"The last thing you want to do is keep your head above water.”

Mary's boy is before all things.

The lectionary epistle reading for this Sunday is Colossians 1:15-28.

Below is an old sermon on the passage. Here is audio of it.

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Immediately upon opening the Bible, a question confronts the reader.

Should the first verse of the first book of the Bible read, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” with “God created…” as a main clause? Or should the verse instead read, “In the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth,” with “God created…” in a temporal clause. The former posits God as the sheer beginning of everything and makes time itself one of the creatures of God’s making. The latter, looking to the second verse of Genesis, suggests that the chaos over which the Lord’s Spirt broods, bringing forth light and life, was somehow antecedent to God’s creative act.

The King James and the Revised Standard Versions both render the verse in the former translation, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

Modern translations like the New Revised Standard Version elect the latter, “In the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth.” The Hebrew does not settle the disagreement since the Hebrew word order can make either translation intelligible. Consultation of the original language cannot answer the question: Is God the sole and sheer beginning of everything, or is there something prior, alongside God, when God creates?

The imponderables do not end with the Bible’s first verse.

According to scripture's first creation story, God creates by speech-act. Specifically, God creates by commanding, "And God said, “Let there be light;” and there was light.” Hence, the existence of all reality is the result of obedience to a command. The simplicity of the sentence structure masks the underlying mystery. Prior to the creation of any other verbal creatures, to whom does God speak when God speaks his first command? Who does God command to make light and land? Who listens and obeys him?

The questions do not stop there in the creation story.