The Beginning When

Text: Genesis 1.1
Other texts: Mark 1.1

Let’s begin at the beginning.

Stories which begin at the beginning are not about the past. They are about the present. They are ways of explaining where we are at the moment by trying to figure out how we got here. Stories that start at the beginning are always auspicious. Beginnings are not determined by events of history but by our portrayal of history. The moment which we call a beginning is a choice we make, chosen because it reveals to us the essence of our existence.

“At the beginning of God’s creating …” so begins today’s first reading. Genesis One, chapter One. Or “In the beginning, when …” as a more common translation has it. The story of Genesis is not the story of the absolute beginning of things but of the beginning of ordered creation. The formless void is not nothing. It is merely formless. Chaos, darkness, wind, sweeping over the waters, exist. But unformed. God forms the world from these things, from chaos. Creates boundaries, distinctions between formlessness and form. The form of things that now exist, formed by the hand of God.

It takes time. Time, the passing of the day and night, is created first, out of the light that was extracted from the darkness. Periodicity, habit, predicability are created. Time passes while the world is created. Six days. Each day some things are formed from other things. The things that are formed cooperate with God to create new things. The earth brings forth living creatures, the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures. Let all these things multiply according to their kind. And they do.

This story tells us about our world and about God. It tells us that God has an interest in the forms of things, of their particularity, of the Spirit that breathes life into all of creation. All things live, are creatures. It tells us that by the ticking of time we come into being and, by implication, by it we die. It tells us that the creation is a cooperative process between God and what God has created. Creatures have a hand in the form of the future. Creation is an ongoing process of which we are in some way agents.

And the story tells us that all this is good. Good in the sense of pleasing. And also in the sense of fitting, or harmonious. Creation is a system of appropriate things that are good. And it pleases God that it is so.

None of these things is self-evident. That God cares about the universe and its tiny elements, that God enlists creation to continue creation, and that all this is good. This is not a story that all our culture shares. It is a story that our faith shares, because it fits what we hold to be true. Another way to say it: God is intimately involved with us, we are partners in creation, existence is a blessing. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ. So begins the Gospel of Mark, the earliest written Gospel and which should by rights have been the first book of the New Testament, as Genesis is of the Old. This first verse has no verb, and therefore is the title of Mark’s book—The Beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ—and could serve as the title of all the books that follow.

Unlike in Matthew or Luke, the story of the life of Jesus in Mark starts when Jesus is a adult. Mark has nothing to say about the birth of Jesus or his ancestry, and unlike John, Mark does not place Jesus in the cosmic scheme of things. Yet Jesus does not come from nothing. He has parents, is raised a Jew, and follows the prophetic tradition established by John the Baptist.

This story at the beginning Mark does not start with the story of Jesus’ life. Rather, it tells the story about how Jesus comes to be—It is not just some news, or the latest news, but good news. Jesus is named here. His identity is establish by the proclamation of John the Baptist, and it is confirmed by the voice, presumably the voice of God, coming from heaven. You are my son, says the voice. I love you. And, the voice adds, I find this pleasing. The creation of the good news of Jesus in Mark echoes the creation of all things in Genesis. God names Jesus and pronounces him—and his work on earth—to be good.

The ministry of Jesus continues the pattern that we have come to expect from God. God is intimately involved with us. God uses us humans in partnership to create or transform the world. And it is all good. This is no more self-evident than is the story of creation in Genesis. We tell the story because, as with creation, we hold its premises to be true. Jesus is neither a hands-off God nor one that acts alone, independently of humans nor one that approaches the world without passion.

The stories in Genesis and Mark are beginnings because they establish for us a foundation of existence. But they are beginnings, not the whole story. Creation and redemption, life and healing, and goodness, are a prolonged, ongoing, and still-continuing event. Our lives are not some winding down of an ancient big push by God and then another little extra nudge by Jesus 2000 years ago. Nor are our lives ethically neutral short-lived animations in an uninterested universe. What we do matters to ourselves, our fellow creatures, to the universe, and to God.

“In the beginning, when …” and “the beginning of …” are just words. They open stories that are remembrances of our origins. But they are more than just nostalgic tales. These stories define us who tell them. We write them down in an important and revered holy book, and we tell them to ourselves over and over, because we need to remind ourselves of who we are.

What we say about ourselves makes a difference in the way we act. It changes our hopes and puts our fears in a particular perspective. It changes how we judge ourselves and judge our plight—how we interpret what happens to us.

The universe is neither indifferent nor pitiless. It is good. We are loved. God is with us.