Sunday’s Readings: Creation in Christ

Isaiah 55.12-end; Psalm 96; Colossians 1.15-20; John 1.1-14 or Matthew 8.23-27

LATIN was my favourite school subject. Then, at university, I learned Greek. But I never taught the languages to my children, apart from a couple of expressions. “Sinister dexter” (“Left, right”), when climbing a steep hill, was a joke borrowed from the film Carry On Cleo. “Brekekekex, koax, koax” (supposedly like croaking frogs) was from the fifth-century-BC play Frogs, by Aristophanes, since the rhythm made it a fun chant. Then there was a vacation game: driving lots of of miles from landlocked Cambridgeshire, we had a contest every day to be first to glimpse the ocean, with the Greek phrase, “Thalatta! thalatta!” (“The sea! the ocean!”).

That family game (which we still play on holidays, and share with recent relations) involves mind because on this Sunday we now rejoice creation. We give thanks that God has made the world, and reflect on our responsibility, as a part of that creation, to be good stewards of what he entrusts to us.

According to Genesis 1.2, though, the primordial waters are usually not a part of the creation of this world. They pre-exist it. Genesis 1.6 describes how the waters were divided, and 1.9 describes how they were gathered to form “seas”. They have at all times been under God’s supervision, as his Spirit “flutters” upon them. But they’ve never not existed, at the least in line with the creator of Genesis.

The sea, though, is a component of God’s divine design for his creation, and shares in his designation of that creation as “excellent” (Genesis 1.31). Which brings me back to that Greek cry, “Thalatta! thalatta!” For it has a gladsome sound for greater reasons than a little bit of family fun. In 401 BC, the Greek general Xenophon found himself and his army trapped and outnumbered in hostile Persian territory, eager to get home. Like Odysseus before them, they faced obstacles and armies. Like him, they were eager to secure their nostos, their “homecoming”. Fighting through toil, tribulation, and tumult of war, they suddenly saw before them . . . the ocean! The sea meant escape, safety, the promise of a homecoming. Hence that heartfelt cry.

The sea plays a positive part in a lot of our memories. To walk beside it’s to concentrate on the wonder and great thing about creation, but in addition its almost infinite power, to interrupt, to form, to renew. The “face of the waters” is the surface on which our island history is inscribed — a few of it for higher, but not all. After all, seafaring is pursued for its many advantages (food, resources, trade, security), but there isn’t a doubt that it’s in some ways a perversion of nature. We are usually not formed for traversing the ocean, either soaring over it just like the albatross or rafting upon it just like the puffin. And deep in our religious DNA lies the instinct to fear the ocean for its utter indifference to human frailty — because the Greeks did, too; for they’d their very own version of the catastrophic flood that we call by Noah’s name.

If I knew nothing concerning the New Testament, but happened to be a reliable reader of ancient Greek, and got here upon Matthew 7.24, here is how I’d translate the beginning of the verse: “And look! A terrific earthquake arose in the ocean.” No wonder that generations of translators have tried to say something else. It will need to have looked like nonsense to them; for the way can there be an earthquake in the ocean? So the issue is disguised with talk of “storms” or “windstorms”. Yet, either there’s an earthquake, seismos, which happens in the ocean, or there’s some form of shaking or commotion (other possible translations of seismos) in the ocean. Winds are usually not mentioned until vv.26-27.

We recognise the Greek word for earthquake, because we use the word “seismic” in atypical speech. Back in 2004, the Indian Ocean catastrophe killed nearly 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 people. It introduced the word “tsunami” into familiar speech, helping us to know how earthquakes and floods go together, and the way a seismic disturbance on the ocean floor can result in the disastrous phenomena that we used to call “tidal waves”. In creation, waters have at all times existed. But God formed the seas for a season and a time: when Christ comes — ending time, ending, too, the stormy shocks of life — then the ocean, whether friend or foe, will probably be no more (Revelation 21.1).