Chaos and Creation

Acts 17:22-31

 

        A couple of months ago the folks from OLLI’s Adult Education Program asked if I might be interested in teaching a class. This invitation came in the middle of Lent and the last thing I wanted to do was take on something new. But sometimes ego overcomes common sense and I told them I might be interested. The next day I received a form asking to describe the course I would be teaching. I decided to have some fun and send in a title I was certain would be rejected. I titled my purposed  course, The influence of Babylonian Myths on the Biblical Understanding of Chaos. I submitted the title and went back to worrying about Holy Week.   A few weeks later I received a notice informing me they were excited and was I prepared to teach the course this fall. I share this to not only selfishly promote my class but share an interesting story discovered in my research.   As many of your might remember on Christmas Eve, 1968, Apollo 8 and its three astronauts were circling the moon. As they marveled at the wonders of space, they took turns reading the first chapter of Genesis which begins, “In the beginning God create the heavens and the earth.” Eugene Peterson declared, “They did what a lot of people do spontaneously when they integrate an alert mind with a reverent heart. They worship.” The problem was not everyone was thrilled by this holy moment.

        The first complaint came from Madelyn O’Hair who claimed the space program had been hijacked to advance Christianity. The battle lines were drawn. The defenders of God pulled out their Bibles. The protectors of Darwin brought out their petrified jawbones and stratified rocks. The argument was on and no one was interested in hearing anything the other group had to say. Three astronauts proclaimed amazement at the mysteries of the universe continued a raging argument between scientist and people of faith that officially began the moment Galileo peered into the night sky.  “Is there a God?” “What place does God have in creation? Humans have asked these questions the moment we evolved into a thinking species.

        So what does that have to do with today’s’ scripture? The Apostle Paul, after dazzling folks at off-Broadway stops in Corinth and Philippi decided to try Athens. Athens was considered the intellectual center of the universe. Before Paul arrived,   folks like Plato and Socrates had offered their brand of philosophical wisdom to both suspicious and hungry minds. It is true the Greeks had their temples to Zeus and Apollo, but the philosophers were more interested in exploring the possibilities of the human mind rather than figments of the human imagination.

        But to Paul, God was very real. Growing up in a Jewish household, being taught by biblical scholars and then experiencing the very power of God on the road to Damascus, Paul conquered the hearts of believers and skeptics with his keen mind and sometimes acid tongue. Paul was not to be taken lightly, but when he climbed the steps of the Areopagus, Paul was about to meet his intellectual equals. He knew it was going to take more than a story to convince the minds of folks ruled by science.

        Paul looked at the statues of Zeus and Poseidon. One ruled the heavens, the other the seas.  But beside them was a third statue dedicated to the unknown God. This inspired Paul. This statue suggested there was uncertainty. Zeus and Poseidon might have the hearts of the people, but the Athenians knew the Romans, the Egyptians, the Persians, even the Jews worshipped other gods. Intellectually they refused to limit themselves to only one possibility. This left a door open, which exposed their curiosities. It was here Paul made his frontal assault. “I looked carefully at all the names of adorning the images to your gods. I saw one erected to the unknown god. Today I will tell you of a God too great to be limited to the vision of humans. This God is the Lord of the heaven and earth. Furthermore, this God demands humanity actively pursue righteousness.

        Heads must have spun. Gods were compartmentalized. One controlled the sun and another, the sea. One was in charge of crops and another ruled human emotions. To make it even more confusing, gods actively competed against one another serving as an explanation for chaos and crisis. If the gods were angry, humans suffered. If the gods felt neglected, humans could expect times of draught. What the common folk feared most was an emotional god.

        But the philosophers, the men to whom Paul spoke, privately questioned the existence of such entities. They were raised on Plato. Their favorite story was the fable of the cave where men feared the shadow dancing on the wall, failing to realize the shadows were their own image. Then one day a man stepped outside the cave into the sun light. The philosophers, seeing themselves as the man who had escaped the shadows, imagined an existence beyond mythological chains.

        Paul was aware of all of this. His congregations in Corinth and Philippi were composed of folks fleeing the whims of cultural gods. Now he faced men who wanted to replace those gods with the splendor of the human mind. Paul the intellect understood their desire. But Paul the believer knew beyond the frailty and chaos of the human dilemma resided a life giving power.

        Paul spoke, “I bring to you the God who creates life.” The gods of the Greek culture specialized in chaos. Read the myths. The philosophers of the Greek culture desired to escape that chaos through their intellectual endeavors. Read their writings. Paul stood before them and said, “You are responsible your own chaos. My God is the author of re-creations.” No wonder Paul was rejected. Why take responsibility for our own mess when we can blame someone else, especially if that someone else is a deity.

        The challenge of Paul still rings true today. We are a people who worship multiple gods. The most obvious is the god of consumerism. On high holy days such as Easter and Christmas we used to race to the temples to make our purchases. Today shopping malls are falling into ruin as we discovered on-line shopping.  But our worship continues, as does our chaos, when once a month we send our tithes and offerings to Visa.

        We worship the gods of inexpensive fossil fuels. As an industrial nation we fell for the allure of coal and gasoline despite predictions of what both would do to the air we and creation breathes. Of course the good news is because of global warming water front property on the Outer Banks of North Carolina is going cheap. Who cares your monthly insurance premium might be more than your mortgage.

        We continue to worship Zeus, the god of power and might. We have to. The entire world is turning against us. The walls and IBM missiles we build cannot fight the chaos that resides inside and outside our own borders. Could this chaos be a product of our own making?

        Most assuredly we worship our minds. We are smart enough to realize everyone else is responsible for our chaos. If people would just listen to us the world would be a better place. We don’t need God. We need better communication.

        My job offers a unique position from which to view the human psyche. I am not a psychiatrist or even a professional counselor. I have little to offer, except a very strong belief in a God who creates in the midst of chaos. I see a lot of folks either in my office or the hospital. For many, while God remains a mystery there is a willingness to welcome me into their chaos. We sit; I listen; and then I prayer. I offer no promises of a miracle, only a gentle witness that beyond our fears, beyond our truths, beyond our realities, beyond our flawed vision, beyond our shadows, is God.

I am naïve enough to think most folks actually believe this. But regardless what we believe, it is still so HARD TO ADMIT that we are the created and not the CREATOR.                   

To God be the Glory.     Amen.