SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7 2025 - ILLUMINATION
September 7, 2025
Deborah Laforet
“Illumination”
Let us pray. May the words from my lips and the meditations of my heart be guided by your Spirit and be words of wisdom for this day. Amen. Today is our first Sunday back after a fairly quiet summer, here at St. Paul’s, and today, I want to acknowledge that this is the last time we come back to this space after a summer of being away. In one year’s time, we will be in a different space. Although we’re not yet sure what that will look like, and we’re still working through details, we know we won't be here. It’ll feel odd, uncomfortable, and we’ll all have very mixed feelings about it. Now, set that aside for a moment. Today begins our season of creation. This is a fairly new initiative in faith communities, taking a season of time in the fall, usually about 5-6 weeks, to celebrate creation and explore climate justice. The colour for the season is orange and each year, we find different ways of acknowledging this season. This year, we’re going to look at the first of the two stories of creation that start off the book of Genesis in our bibles. What’s that? You didn’t know there were two creation stories in the bible? Similar to our two birth stories of Jesus, in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, these two stories are often seen as one story, and the details are often jumbled together, which sometimes causes confusion and often causes poor interpretations. There are two separate creation stories, back to back. In the second one, we have the Adam and Eve story and the banishment from the garden. This is a great story to explore when we want to talk about sin or humility, or even gender issues. Today, though, as we start our last year in this building, we’re going to look at the first story of creation. The first story of creation, with its six days of God speaking creation into existence, is very orderly, and follows a simple pattern. It begins with the very well-known phrase, “In the beginning, God 2 of 5 created the heavens and the earth.” We then hear, “the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep.” Sometimes we hear that God created this world from nothing, but actually, that’s not what we read. We read there was an earth and it was chaos, and darkness, and deepness, possibly a large body of water. God then begins to creates order from this chaos, by first creating light, not to eliminate the darkness, but to be in balance with it. This very structured and orderly account of creation can feel comforting and reassuring, and it’s the reason I’ve chosen to focus on this creation story. The reason we’ve sold our building, is not because this community has decided to throw in the towel and close. We’ve decided it’s time to try something new. Our landscape has greatly changed since the boom of the 1950’s and 60’s, when most churches were planted, including this one in 1956. Every room in this building was full to bursting with people of all ages. It was a time when most people went to church on Sundays, and families were involved in their faith communities all week long. Much has changed since then. This very large building is too much for this congregation to maintain. So it’s time to imagine church differently, and not just this faith community, but faith communities across Canada, and in many other parts of the world. In some ways, it feels chaotic. Churchgoers are struggling to imagine different ways of going forward. Ministers are retiring and we’re not training enough to replace them. Fewer people are coming to church and fewer people are supporting churches, which is creating a financial crisis, and the inability to support large buildings and properties like this one. Some people might say, “the church is complete chaos, and darkness covers the face of the deep.” Might this be a time to pray for God’s intervention, to step aside and let God speak creative words of new life and and bring order to this chaos. This creation story has been passed down orally for generations, but wasn’t actually written down until a very turbulent time for the Hebrew people, after their temple had been destroyed, their city 3 of 5 or their centre of power shattered, and when they were living as exiles in Babylon. It was a chaotic time, a time when order and structure would have been highly valued. It was a time of grief and trauma, a time when assurance of God’s spirit was crucial to a people who felt they had lost all that made them a people, with their own laws and practices and ways of being, and when they even felt God had abandoned them. So we have this creation story that follows a pattern. On each day, God said, God saw, and God called, and then there was evening and there was morning, completing each day. On the first day, we read that God said, “Let there be light;” and there was light. God saw that the light was good. God called the light Day and called the dark Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. It’s repetitive; it’s neat, it’s easy to remember and recite. Richard Boyce, a professor of preaching and pastoral leadership, wrote, “The creation story is a way of holding onto hope when all signs of order in our lives have been destroyed and we must look out for signs of the creative work of God beyond our control.” Beyond our control but not beyond God’s control. As we move forward as a congregation, or as individuals, living with our own struggles, sometimes it’s hopeful to know that it all doesn’t depend on us, on you, and on what we do. In fact, sometimes we must do what is most difficult and surrender our anxiety, our control, our expectations, our plans and preconceived notions of how it’s all supposed to be, and to let God take over, depend on God to to take us where we need to go, to rely on God to create order out of chaos. One of my favourite parts of the passage we heard today is that in the beginning, in this chaos and darkness, “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” Even before God’s words brought illumination, this wind was present. The Hebrew word, “ruah,” can mean wind or Spirit. Some 4 of 5 translations read that the Spirit of God swept over the face of the waters. In the midst of chaos and darkness, even before “the beginning,” the Spirit was present. Judy also read for us this morning a passage from Proverbs. In this passage we read about Chokmah, a Hebrew word that means wisdom. In the Greek, it’s Sophia. I love this passage because we hear from Chokmah, or Sophia, this female personification of God, which can be found in different parts of the bible, subversively hiding amidst a partriarchal lens of the Holy. I always appreciate a little subversiveness. I lift up this passage today because this reiterates that message in our creation story. Chokmah, Sophia, or wisdom, states, “Yahweh (or God) gave birth to me at the beginning, before the first acts of creation. I have been from everlasting, in the beginning, before the world began.” Similarly, we hear in the gospel of John, a favourite verse: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” We hear this constant mantra of God’s presence with us, at the beginning, before the beginning, during the chaos. God is with us. God’s Spirit is with us. Wisdom or the Word is with us. Guiding, assuring, creating, and loving. As we move through life’s struggles, remember that we are not alone, that this Spirit hovers overs the chaos and the deepness. As this congregation acknowledges endings throughout this year, and as we celebrate beginnings as we find our way forward, may we also remember that we are not alone, that God’s spirit hovers over what we do, bringing order from chaos. May we trust in this God, who has a plan for us. May we follow in the way of Christ, as we strive to meet the needs of this community. May we feel the Spirit’s embrace as we move through this chaos, to illumination. May we, at the end, call it all very good. May it be so. Amen. 5 of 5 Genesis 1:1-5 & Proverbs 8:22-26 (Introduce yourself.) I am reading from two creation stories today. The first is at the beginning of our bible, in the book of Genesis, the very first book and the first five lines. This tells the story of the first day of creation. Over the next few weeks, we’ll hear about each of the six days of creation. I will also read a less known creation story from the book of Proverbs. In chapter 8 of Proverbs, we are introduced to “Wisdom,” which is the only female personification of God in our bible. Wisdom tells us that she was present and included in the act of creation. I’ll read first from the book of Genesis, the first five verses of Chapter 1, from the New Revised Standard Version. When God began to create the heavens and the earth, 2 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. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. I will now read from the eighth chapter of Proverbs, verses 22 to 26, from the Inclusive Bible. 22 “Yahweh gave birth to me at the beginning, before the first acts of creation. 23 I have been from everlasting, in the beginning, before the world began. 24 Before the deep seas, I was brought forth before there were fountains or springs of water’ 25 before the mountains erupted into place, before the hills, I was born -, 26 before God created the earth or its fields, or even the first clods of dirt. May the Spirit guide our understanding of this sacred scripture. Amen.