Sunday Worship 6 April | Let The Waters and Skies Teem With Life

Genesis 1:20-23

And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

Job 12:7-9

But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?

During Lent, we have been reflecting on the six days of creation, working our way through the first chapter of Genesis, alongside some other readings and Ruth Valerio’s book ‘Saying Yes to Life’. I said at the very beginning that I don’t read the biblical account of creation literally, because I don’t believe it was ever intended to be read as a scientific textbook, but rather as a poetic affirmation of God’s creative energy, and that is how I am approaching it throughout this series. Creation came into being because God made space for it. “Let there be light...let the waters be separated...let the land produce vegetation...let there be lights in the sky...let the waters and skies teem with life...let the land produce living creatures...”. God creates room and possibility and life flourishes. And as we heard two weeks ago, all of this happens through the overflowing of the love that is within God, so that it is within the love of God that all things live and move and have their being.

This morning we have reached the fifth day of creation, which gives us the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky, the first living creatures. God says “let the water teem [and] let birds fly”, and then God creates “every living thing with which the water teems [and] every winged bird”, all “according to [their] kind”. On some days we are simply told that God spoke “and it was so”, but here as with the vault of the heavens and the lights in the sky, we see God getting deeply stuck into the act of creation, and it is clear that God is delighted with the outcome. This account does not deny what we now know of evolution, but it does tell us that the mechanics of life are not the only thing worth knowing about it. We also need to understand that there is divine purpose and imagination behind all of it, and that it has always been good. 

An interesting note on the language here, because the Hebrew word ‘nephesh’, which is translated as “living creatures” in verse twenty, is also used in chapter two, where we are told “the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature”. The same word is also translated as soul in several other places in scripture, including Deuteronomy 6:5, which exhorts us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength”.  If 'nephesh' is synonymous with living creature and also with soul, then Ruth Valerio suggests “we must be careful not to ascribe something like a soul to humans but not to other creatures”. There are real and meaningful differences between humans and other creatures, but that should not lessen our respect for them.

That God respects living creatures is clear from the way they appear throughout scripture. Birds are plentiful, from the doves sent by Noah to find land and hovering over Jesus at his baptism, to the ravens that bring food to Elijah, to Isaiah’s promise that those who have faith will soar like eagles, to Jesus’ assurance that God cares about the sparrows, to the cockerel that marks Peter’s betrayal. Fish appear too, from the Leviathan we hear rumour of in Job, to Jonah’s big fish, to the miraculous catch and the miraculous feeding in the gospels. I won’t dig into those stories now, but there are many things we can learn from the natural world, if we can humble ourselves to let the birds and the fish be our teachers.

Coming back to the fifth day of creation, there is a wonderful sense of abundance in these verses. The water is already teeming to begin with, and we are left with the impression that the skies are hardly less busy, and then God tells the fish and the birds to “be fruitful and increase”. And it’s not just the number that’s remarkable. That the creatures are made “according to [their] kind” reminds us that there are many different kinds - we estimate around 11,000 species of birds and as many as 30,000 species of fish - and that this is not an accident of biology or a quirk of nature, but part of the divine plan. By the end of the fifth day, God has created a riot of colour and noise and variety, and set in motion processes to increase that abundance.

This is why we should be so troubled by declining populations. Looking to the seas, a report in 2019 found that 33% of fish stocks were being harvested at unsustainable levels, and a third of shark and ray species are now endangered because of hunting. The amount of plastic being dumped in our oceans is quite literally choking marine populations, and there are fears that coral reefs could disappear completely within this century. Looking to the skies, 14% of bird species are believed to be at risk of extinction. In this country, that is largely due to habitat loss driven by urban development and changes in agricultural practice. That last point surprised me, but hedgerows are pulled up and wetlands are drained in order to create larger fields in the name of efficiency, and the move from mixed to more specialised farming means less diverse ecosystems. The use of pesticides also has a dramatic impact, with 44% more birds found on organic farms. 

There are things we can do though. We can buy fish that has been caught responsibly and limit the amount of plastic we are putting into circulation. We can champion the safeguarding of green spaces and buy organic where our budgets allow. It may take a bit of effort and a bit of research, but it is our duty as stewards of this good earth, which includes the seas and the skies. And with growing awareness of the ecological crisis we have been creating for ourselves, there are lots of resources out there to tap into. If you want to use less plastic, type something like “plastic free alternatives” into your search engine of choice, and you will get loads of suggestions. And for what it’s worth, I recommend using the search engine Ecosia, because the company behind it is a not-for-profit which uses its revenue to plant trees and fund other climate impact projects.

The statistics I have shared can be scary, and it can feel like reversing the damage is an impossible job, but Ruth Valerio shares a story which was told to her by Wangari Maathai, whose Green Belt Movement has planted over 45 million trees across Kenya, which was told to her by a Japanese professor: The story starts with an enormous fire, which breaks out and rages through the forest. All the animals flee to the forest edge to watch. All, that is, except a tiny hummingbird. 'I will do something about this fire’, says the tiny bird. So it flies to the nearest stream and dives beneath the surface. Rising into the air, it carries a bead of water in its beak that it releases over the flames. The fire is huge, but over and over the hummingbird flies to the stream, returns with a droplet in its beak, and lets it fall onto the flames. Each time, the bird believes that this one drop might make the difference. The other animals - some with large trunks and large mouths like the elephant, giraffe, lion and leopard - laugh at the diminutive creature. 'What do you think you're doing?' they jeer. 'You're only a hummingbird. You can see how big the forest fire is. Do you think you're going to do any good at all?'. Without wasting any time and tired of their discouraging words and inaction, the hummingbird turns to the other animals as it prepares to fly back to the river, and says, 'Well I'm doing the best I can!' All we are asked to do is the best we can, and if we can encourage some of those elephants and lions with their large trunks and large mouths, the work will become even easier.

I'll draw to a close now, with the prayer that Ruth Valerio uses at the end of her chapter on the fifth day, written by a young person from Vanuatu: O Jesus, be the canoe that holds me in the sea of life, be the steer that keeps me straight, be the outrigger that supports me in time of great temptation. Let your Spirit be my sail that carries me through each day, as I journey steadfastly on the long voyage of life. Amen.