The briefest, initial assertion of the Bible — of our faith, really — comes in the first 4 words of the Bible, the start of today’s reading: “In the beginning, God.”
The assertion is that, from the very beginning, from before the beginning of all we know and experience, there exists God. That’s the primary, foundational proclamation of the Bible. The eternal God. The one who always was, and still is, and evermore will be.
One of my favorite local theologians, Ed Kuny, once wrote, “The opening sentence of the Bible tells us that there is a God…a God who works in unimaginably creative ways. … Without this beginning statement, everything following is commentary.” Wise words. They echo one of my favorite famous theologians, Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann who wrote, “This [Genesis 1:1] is the presupposition for everything that follows in the Bible. It is the deepest premise from which good news is possible. God and his creation are bound together by the powerful, gracious movement of God towards that creation.”
Both are, of course, right. The phrase “In the beginning, God” sets God up to be the subject of the verbs that follow. God is the actor, the initiator — not only of creation itself but of the relationship that forms between creation and creator. As a mentor of mine once put it simply, “God moves first.” And that matters because it means that we humans don’t initiate or cause the relationship between us and God. It’s not as if we existed and then were so desperately in need that God had to come and help us. Or we screwed things up so much that God came to punish us. Instead, the whole idea for the relationship was God’s. God initiated it. God intended it. From the very beginning. God acted to create this whole world, to create us.
And present at that very beginning, was Jesus, as John 1 reminds us, in phrases and images that echo Genesis 1:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into beingin him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” – John 1:1-5
In the beginning: the Word.
In the beginning: light and life.
In the beginning: God.