The Margins of Creation...The Gulf South

Genesis, chapter one, resounds with astounding proclamations. God speaks and creation unfolds: air, water, land, life. Upon seeing each stroke of creation unfold God affirms the goodness of each element. In the culminating act, male and female are proclaimed to be the very image of God. The picture of God revealed in this text asserts: power and order, immanence and imagination, a God who finds peace at rest and profound joy in creation. These are truths we know.

So it comes as a surprise in Genesis 2:4 to read, “This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created…” Haven’t we heard this story already? Here, the story unfolds with a closer view. There is less precision and more dust and mud. There is less power and more personal presence as God seems to kneel down in the playground to form a person out of the dust and breathes in the breath of life. There is less professed joy and more personal concern, “It is not good for man to be alone.” And so we find between these two stories important differences in the order of creation, the nature of God, the relationship between man and woman.

Two stories, many affirmations. Why the tension? The answer lies in a crisis of exponential magnitude and experiential negation. Exile. Exile is that moment when everything changes in life, even your perception of God. Prior to exile, the text of Genesis 2 circulated through the oral tradition in the height of the prosperity – the theology affirmed a God close at hand. When the first deportation to Babylon occurred in 597 BC, that theology seemed negated. Life was dismal, God was distant. God appeared uninvolved and unable to save. So professors of faith lent new affirmations to the story of creation. The rhythmic liturgy of Genesis 1 was life-giving in the face of death. The resounding goodness of creation forced the people of Israel to take a new look at their surroundings. And for a people enslaved and oppressed, the affirmation they were created in God’s image was revolutionary.

Our world is in crisis. We need a new creation story.

On Earth Day, April 22nd, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killed, sank and ruptured. Since then, the seams of the earth have been heaving oil and ordinary people on the shores of the gulf are grieving a way of life. Exile confronts them even in their own landscape.

The Gulf South needs a new creation story. The Gulf South needs a new creation story because our Biblical stories have been corrupted. This is a year where the Supreme Court gave corporations the right to have ‘freedom of speech’. Businesses whose very business it is to generate profits, are entitled to voice and action in political campaigns. Suddenly, this corrupts the concept God had in mind when he bent in the mud to shape life, breathing vitality into a human being whose lips give voice to praise and prayer, questions and lament, confession and calling. God created a human, not a corporation, to have freedom of speech.

And now, our corporations running amok in the muck and mud of the world today are scarring the face of the earth.

In the Gulf South where the ordained order of Genesis has been upended by the free speech, not of God, but of corporations – this liturgy falls on deaf ears. The flora and fauna of creation are now drenched in oil and dying a slow and painful death. These teeming elements of the earth – pelicans, turtles, alligators, dolphins, shrimp and crawfish – are no longer able to give praise.

The Gulf Coast needs a new creation story. This new creation story will not be written by tampering with the very Word of God. Instead, the inspired word our world needs will come from the voices of those created and called to praise, to lament, to ask and to seek. This community of those longing for a new creation will need to stamp their muddy feet, raise their dusty palms and from their breathy voices cry out in anger.

Genesis 1 describes a powerful God who is above creation and whose very voice booms creation into being. Genesis 2 paints a picture of a God at play in the world, personally present to those humans who dare not be lonely. If Genesis 1 says God is above, and Genesis 2 says God is beside, then perhaps this new creation story will proclaim God can be at work within this very mess.

In other words, the leadership of the church needs to be in the throes of this disaster praying and working for a redeemed creation. Consider these three suggestions to start that new creation story:

1. Consult Resources: The National Council of Churches has a humbling and challenging wealth of resources to guide and direct the leadership of churches in the area of eco-justice. Look to www.nccecojustice.org for a wealth of resources and stories to guide and inspire.

2. Create Partnerships: During the aftermath of Katrina many churches partnered with people to provide life-giving support. Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church adopted particular floors of hospital staff to provide resources through the disaster. Consider zooming in on a particular community and asking precisely what they need to survive.

3. Craft Responses: Craft sermons and educational series teaching environmental justice and mindful stewardship are essential in such a time as this. Craft letters to congressmen calling for resources in disaster areas and limits on corporate benefits. Craft pictures among the children in the church sharing images of a world that is broken and images of a world that is blessed.

Exile, that time when everything in life seemed X’ed out by the circumstances of the day, called the people of Israel to new worship, to deeper theology and to a renewed vocation. The Gulf South is not the only community in exile today that needs a new creation story. The re-release of “Exile on Main Street” by the Rolling Stones is a timely statement of the forces at work in our broken world pushing many to the margins. In this modern exile, where the world heaves and the Gulf South grieves, may the church be a voice for restored, redeemed, renewed creation.