Today in the Mission Yearbook - One farmer’s take on the Creation narrative

The director of Princeton Seminary’s Farminary Project says we ought to start by stopping

September 23, 2022

Photo by Greg Rakozy via Unsplash

The Rev. Dr. Nathan Stucky serves Princeton Theological Seminary as director of the Farminary Project, a place “where theological education is integrated with small-scale regenerative agriculture to train faith leaders who are conversant in the areas of ecology, sustainability and food justice.”

Small wonder, then, that NEXT Church would ask Stucky to preach on the Bible’s first Creation story during the gathering’s recent worship service.

Those worshiping online and in person at Montreat Conference Center weren’t the only exhausted people seeking rest, Stucky said. In his 2019 book “Wrestling with Rest: Inviting Youth to Discover the Gift of Sabbath,” Stucky talked about a “cruel irony” revealed by the 39 high school seniors he interviewed for his book: While confessing the desire to rest, they also confessed that rest created its own anxiety.

These “industrious, capable, achieving” high school students “of course longed for rest,” Stucky said. “But when you stop and rest, you find yourself thinking of all the things that aren’t getting done. What a heartbreaking reality, to long for rest and find only anxiety when you try to enter that rest.”

Those findings date back nearly 10 years, he said, before the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, before the war in Ukraine “and even more senseless gun violence.”

“Friends, our young people are exhausted. We are exhausted,” Stucky said. “Creation is exhausted. How did we get here?”

The Rev. Dr. Nathan Stucky

What, he asked, stands out in the Creation narrative? First, “over and over, God says Creation is good.” By Day 6, the “whole of Creation is very good,” Stucky said.

Smack in the middle “of this beautiful story is the command to humans to have dominion, to fill the Earth and subdue it,” Stucky said. Studying the Hebrew verb proved especially troubling for him. Possible definitions include “bring into bondage,” “violate” and “dominate.”

“I cannot explain this word away. I cannot subdue it, and I don’t think we are supposed to,” Stucky said. “Let it unsettle us. Let it mess with our assumption about what Scripture says about being in right relationship with God.”

Even though the created order is pronounced good, “there is no analogous affirmation to humans” in that first Creation story, Stucky said. “If there is goodness among humanity, it happens in relationship with the whole host of Creation.”

Humans, he said, “are supposed to reflect the relationship that God has with Creation,” which is attentive and empowering. “God’s relationship with Creation is fructifying. It’s ‘Be fruitful and multiply,’” Stucky said. “God creates a world where the whole Creation flourishes. We must ask ourselves, ‘What if God invites us to just this kind of relationship, where everyone flourishes and embraces co-Creation and shared power?”

The culmination in that first Creation account is, of course, the fact that God rests on the seventh day.

“Humanity’s starting point with God is God’s own rest,” Stucky said. “The text says, ‘Hey humans! Before anything else, stop.’ It’s the root of sabbath. Stop. Cease. Get to know God for a minute.”

Sabbath “has much to teach us about faith in an exhausted world,” Stucky said, adding there’s little hope for exhausted people — at least for those acting on their own.

“We talk about [sabbath] like it’s a chai latte we can grab from Starbucks,” he said. Rather, sabbath is “the glue that holds us together. … Sabbath in isolation cannot be our cure because isolation is our disease.”

We can “start with stopping,” Stucky said, by first abandoning the notion of the individual sabbath. That may be terrifying to some, but it’s good news, Stucky said. “Rest with God and Creation,” he suggested. “The hope resides in the community that can exist between us and God and the broader Creation.”

While we’re at it, we ought to abandon the idea of rest as a reward. Recall that during the seventh day, “humans had done no work in the story. The only work they have to reflect on is God’s and the work of the broader Creation. Stop fixating on our work and start focusing on God’s,” Stucky said to building applause. “Rest is sheer grace, a gift.”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Ingerlene Frick, Director of Guest Experience & Innovation Retreat Center, Stony Point Center, Presbyterian Mission Agency
Stephanie Fritz, Coordinator, Christian Formation, Theology, Formation & Evangelism, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Gracious and loving God, encircle all of your Creation with your grace, love and peace that passes all understanding. Open our hearts to the ways you are calling us to be the body of Christ beyond the walls of our churches. Amen.