Readings: Dreamtime creation story - Australian aboriginal tradition; Genesis 1:1-3, 26-37; Genesis for a new millennium - Arthur Peacock We live at an amazing time in history - A time when we can explore both ourselves and our universe at a level unheard of only a few years ago. We have just seen pictures from the Hubble telescope and can marvel at the universe and its structure. But we are also at a time when we consume more, pollute more and populate more than the planet itself can withstand. We have become, as David Suzuki points out, a super species. So this time is also a time when a great transformation is required. We have come to a junction in the road of life, where it divides and we can go in either direction. And based on which direction we take hinges the future of our species and our earthly home.

This is not a question just for scientists to solve, but for people of faith to engage and help determine. To do this there are some hard questions to face, and some remodelling to do. Christianity is only 2000 years old, while the earth is 14 billion years old. The question is, can we bridge the gap and come back to a spirituality for all the ages and all earth`s creatures? I think we can but we have to start at the beginning.

Creation stories are based on an age old process where by people determine in myth and stories where they have come from and why they are here. In the pre-scientific world many arose from places like Babylonia, Egypt and Mesopotamia, the cradles of western civilisation. They are found in the traditions of indigenous people everywhere, like the creation story from the Dreamtime of the Australian aboriginals we heard earlier.

The main similarities these stories have are how the people are linked with the land and with all of creation. There is harmony and guardianship reflected in the words and images.

We find an example of a creation story in today`s reading from the Old Testament book of Genesis. This reading is quite different, however, from many of the other traditional creation myths. The problem is that much of this tradition, our tradition, is grey not green, and very human centred rather than creation centred. This is according to Norman Habel, a theologian and author of a book called `An Inconvenient Text`. He classifies grey texts as texts that view nature as a resource for humans to exploit because humans are superior to the rest of nature. This is what we find in the passages today. In verses 26-28 there is the mandate to dominate nature, giving humans a God given right to harness it for their own purposes. It is reinforced in other verses (9:2), and persists post the flood, where the world of new beginnings is still calling for humans to be superior over all animal life. And we find it in Psalm 8 where the mandate to dominate nature is celebrated.

Habel does not suggest the whole bible is grey, and he sees many green texts as well, texts that affirm earth and all of creation as having intrinsic value. Genesis Chapter 2, verse 15 points out that humans are to serve and guard creation rather than dominate. This call to be guardians of the land is found in the tradition of many indigenous peoples. And we heard Marion a couple of weeks ago talk about Noah and the flood in terms of God`s covenant with all of creation. But we cannot deny that the many passages that concentrate on humans` rule over the earth have been used over the centuries to justify the destruction of the natural order. And have been reinforced by the church.

So what do we do? Well, Habel suggests it is the words of Jesus we should be listening to. We hear clearly the call from him to serve (Mark 10:42-45) not dominate, although it is not specifically being applied to the earth, and he often looked to nature to illustrate his teachings. Or we could look at passages which recognise the groaning of the earth, as in Romans (Rom 8-17-27).

But I think we need to be slightly more radical than that. We need to accept that the bible was written a long time ago, when culturally and scientifically the world was a completely different place. Many, many things were not understood, so a mighty God who controlled the world and intervened regularly, became the default position. Humans were seen as God`s ultimate creation, and the rest of nature something used to support the human endeavour. So the texts are very human centred. Many people have tried to make the bible green. But even people like Habel who produced a whole book looking at the bible with green eyes cannot deny it is an inconvenient and contradictory text at times.

Thomas Berry, an eco-theologian, has written, `One of the best ways to discover the deep meaning of things is to give them up for a while … So I suggest putting the Bible on the shelf for a while to recover the ancient Christian view that there are two scriptures, the scripture of the natural world and the scripture of the bible.`

I am not suggesting we discard the bible altogether, but we need to realise that it is limited in its ability to provide answers for us today, particularly ecological answers. It has to be read with eyes focused on a different beginning story and a different view of the God/human relationship. For many generations it has been us and the natural world, radically separated. Now we need a different approach, adopting an `all in together` story that takes our interdependence seriously.

This new story, based on our current scientific understandings describes the big bang, almost 14 billion years ago as the starting point. It includes the formulation of matter and planets and stars and galaxies, and it relates the evolutionary path from single cell organisms to a species that walks upright, and thinks abstractly. It is a story that is not all about us, but about the creation of the universe, of which we are just a very small, and rather late part.

To show you just how late we come into the picture of creation let us imagine the birth of the universe is on a scale of one year. The big bang would have happened on January 1st. The solar system would have formed in June. Life (micro organisms) would have appeared on earth in October. The first human would have been born on December 31st at 11.56 pm. And Jesus Christ appeared on December 31st at 11.59 and 56 secs. It puts the enormity of where we have come from into perspective

This is our creation story for the 21st century. It gives a message of unity and inclusiveness and a profound kinship with all of life.

Brian Swimme, a cosmologist suggested that `The Universe story shows how profoundly related we are. It shows that we are involved with each other and have been for a long time. So, it is not the case that the earth was assembled and then we were added to the earth, and it was there for our purposes. Rather, we came out of the Earth.`

But where is God in this story? For me God is everywhere and in everything.

Many would say there is no purpose or direction in this new scientific story, that there cannot be a God because all this seems to have occurred naturally. Yet it is not what we see. We see instead an emerging, increasingly complex universe that continues to evolve.

Science measures substance and matter, not interconnectedness, not an urge for community, cooperation or order. Yet these are the things that are needed for life. As we progress to an even greater understanding of physics, biology and the universe, the world becomes more complicated and more indeterminate. Many current physicists and biologists would say that life in our universe is more than just the particles that make it up. They would assert that it involves the relationship between the parts rather than the parts themselves, with an unseen order that is required for that life. God is revealed as the other, the extra, the energy, who gives this order, a God who is intimately involved in creation at every level. There is a progression forward, from the smallest amount of stardust to ultimately conscious beings, which is astounding and ultimately mysterious.

As Charles Birch has said, `The universe is a happening of happenings. Stop the happenings and the universe collapses. God is necessary for the world. God is not the world and the world is not God. God is not before all creation but with all creation. The world includes God and God perfects the world. There is no world apart from God.`

Or as John Spong says in somewhat simpler language, `I saw a universe born in a physical explosion of matter that ultimately produced life, consciousness and self consciousness, I am convinced that matter carries within it the seeds of life. I see no dualism between matter and life or between matter and spirit. The human being lives in the wonder of self consciousness and perceives thereby the wonder of life itself. God is not external to that.`

This new creation story, with God at its centre, reveals a picture of interdependence, unity with all other life forms and an emerging creation, reliant on its relationships with one another down to the smallest particle and atom to survive and flourish. This new story, reflected in Arthur Peacock`s Genesis for a New Millenium, demonstrates that our beginnings are not just human but of the universe, of which we are just some `Johnny come latelys` in the incredible story of life. It is impossible not to be in awe of the things around us which we just take for granted. We have to see our relationship with the rest of creation in a totally different inclusive way.

But we also need to see God in a new way. God is not a magical figure intervening at regular intervals in order that humans can somehow have it easy. No, God is far, far bigger than that. God is the God of the universe, of the stars and planets, and galaxies, of the forests and trees, streams, rivers and oceans, bacteria and amoebas, of lions, tigers, elephants, crickets, frogs, and of course humans. And humanity with its ability to be conscious of this fact, to be aware of God as part of the life-evolving force, has a special role to play. Not a special place, but a special role, as co-creators to life. We as humanity have now come to a point where we can help choose the future of God`s evolving creation.

And this will involve not just ecological sustainability but a search for justice as well. We have to become eco-centred, or creation centred, rather than human centred, which means challenging a human centred approach to ethics, economics, religion and culture. Albert Schweitzer calls us to have `a reverence to life`, to all life. Not a bad starting point when attempting to act on behalf of the planet and all its inhabitants.