Our Creation Story

In the very first pages of the bible, in a book called Genesis, we see God first begin to tell his story. He says that he is a creator, God and we watch him begin to create the heavens, the earth, the sea, the stars, the animals and then…. After every thing is done….he makes a person. But this person he makes in a brand new way. He doesn’t just make this person out of nothing, or in a flash, no – we see God get on his hands and knees and form a person from the ground. He gets his hands dirty in the earth and soil and pats and smooths the first human being.

But the person is not alive. No, not until God does one more thing. Like a lifeguard finding a lifeless body on the beach, he bends over and breathes into the nostrils of the person – he fills the person with his ruok, his “spirit.” And it was only then the person came to life. As people we are made in the material, we live in the physical realm, but we also contain the breath of God “the spiritual” on the inside.

But then an interesting thing happens in our bibles, pages later after hundreds and hundreds of years, a young Rabbi named Jesus shares a Jewish holiday meal with those closest to him, and around a table of lamb and bitter herbs, he stops the meal and offers a new perspective.

“This bread that you are eating, is my flesh, this wine that you are drinking, is now my blood. Whereas this meal used to have an older meaning, now, I give it a new meaning.”

What just happened?

This Passover dinner became a new creation story.

Jesus offers that at one time the Spirit of God lived in each of us…now, as believers, Jesus himself inhabits our hearts and souls. Jesus says his body and blood are now inside of us.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5, if anyone says that they are in Christ, they are a new creation.

Whenever your church family celebrates the Lord’s Supper, I would suggest that you stop and give it the time and thought the moment deserves. So often the elements pass by and we simply go through the motions of worship. This remembrance is our creation story. Maybe you can not relate to naked natives in a garden of talking animals, maybe that story seems too far removed from your own. I offer as fellow followers of the teachings of Jesus, that on the eve of our savior’s death – he redefined our creation story.