Sunday, September 14, 2025

Reading 1 | The Bible in 100 Passages

Today’s Scripture
Genesis 1:1–5, 26–31

When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Then God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

So God created humans in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (NRSVUE)

Reflection

The most important word in creation might be “when.” The editors of the updated edition of the New Revised Standard Version (NRSVUE) of the Bible seem to agree with me, as they move it to the very beginning of the very first sentence in all of scripture: “When God began to create ...” This is a change from the NRSV, which followed tradition in starting the story with the prepositional phrase “In the beginning” (a phrase that the Gospel of John appeals to beautifully in its prologue about the “Word” that was “in the beginning”).

The thing that makes “when” feel so important to me is what it isn’t: an introduction to God. It seems to me that by jumping right into a story about when God did something without first introducing us to this “God” character, the author(s) of our primeval creation story send a clear signal about what kind of story this is and what kind of hearers we are.

We are hearers (and tellers) of this story who already know God, because, as this story will insist, we are intimately known by God as those created in God’s image. We arrive at the beginning already decorated by a past and a story about God who stitched us together in our mother’s womb (Psalm 139), who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (Exodus 34), and who fashioned us as a people to bless all the families of the earth (Genesis 12). We know all of this about God before “when,” and we don’t understand “when God began to create” without all of this. Faith comes to creation with presuppositions about God’s character and God’s calling on our lives. This is what a faith-full grasp of creation means, that we come to it already involved in it because we know ourselves to already be involved with God.

This is not an “objective” reading of Genesis 1, as if to weigh it against Darwinian evolution in order to render a verdict between the two. That’s not what biblical creation is; Genesis 1 is not a theoretical set of assertions about the origins of life. Rather, it’s a story (the story, really) that establishes who we are in relation to this world (stewards), in relation to one another (siblings), and in relation to God (children).

A final word: contemporary translators insist on including the word began in Genesis 1 because the tense of the Hebrew verb for “create” implies ongoing action and not a once-for-all completed task. Creation continues. Always. The Beginning is always with us.

Prayer

Creator God, as those created in your image, inspire us to courageously bear that image to one another and to our neighbors, mirroring your mercy and grace and creativity in all we do. Illumine our eyes and our minds to see your image in everyone we meet and everyone we consider. Amen.

Written by Rocky Supinger, Senior Associate Pastor

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