June 15, 2014 | Trinity Sunday

Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Psalm 8
or Canticle 2 or 13
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20

One of our founding members, Gary Lagerloef (rocket scientist), has written an amazing version of the Genesis story.

Here it is alongside the NRSV:

Genesis 1:1 - 2:4

1In the beginning when God created the heavens and the

earth, 2the earth was a formless void and darkness

covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God

swept over the face of the waters.

A Contemporary Genesis

Before it all began

There was nothing.

No space, no time, no matter, nor energy.

Nothing.

Except perhaps God.

God of nothing, and God of everything.

God who is infinite possibility.

And God said “Let’s see what the possibilities

are”.

3Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

4And God saw that the light was good; and God

separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the

light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there

was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Then there was light.

All light and all energy, infinitely dense and

infinitely hot.

All that was needed to make a universe

was encoded within the first second.

A burst of inflation.

Atoms formed.

Hydrogen and helium; 3:1.

All made in a few hundred seconds.

And God said “The possibilities look good!”

The opaque fireball lasted 300,000 years;

Cooling, expanding.

Until light decoupled from matter.

All became dark, transparent.

Thus darkness was separated from the light.

And the cosmic radiation took flight.

And God said “Now that’s done.”

6And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the

waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”

7So God made the dome and separated the waters that

were under the dome from the waters that were above

the dome. And it was so. 8God called the dome Sky. And

there was evening and there was morning, the second

day.

Gravity reached out her tentative fingers.

Random pockets of denser stuff,

With time, fell into clumps and strands

Of billions of proto-galaxies.

The first stars formed,

And light shown again in the heavens,

Like birthday candles, arrayed

To celebrate a billion years of cosmic

evolution.

And God said “It’s looking better all the

time!”

Ancestral stars of hydrogen and helium,

Solitary blast furnaces for our basic

ingredients,

Makers of heavy elements,

Raw material for future projects.

After billions of years of heavy industry,

Died and gave their bounty in supernova

splendor,

Spreading the seed of newly created matter,

Carbon, Oxygen, Iron, and more - into

stardust.

And God said, “Nice work!”

With time, gravity cast her net again,

Gathering dust into new star systems,

With residue orbiting on the peripheries,

Hard rocks and gas balls.

Thus our solar system came to be.

By 4.5 billion years ago,

And 10 billion since work began,

The third planet from our sun had taken

shape,

And God said “This one has possibilities.”

9And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered

together into one place, and let the dry land appear.”

And it was so. 10God called the dry land Earth, and the

waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And

God saw that it was good.

A billion years passed while the planet

churned and cooled,

Harnessed an atmosphere from stellar gas.

Multitudes of icy comets fell,

while steam erupted from within;

All turning to rain to fill low-lying places

with seas.

Thus the land was separated from the

waters,

Where carbon combined with many

elements;

A primordial soup.

And God said “Time to liven things up

here.”

11Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation:

plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on

earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so.

Complex interacting compounds,

Self organizing into catalytic webs,

Pre-biotic structures, self contained,

Drawing energy from the surroundings.

By 3.5 billion years ago,

The first bacterial cells evolved,

Soon learned to photosynthesize,

And filled the air with oxygen.

Fractured crustal plates in ponderous motion

Remade the surface with mountains

Trenches, lava flows and volcanos.

1.5 billion years ago,

The surface teemed with microbial life,

And God said, “Let’s liven it up still more.”

So microbial life advanced,

Learned locomotion, sexual reproduction

And more complex cells began to link up.

By 700 million years ago, early sea animals

appeared

In an explosion of diversity; the Cambrian

age.

Skeletons and shells left the first telling

imprints

On ancient sea bottoms.

14And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the

sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be

for signs and for seasons and for days and years, 15and

let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light

upon the earth.” And it was so. 16God made the two great

lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser

light to rule the night—and the stars. 17God set them in

the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, 18to rule

over the day and over the night, and to separate the light

from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19And

there was evening and there was morning, the fourth

day.

20And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of

living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across

the dome of the sky.” 21So God created the great sea

monsters and every living creature that moves, of every

kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged

bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. 22God

blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the

waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”

23And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth

day.

24And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures

of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals

of the earth of every kind.” And it was so. 25God made

the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle

of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the

ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

The rest is history.

A torrent of life came and went;

Fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals,

insects

And multitudes of other invertebrates and

plants.

26Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image,

according to our likeness; and let them have dominion

over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and

over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth,

and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the

earth.” 27So God created humankind in his image, in the

image of God he created them; male and female he

created them. 28God blessed them, and God said to them,

“Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it;

and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the

birds of the air and over every living thing that moves

upon the earth.”

Then from amongst all these, very recently,

The rise of homo sapiens.

And God said, “There is much work yet to

do.”

29God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding

seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree

with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30And

to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air,

and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything

that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant

for food.” And it was so.

31God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it

was very good. And there was evening and there was

morning, the sixth day.

1Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all

their multitude. 2And on the seventh day God finished the

work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day

from all the work that he had done. 3So God blessed the

seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested

from all the work that he had done in creation.

4These are the generations of the heavens and the earth

when they were created. In the day that the Lord God

made the earth and the heavens,

As for music:

These Are the Days by Van Morrison

You Call That Church Music?

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