faith, and repentance by our God means that we truly have not been told an important story when we were being told as modern men and women the story of our lives.

          Thus Psalm 19 begins:  “The heavens declare the glory of God: and the firmament shows his handiwork.  Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night shows knowledge.  There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.  Their line is gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.”  (Psalm 19:1-4)  This Psalm describes for us how God’s word has gone out into the world first in creation, secondly in the word of the law of the Scriptures capable of leading to our redemption, and ultimately in the Lord our strength and redeemer.  How can we understand ourselves apart from the liturgy of creation and redemption?  This is an essential part of the story not only of creation, but it is an essential element in understanding each of us our own individual life story.  If Jeanne, in "Don't Look Back" had discovered this story of Genesis she might well have said of her teachers in modernity, "You left out this part when you told me the story of my life."  The Bible however is written from a different vantage point, from the vantage point of God in search of man.