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YEAR B: The Word Series
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YEAR B THE WORD SERIES 126 YEAR B: THE WORD SERIES First Sunday in Creation Earth Sunday Gerald West genesis 1:1-25 Psalm 33:1-9 Romans 1:18-23 John 1:1-14 Background Biblical texts have no fixed meaning. While a certain meaning may become entrenched, there are always other contending meanings. This is true not only of our own appropriations of Scripture, but also of the very production of Scripture itself. The Genesis text that opens the Bible and that begins our worship and reflections on this Earth Sunday is an excellent example. Produced, probably, in a context of exile and colonization, when the elites of Judah were attempting to assert their own identity and theology in the midst of Babylonian and then Persian hegemony,Genesis 1:1-25 addresses this site of production, as well as many other sites of reception over the centuries. This may seem an odd way to begin this liturgical reflection,but we do well to pause and remember that the same urge to dominate and domesticate Earth that we revisit and resist in this Season of Creation series has been present in the reading of Scripture. We desire a definitive and declarative “meaning” of Scripture. The impulse to dominate and domesticate is driven in part by our deep sense that Scripture matters, and so we yearn to hear its voice distinctly. But, in part, the desire is also to control, to hear the voice we expect Scripture should speak with. We can do no other than bring our interests and questions to the text, and as people of faith we justifiably expect our sacred texts to speak to [44.204.94.166] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 11:55 GMT) 127 First Sunday in Creation | Earth Sunday these interests and questions.And they do. But as they do, we should never forget for a moment that they, the biblical texts, are only able to speak because our ideo-theological orientations have been brought to bear on them. To put it crudely: without a reader, the text is silent. The particular ideo-theological orientation we bring to an encounter with the Bible in this Season of Creation is an ecojustice orientation. But as people of faith who locate ourselves in forms of continuity with Scripture, we also recognize and respect the details of Scripture. We cannot or should not conjure only what we would like to hear from Scripture. We should be able to hear the voice that speaks over against our preferred reading. After all, Scripture speaks with more than one voice, particularly when we pay attention to the details. This is especially the case with the book of Genesis, as Mark Brett so eloquently argues. He discerns an “intentional hybridity” in the fabric of the Genesis text, a text where there is “a blending of two or more voices, without compositional boundaries being evident, such that the voices combine into an unstable symphony—sometimes speaking univocally but more often juxtaposing alternative points of view such that the authority of the dominant voice is put into question.”1 “In the case of Genesis,” he continues, “the overriding ideologies have been juxtaposed with so many traces of otherness that the dominant voices can be deconstructed by audiences who have ears to hear.”2 First Reading geNeSiS 1:1-25 Genesis 1:1-25 is usually considered, at least by biblical scholars, as part of the larger unit of Genesis 1:1—2:4a. It is only with the advent of ecological interests and questions that Genesis 1:1-25 has been considered as a literary unit. Norman C. Habel, for example, reads these verses as“a consistent story about Earth that affirms the intrinsic value of Earth.”3 Indeed, continues Habel, “when Genesis 1 is read as a story of Earth, the account of God creating humans [in Genesis 1:26-29/31] does not represent a climax to the narrative, but a sharp conflict of plot and perspective within the narrative.”4 Reading Genesis 1:1-25 with the Earth as a central character of the story is appropriate on Earth Sunday. The Earth is introduced immediately in verse 1. It is possible to read verse 1 as indicating that God existed before the heavens and the Earth, the creation of which would then have been God’s first creative act. 128 Year B | The Word Series By contrast, an Earth-centered reading, which also fits with the Hebrew grammar...