When I was sixteen years old I was pretty sure of two things. I figured that my career would involve science in some way, confirmed by a part-time job at a drug store where I really thrived, and I deeply enjoyed Sunday Worship and my growing involvement at Westminster United Church in Regina.
Four years later, halfway
through a Pharmacy degree, in the middle of the night I had a call experience
in which God called me “to minister to others.”
Whether that would be as an ordained minister, or as a pharmacist who
conducted himself in helpful and ethical ways was not yet clear, but again, the
worlds of science and spirit were not far apart.
I share these snippets to
make clear, that for at least fifty years I have seen no conflict between the
world of faith and the world of science.
I believe in the creative intent of a loving God, which makes us kin with
all living beings and with this planet itself.
I also trust the scientific process, of being curious about life and the
world we live in, asking questions, testing the hypothesis, seeing if results
and answers can be duplicated and verified, and publishing the results so that
they can in turn be scrutinized, challenged and honed. The
things we think we know about the world need to always be questioned, and so do
the things we think we know about our spiritual selves. I have long believed
that intellect and reason are among God’s most generous gifts to humanity, so
for me, thoughtful, probing Christian Theology and the theories of Charles
Darwin can coexist very nicely, thank you very much.
Unfortunately, and
increasingly, science has been attacked by the Christianity of literalism and
empire, and one of the typical battlegrounds is the story of creation, which we
heard in its glorious entirety this morning.
Insisting that the only way to understand creation is as six
chronological 24-hour days, the work of the scientific community through
radiometry, carbon dating and other techniques is rejected as false and
faithless. Understandably, in response
there has been unfairly generalized pushback labelling all people of faith as
simple-minded and obtuse. This is so unfortunate, and so distracting, as I
think it misrepresents what science really is, and misunderstands the role of
our sacred text.
I have struggled to find
words that are clear enough to describe how important it is to me to both
respect science, and to love the sacred story that has come to us from our
forebears in faith. In this I am
indebted to Karen Armstrong, a historian of religion whose work I find to be
deep, clear and brilliant, and she offers these words:
“Our culture” she writes
“trains us to look for the literal truths of the words on the page. We expect a
text to express its ideas as clearly as possible… we are likely to condemn a
work that is deliberately vague or paradoxical or that presents mutually
exclusive arguments. There are many Jews and Christians who have come to apply
the same standards to the Bible. Some, for example, have argued that the first
chapter of Genesis is a factual account of the beginning of life on earth: they
believe that God really did make the world in six days, and that those scientists
who maintain that it took billions of years to evolve must be wrong.
“What we need to understand”
she continues, “is that the Bible does not present its truths to us in this
way. Reading it demands the same kind of meditative and intuitive attention
that we give to a poem. We often have to wrestle with the text, only to learn
that we are denied the certainty of a final revelation. Genesis has been one of
the sacred books that have enabled millions of men and women to know at some
profound level that human life has an eternal dimension…Genesis points to a
reality that must essentially transcend it.”
Karen describes perfectly
what I wish to convey here. As someone
who deeply respects the integrity and wisdom of science, my soul still yearns
for the poetic rhythm of these words of Genesis, not as a construction manual
of how to build a planet, but as a means to come close to the God of loving,
creative purpose. Each of these six
legendary days, imagining the origins of water and dry lands and people and
animals, expresses that holy purpose. I
come to these words with awe and wonder.
And when I do so, I wonder
how I would have explained the beginnings of all that is, if all I had was my experience:
the experience of planting the seeds and harvesting the fruit, the experience
of the regular return of seasons, the experience of the joy and tragedy and
complexity of human relationships. If all I knew about life was from my
experience, and from the experiences of my neighbours and my relations, how
might I have explained the miracle of existence itself? What words or framework would God have led me
to?
When I slow down, and set
aside the silly “religion vs. science” tussle, and allow these words of Genesis
to draw me back to the very beginnings of time, in the narrative of my long-ago
spiritual ancestors, I am gifted with the beauty of language, and mystery, and
wonder.
· I picture myself looking upward, and wondering how the
clouds stay in place, and imagining a dome holding waters above from waters
below. That same dome would hold the sun
and stars safely in place.
· I imagine standing on a lakeshore, and proposing that
once upon a time water and sea were just mixed up in a sort of slurry, then the
waters all came together, leaving dry land.
· I recall how from I have since childhood been amazed
at how shrubs and trees and seedbearing plants propagate themselves with no
assistance from any human hands, and I cannot help but imagine a creator whose
hands were initially involved.
· I consider the diversity of birds and fish and mammals,
how thrilling it is to see and hear a new one for the first time, and how fearful
and activated I can be when I do not know their intent.
· And I give thanks for this first account of creation,
which describes humans, both male and female, equally bearing the image of God,
and carrying the tasks of being God’s own stewards of all of this.
Throughout this sacred text
of origins, I notice that seven times we are told that God paused to observe
what had just been made, and it was good. Not just okay, but good. Godly good. And we also note that the reward
of six days of creativity was a day of sabbath rest. Even God gets to be satisfied in a job well done,
and lay back and do nothin’.
Do I need this reading to
function as a textbook, as if I were watching a YouTube video showing me
sequentially, with timings, how to build my own heaven and earth? No, I really don’t, any more than I would benefit
from dismantling song lyrics that move me to tears each time I hear them, for
to me, the story of creation is very much the love song of Creator God. I need
those recurring words, “God saw that it was good” to seep into my very being,
to renew my awe and wonder and love at the gift of life and the gift of the
planet on which life is lived, even as I celebrate the scientific curiosity
that helps us learn more and more about the miracle of life, and which warns us
of the dangers of taking the earth for granted. The slow, methodical presentation of the
first chapter of Genesis truly helps me to “let go and let God”, to reframe
each day as “gift” rather than “problem” and rest in the love of the Creator.
And with that, this message
draws to a close with words from Karen Armstrong, as she writes about the first
chapter of Genesis:
“This masterly
account…emphasizes the purposefulness of God's creativity…. Key words are
repeated throughout the chapter. God ‘said,’ ‘saw,’ ‘separated,’ and ‘called.’
The stately rhythm and repetition make us feel that events are following a
serenely ordained pattern. Similarly, God's pronouncement that each stage of
his creation is ‘good’ emphasizes the excellence, rightness, and wholesomeness
of the universe. This God is not only powerful but completely benevolent. The
structure of the text rises to a crescendo: the author devotes more time and
space to each successive day.
“At the end of the creative
process”, Karen Armstrong concludes, “God, having expended no effort, was not
exhausted by these labors. God brought his work to an end, and on the seventh
day rested and contemplated his creation in rather the same way as a craftsman
surveys the work of his hands….God is in his heaven and all is right with the
world”.
May our relationship with
all that we know, all that we believe, all that causes us to worry and all that
brings us hope, be truly spacious. May
we have the room in our lives, in the Church, and in the world, to engage the
glories of our sacred story and the amazing discoveries of science, even amidst
the anti-intellectual leanings of some of the world’s most powerful regimes. May
we love this planet, our human neighbours, and all living beings, knowing that
through God we are all part of one beloved realm. May the refrain “it is good” –
God’s own assessment of all of it - be enough for us on this sabbath day. Amen.
Reference cited:
Armstrong, Karen. In the
beginning: a new interpretation of Genesis.
NYC: Knopf, 1996. See especially
pp. 9-12.
© 2026 Rev Greg Wooley,
Osoyoos-Oliver United Church Pastoral Charge.
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