Back in 2007, Dr Vince Cable, then the acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, observed at Prime Minister’s Questions that the House of Commons had watched the remarkable transformation of Gordon Brown from “Stalin to Mr Bean” as he “created chaos out of order, rather than order out of chaos”.
Genesis 1, the first of two creation stories in Genesis, is at its most fundamental a description of God taking chaos and ordering it. At the beginning of the narrative, there earth is formless and void, the darkness covers the deep and God’s “ruach” sweeps over the face of the water. The Hebrew is delightfully obscure, and it’s difficult to pin down exactly what’s going on – either the mass of water is stirred by God’s “ruach” wind or the “ruach” wind hovers over the waters like a bird of prey, ready to consume the chaos. There is perpetual motion, not stillness and no possibility of life.
The first observation is that God’s creation, in Genesis 1, doesn’t start with nothing. Theologians have written lengthy tomes about that. But the seven day creation gradually creates order from the chaos in a balanced way, first creating the zones in turn and then filling each of the zones in the order they were created. So by God’s seventh day, appointed for rest, the world is well-ordered and abundant with life. The narrative represents order itself – regimented by repeated phrases, observations and controlled language, it couldn’t be contrasted more with the chaotic start of Genesis 1:1.
The world of Genesis isn’t our own world. The world of Genesis 1 is God’s world, a world of undisturbed beauty and serenity, as yet uncorupted by the scandals sin and division. Our world is not just God’s world, it is also a world of our own making. It is a world that we have “Mr Beaned” – we have taken God’s created order and produced from it chaos. In Genesis 1 God gives man dominion over the earth to ensure it remains ordered and serene (1:28). The world we live in is evidence indeed for the fact that whilst we have certainly exercised this dominion, we have failed to exercise it authentically.
Genesis 1 was most likely composed by the Jewish people during their exile experience in Babylon. Ripped from their homeland and their families, and with their temple lying in ruins and their social structures desecrated, the King and the Priesthood demolished, the Jewish people battled for their identity as they were thrust into a culture and a religion entirely alien from their own. The questions that had burned on their minds in Jerusalem were long since forgotten – the questions they now asked boiled right down to the core of what i meant to be human, and what it meant to be Jewish: Who am I? Who are we? What on earth are we doing here? Were they really the chosen people of God? Was God punishing them for sin? Can I cooperate with these people? For the Jews of the exile, life in the exile was nothing if it wasn’t chaotic – it seemed like it was the complete antithesis to the halcion days when David ruled over a united Northern and Southern Kingdom.
And yet, living in exile, the Jews commend to text the creation narratives and primeval history found in Genesis 1-11. The narrative serves two purposes. It provides an aetiology: it explains why humanity is like it is, how the world has come to be as it is, and it supports the monotheistic faith of the Israelites whilst they are surrounded by polytheistic idol worshippers. Amongst other things, punishment for human sin accounts the present exile. Yet a more important purpose underlies this: the genesis of hope. The world of Genesis 1 is not simply the world of the past, but it is also the world of the future, because it is God’s world.
To be Christian is to be a resident alien – the Christian’s homeland is not of this world, it is of God’s Kingdom that is to come. The disorder and chaos of the world around us is explained by God’s continued ordering of the world. The creative ordering of Genesis 1 is the very same ordering that we now see as salvation. As Irenaeus argued, salvation and creation are not two acts, but one act viewed from two perspectives. The process of change, of becoming, is painful and depends upon grace. But humanity is called to participate in God’s act of creation, in his creation, through his grace, with his grace, and in his grace.
There is a need to respond – one either co-operated and participates each in his place, or one rejects his place and disturbs the order, introducing yet more chaos. The challenge is not to be some form of uber-Christian, but simply to be true to who we are, to what we have been, and to long for what we are to become, rather than for somebody else’s past, present and future. Vocation is not merely about personal happiness, or Church service, it is about the salvation of the world.
So the question today is this – am I co-operating today, or am I being Mr Bean?
