And It Was Very Good

In the beginning of creation, when God made heaven and earth, the earth was without form and void, and with darkness over the face of the abyss, and a mighty wind that swept over the surface of the waters. God said, "Let there be light," and there was light; and God saw that the light was good, and he separated light from darkness. He called the light day, and the darkness night. So evening came, and morning came. The first Day.

God said, "Let there be a vault between the waters, to separate water from water." So God made the vault, and separated the water under the vault from the water above it, and so it was; and God called the vault heaven. Evening came, and morning came, a second day.

God said, "Let the waters under heaven be gathered into one place, so that dry land may appear;" and so it was. God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters God called seas; and God saw that it was good. Then God said, "Let the earth produce fresh growth, let there be on the earth plants bearing seed, fruit-trees bearing fruit each with seed according to its kind." So it was' the earth yielded fresh growth, plants bearing seed according to their kind and trees bearing fruit each with seed according to its kind; and God saw that it was good. Evening came, and morning came, a third day.

God said, "Let there be lights in the vault of heaven to separate day from night, and let them serve as signs both for festivals and for seasons and years. Let them also shine in the vault of heaven to give light on earth." So it was; God made the two great lights, the greater to govern the day and the lesser to govern the night; and with them God made the stars. God put these lights in the vault of heaven to give light on earth, to govern day and night, and to separate light from darkness; and God saw that it was good. Evening came, and morning came, a fourth day.

God said, "Let the waters teem with countless living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of heaven." God then created the great sea-monsters and all living creatures that move and swarm in the waters, according to their kind, and every kind of bird; and God saw that it was good. So God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase, fill the waters of the seas; and let the birds increase on land." Evening came, and morning came, a fifth day.

God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures, according to their kind: cattle, reptiles, and wild animals, all according to their kind." So it was; God made wild animals, cattle, and all reptiles, each according to its kind; and he saw that it was good. Then God said, "Let us make humans in our image and likeness to rule the fish in the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all wild animals on earth, and all reptiles that crawl upon the earth." So God created humans in his own image; in the image of God did God create them, male and female God created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish in the sea, the birds of heaven, and every living thing that moves upon the earth." God also said, "I give you all plants that bear seed everywhere on earth and every tree bearing fruit which yields seed: they shall be yours for food. All green plants I give for food to the wild animals, to all the birds of heaven, and to all reptiles on earth, every living creature." So it was; and God saw all that God had made, and it was very good. Evening came, and morning came, a sixth day.

Thus heaven and earth were completed with all their might throng. On the sixth day God completed all the work God had been doing, and on the seventh day God ceased from all work. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on that day God ceased from all the work God had planned to do.

NARRATOR ­ In the beginning there was the computer. And God entered:

GOD ­ Let there be light!

COMPUTER ­ Enter user ID.

GOD ­ God.

COMPUTER ­ Enter password.

GOD ­ Omniscient.

COMPUTER ­ Invalid password. Enter password.

NARRATOR ­ And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Sunday, March 1.

GOD ­ Let there be light!

COMPUTER ­ Unrecognizable command.

GOD ­ Create light.

COMPUTER ­ Done.

GOD ­ Run heaven and earth.

NARRATOR ­ And God created day and night. And God saw that there were 0 errors. And God logged off at 12:02:00 AM, Sunday, March 1. And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Monday, March 2.

GOD ­ Let there be a firmament in the midst of water and light.

COMPUTER ­ Unrecognizable command. Try again.

GOD ­ Create firmament.

COMPUTER ­ Done.

GOD ­ Run firmament.

NARRATOR ­ And God divided the waters. And God saw that there were 0 errors. And God logged off at 12:02:00 AM, Monday, March 2. And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Tuesday, March 3.

GOD ­ Let the waters under heaven be gathered together unto one place and let the dry land appear and

COMPUTER ­ [INTERRUPTING] ­ Too many characters in specification string. Try again.

GOD ­ Create dry land.

COMPUTER ­ Done.

GOD ­ Run firmament.

NARRATOR ­ And God divided the waters. And God saw that there were 0 errors. And God logged off at 12:02:00 AM, Tuesday, March 3. And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Wednesday, March 4.

GOD ­ Created lights in the firmament to divide the day from the night.

COMPUTER ­ Unspecified type. Try again.

GOD ­ Create sun, moon, stars.

COMPUTER ­ Done.

GOD ­ Run sun, moon, stars.

NARRATOR ­ And God separated the light from the darkness. The sun ruled over the day and the moon and stars ruled over the night. And God saw there were 0 errors. And God logged off at 12:01:00 AM, Wednesday, March 4. And God logged on as 12:01:00 AM, Thursday, march 5.

GOD ­ Create fish.

COMPUTER ­ Done.

GOD ­ Create fowl.

COMPUTER ­ Done.

GOD ­ Run fish, fowl.

NARRATOR ­ And God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that creepeth wherewith the waters swarmed after its kind and every winged fowl after its kind. And God saw there were 0 errors. And God logged off at 12:02:00 AM, Thursday, March 5. And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Friday, March 6.

GOD ­ Create cattle.

COMPUTER ­ Done.

GOD ­ Create creepy things.

COMPUTER ­ Done.

GOD - Now let us make man in our image.

COMPUTER ­ Unspecified type. Try again.

GOD ­ Create man.

COMPUTER ­ Done.

GOD ­ Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth.

COMPUTER ­ Too many command operands. Try again.

GOD ­ Run Multiplication.

COMPUTER ­ Execution terminated. 6 errors.

GOD ­ Insert breath.

COMPUTER ­ Done.

GOD ­ Run multiplication.

COMPUTER ­ Execution terminated. 5 errors.

GOD ­ Move man to Garden of Eden.

COMPUTER ­ Filename: Garden of Eden does not exist. Abort, Retry, Ignore:

GFOD ­ Create Garden of Eden.

COMPUTER ­ Too many parameters.

GOD ­ Create Garden.edn.

COMPUTER ­ Done.

GOD ­ Move man to Garden.edn.

COMPUTER ­ Done.

GOD ­ Run multiplication.

COMPUTER ­ Execution terminated. 4 errors.

GOD ­ Copy woman from man.

COMPUTER ­ Done.

GOD ­ Run multiplication.

COMPUTER ­ Execution terminated. 2 errors.

GOD ­ Create desire.

COMPUTER ­ Done.

GOD ­ Run multiplication.

NARRATOR ­ And God saw man and woman being fruitful and multiplying in Garden.edn.

COMPUTER ­ Warning: no time limit on this run. 1 errors.

GOD ­ Create freewill.

COMPUTER ­ Done.

GOD ­ Run freewill.

NARRATOR ­ And God saw man and woman being fruitful and multiplying in Garden.edn.

COMPUTER ­ Warning: no time limit on this run. 1 errors.

GOD ­ Undo desire.

COMPUTER ­ Desire cannot be undone once freewill is created.

GOD ­ Destroy freewill.

COMPUTER ­ Freewill is an inaccessible file and cannot be destroyed. Enter replacement, cancel, or ask for help.

GOD ­ Help.

COMPUTER ­ Desire cannot be undone once freewill is created. Freewill is an inaccessible file and cannot be destroyed. Enter replacement, cancel or ask for help.

GOD ­ Create tree of knowledge.

NARRATOR ­ And God saw man and woman being fruitful and multiplying in Garden.edn.

COMPUTER ­ Warning: no time limit on this run. 1 errors.

GOD ­ Create good, evil.

COMPUTER ­ Done.

GOD ­ Activate evil.

NARRATOR ­ And God saw he had created shame.

COMPUTER ­ Warning: system error in sector E95. Man and woman no longer located in Garden.edn. 1 errors.

GOD ­ Scan Garden.edn for man, woman.

COMPUTER ­ Search failed. Abort, Retry, Ignore?

GOD ­ Delete shame.

COMPUTER ­ Shame cannot be deleted once evil has been activated.

GOD ­ Destroy freewill.

COMPUTER ­ Freewill is an inaccessible file and cannot be destroyed. Enter replacement, cancel, or ask for help.

GOD ­ Stop.

COMPUTER ­ Unrecognizable command. Try again.

GOD ­ Control Break.

GOD ­ Control Break.

GOD ­ Control Break.

COMPUTER ­ Attention all users. Attention all users. Computer going down for regular day of maintenance and rest in five minutes. Please log off.

GOD ­ Create new world.

COMPUTER ­ You have exceeded allocated file space. You must destroy old files before new ones can be created.

GOD ­ Destroy earth.

COMPUTER ­ Are you sure you want to destroy earth?

GOD ­ Yes.

COMPUTER ­ Computer down. Computer down. Service will resume Sunday, March 8,
at 6:00:00 AM. You must sign off now.

NARRATOR ­ And God logged off at 11:59:59 PM, Friday, March 6. On Saturday, March 7, God rested. On Sunday, March 8, God created Macintosh. And God saw that it was good.

Sermon

Many thanks to the Hart Family Players for the second reading. Using Southern talk (not cyber-talk) I "might could" do a whole sermon series comparing and contrasting these two creation stories ­ one from a verbal tradition dating back several millennia, the other only recently scribed. The cyber-version collapses two Genesis myths into one story. I read only the first Genesis myth ­ the one where both men and women are created in God's image, and there is no Garden of Eden.

What I do want you to notice about these two stories is what happens on the seventh day ­ God rests AND the computer rests. In the cyber-version, God may rest only 24 hours, but the computer rests for 30 hours! God may want to log on at 12:01:00 AM on Sunday, March 8. But God has to wait until 6 AM that day to be able to work with the computer. In religious language, this seventh day's rest is known as the Sabbath.

It's not clear to scholars where the word "Sabbath" comes from or how far back the practice of observing the Sabbath goes. Some think that in the old religions the Sabbath was part of the lunar cycle, possibly on the dark of the moon, as the story Joseph Who Loves the Sabbath suggests. In Islam the Sabbath is celebrated on Friday. In Judaism, the Sabbath begins on Friday at sundown and continues until Saturday sundown. Both Islam and Judaism emphasize that the Sabbath is held on the seventh day of the week. In Christendom, the Sabbath is held on the first day of the week, to celebrate Jesus' resurrection.

I think this is an important difference. It explains why in Judaism one does no work and in Christendom why one has no fun on the Sabbath! On the one hand, one is resting or ceasing from work. On the other hand one is commemorating the death of a beloved religious figure and celebrating his rise from that death to eternal life. Remembering her Catholic childhood, my friend, Mary Jo thinks not of feasting, but of fasting on the Sabbath. She couldn't eat breakfast on Sunday, her Sabbath, until she had taken communion, and she had to go to confession on Saturday so she could receive communion.

In our culture the Sabbath is a little of both. On most monthly calendars it is the first day of the week ­ all the Sundays are in the far left hand column. On most weekly calendars it is the last day of the week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday usually have big boxes to write things in ­ Saturday and Sunday usually have one box split between them.

Our memories of the Sabbath ­ Sunday, if we grew up Christian, Unitarian Universalist or secular; Saturday if we grew up Jewish ­ are similar.

The dinner plates that my partner, Patricia and I use are a collection of plates friends and family have given us, one by one. One of our favorites came from Pat's brother. It is a Limoges plate from a set her grandmother gave to her brother when her grandmother went to live in a retirement home. Mémé (as Pat's grandmother was called affectionately) lived in Algeria, and every Sunday she used to have all of the family and many of the neighbors in for dinner. It was not unusual for there to be 20 or 30 people gathered under her roof for Sunday dinner, which was served on these beautiful plates. Many of us remember Sabbath dinners, served in the afternoon.

Many of us remember reading the funny papers ­ in fact this may still be a ritual in some homes. Anne Keiter has written a poem called Sunday Funnies which captures her Sabbath experience:

I can remember lying
stretched-out
backs close against the sagging bed's
worn green spread,
with the Sunday funnies covering our
selves
like a comical umbrella.
He lay between us;
my sister, long and quiet,
piercing brown eyes
taking in all;
me, curls of body and black hair,
turning, wriggling
in anticipation of
Joe Palooka
beyond Dick Tracy's blocked-out smile.
Sheltered in a world of bright colors
and laughing heroes,
my father, wire glasses resting uselessly
too far down his nose,
would turn the thin pages,
crackling like the Sunday chicken
in Mother's kitchen, while
his easy voice told us wonderful tales;
more wonderful than the words alone
could ever do.
Then, slowly,
his voice would linger,
shorten,
and nod off
in his own
inaudible wisdom.
My sister would sigh in disgust,
I would playfully punch his belly,
and listen for the pages, nearly flattening against his half-shut eyes,
to rustle in awakening.
Nap time lost,
my father would read on,
while we lay, listening, smiling
on either side.

Isn't that delicious? It brings back memories for me ­ not because reading the funnies happened that way in my house, but because of the feelings Anne Keiter evokes ­ Sabbath feelings.

Many of us think of the Sabbath as a time to rest, and certainly Anne's poem makes us think of rest, but the story of Mémé overseeing preparations for feeding 20-30 people certainly doesn't!

Actually, the word Sabbath means to cease. Joseph Who Loved the Sabbath ceased to work for Sorab, his employer, on the Sabbath, just as in the Genesis story, God ceased creating things on the seventh day and took time to celebrate and appreciate the creation.

The Reverend Rebecca Parker, the President of Starr King School for the Ministry, reminds us that in our world today the dominant system is not religion; it's business. Several years ago, Joseph Campbell, the noted mythologist pointed out to us that the tallest building in the village used to be the church or the temple ­ today it's the skyscraper. Not only are our lives dominated by business, the skylines of our cities, towns and villages are, too. In fact, the very air punctuated by rooftops and spires is often dominated by contaminants which would not be there were it not for business. John Cobb, who is Rebecca's teacher and a noted theologian, spends all his energy these days analyzing and critiquing the global economy, because, as Rebecca says, we are enmeshed in this system to the extent that our relationships with each other and with the earth are imperiled and endangered.

While reminding us that many business people are fine ethical people, Rebecca calls on us to observe the Sabbath as a radical act of resistance! She calls on us to cease working, to cease getting, to cease spending ­ one day a week on the Sabbath. She calls on us to sit at table with friends, celebrating our precious and dear relationships with them. An even more radical act would be to include strangers, as Joseph Who Loves the Sabbath did, so that we make of strangers, friends. Rebecca calls on us to gather in religious community to lift up the religious traditions among us which speak of meanings for life beyond the bottom line. She calls on us to read and think, to reflect and pray, to give thanks and rest. She calls on us to notice what's happening in our world and to grieve for our lost meaning of life, to face that intense despair deep within us that we usually cover over with busy-ness. Only then, only after our observance of the Sabbath, Rebecca says, can we become "capable of entering into profound and sustained engagement with our culture, which needs our active creative witness and work for change."

In early April, in USA Today there was a magazine article by Wayne Muller called "Remember the Sabbath?" In his article Muller suggests twelve different Sabbath practices. Here are my three favorites:

Create a Sabbath box. Put your to-do list, your keys, your wallet ­ anything you don't need in Sabbath-time ­ into the box. Or write down a particular worry or concern and drop it in. Just for now, let it go.
Bless your children. Place your hand gently on their heads and offer your blessing. What do you most wish for them? Self-knowledge, courage, safety, joy? Let them hear your prayers for their happiness.
Turn off the telephone. Or the computer, the TV, the washer and dryer. Create a period of time when you will not be disturbed or seduced by what our technologies demand of us.

My partner, Pat and I, are going to celebrate the Sabbath today by visiting with some of you in our home this evening. If this sounds like a good idea to you, we have room for two more. Talk to me after the service if you want to come. Or you could create your own Sabbath gathering, spontaneously, during our fellowship time following the service, by inviting someone to your home for the midday meal. It doesn't have to be fancy. You could even order-out.

I want to end with a poem by Cynthia Ozick. She reminds us that it takes practice to learn how to celebrate the Sabbath. In her poem, the speaker is a small boy, comparing his Sabbath experience with his father's.

In boyhood once I rated
one of my Sabbaths ­ an ordinary day,
and desecrated ­ against the hallowed way
my father kept his. Even then I knew
how mine sped like short Friday to
its end. My father's Sabbath waned
as if it had a year to spend.

His Sabbath rest gave full weight.
I profaned the day.
The more I broke it, the faster it fled.
Each boyish breach made it fly away.
My father sang, studied, prayed ­
in a single Sabbath could fit so much!
Bliss lit him; his eyes would touch
my mother with new love.

Let us celebrate this Sabbath with a wonderful hymn from the Jewish tradition, "Shabbat Shalom", number 214.