Pastor Vicki Zust was the rector of St. Paul’s, Clarence, NY. Having completed a 2 year cycle of reading the entire Bible she decided to try something different. As she writes, “So I went through the Old Testament and wrote down the stories that a lot of our theology and history depends on. It turns out there are 40 of them.”
For the next few weeks we will look at her list with links to the reading. Her blog is here.
Link to the reading – Genesis 1
“Actually it is the two stories of creation.
“There are two slightly different versions of the story (or maybe just a retelling of the story with a different focus).
“Most Christians are basically aware of the Creation story. “In the beginning, when God was creating the heavens and the earth …” Everything was created in six days and on the seventh day God rested.
“I want to point out three things about the story that you may have skimmed over (or forgotten)
“1. Everything God created was good. Every day of creation ends with “and God saw that it was good.” Creation (including us) are good at its beginning. God saw that creation was good.
“2. We are made in the image of God – to quote from the NRSV – “And God made humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male & female he created them.” This is a pretty good translation from the Hebrew. We are made in the image of God – male & female, black & white, all of us, are made in the image and likeness of God.
“3. God says a strange thing in talking about humanity, again from the NRSV – “and God said, “let us make humankind in our image.” Did you catch that – God is talking to God and talks about himself in the plural. Our image – not my image, that is a good translation from the Hebrew too – so, what do you think that says about God?
Here is another way to look at this sequence.