Tohu wa-bohu
Dear Friends:
On this First Week of the Epiphany, and in the midst of one of the most tumultuous episodes in our nation’s history, I am struck by the appropriateness of our scripture readings for this Sunday, particularly our reading from Genesis, and what it has to say about creation in chaos. And yes, we have seen chaos.
Our reading from the first Chapter of Genesis says that “In the beginning,” the primordial soup of pre-creation was a formless void, an unformed, chaotic waste. In Hebrew, the word is tohu wa-bohu, something I learned in my Seminary that I couldn’t forget if I tried. The word was pleasurable to say out loud as a student - it rhymed, it was phonetically simple, and it was one of the few things that I could pronounce without mangling the language. It also made you feel like you enjoyed some mystical knowledge about creation.
Tohu wa-bohu. The stuff of creation was a formless or unformed waste. A shapeless, futile and empty void. Darkness and desolation covered the watery deep. Things were chaotic. But then there was a "great wind" ("ruach elohim") that blew over the waters. The simplest way to read this is a "strong and stormy wind," but interpreters have never been able to resist the translation that the ruach elohim is the very wind, breath, or Spirit of the living God.
Like a tender mother, God's Spirit hovers, “broods,” or flutters over the watery chaos. The Hebrew word for “brood” is used only two other times in the Hebrew bible. In Deuteronomy 32:11, God says that when he found his people in a "howling wasteland," God shielded or guarded them — "like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young."
The gospel and the epistle for this week remind us that the Spirit of God broods and blows over our own little lives just like she does over all creation and history. At the baptism of Jesus, Mark writes that "the Spirit descended on him like a dove." And when Paul baptized twelve clueless people in Ephesus, Luke writes that "the Holy Spirit came on them."
As with the original creation of the whole cosmos, so now with the recreation of our own lives. The life of our nation. The life of our planet.
As we move through these harrowing times, I invite us to turn to the very first words of Scripture and the ancient wisdom of our ancestors in faith. The Spirit of God forms the formless. She breathes spirit into matter. She creates purpose, order and meaning out of the chaos. She fills the empty void with beauty and goodness. She turns darkness into light, night into day, the evening into a new morning. God calls those things that don't exist into existence.
That's what the Spirit did in creation, and that's what she will do in our redemption. The redemption of our country, our communities, and our own, yearning hearts.
Holding you in the light of Epiphany,
Amelie+
