Season 5 - Episode 2

To listen to an audio version of this post, visit www.covenantchurch.ca/podcasts/covenant-weekly.

Good morning, Covenant family. One of the things I mentioned on Sunday morning was that we simply didn’t have time to talk about all that we could have from Genesis 1:1-2:4. Over the coming Covenant Weekly season, when we don’t have time to talk about everything on Sunday morning, I’ll likely use this space to look at something we had to skip. I’m going to start that today by talking about being Part of the Whole in this Covenant Weekly for September 9, 2025.

In the Genesis 1 creation telling, there is a rhythm of days that unfolds as God forms and then, working with creation itself, fills the spaces that were, by divine Word, carved out of the chaos. And a few times, God takes the stance of a satisfied artist and looks at the work of the day and says, “It was good.”

We noted briefly on Sunday that on the sixth day of creation, God pauses part way through the day to look at the pre-human land creatures and observe their goodness. But at the end of the sixth day, God doesn’t observe humanity uniquely. After humanity has been formed in God’s image and given the assignment to rule over the created order, we read this, in Genesis 1:31:

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

In this creation story, humanity is only ever viewed as a part of the whole. Yes, we are unique within the creation - both in our being and in our responsibility. But we are not separate from it. Our reality is intimately tied to both the divine and the earthly. We are, to borrow from the image found in Genesis 2, “dirt people.”

The interdependence of humanity is easily forgotten and lost when we disengage from some of the consistent themes of scripture. And one might argue that most of the tragedies of scripture come from people losing sight of our interconnectedness to God, each other, the world, and even with the deepest parts of ourselves.

Cain thought he could kill Abel without wounding a part of himself. Ancient people thought they could exploit natural resources to build a tower to the heavens without harming themselves. The residents of Sodom felt free to abuse visitors to their city without harming themselves. Kings of Israel used their position to exploit people and resources for their own gain, thinking they weren’t harming themselves. And yet in each case, they were harming themselves.

The creation story reminds us that attempts to operate independently of each other, of God, or even as united humanity independent of creation is a failure to embody the good, the very good reality of creation.

Academic, author, and farmer, Wendell Berry, has a fascinating essay called “Two Economies.” The essay was born out a conversation he had with a friend in which they saw a “money economy” as a driving force behind the ruination of farmland. They mused about what economy could be comprehensive enough to care for the land and for those living on it. His friend eventually stated that only a Kingdom of God Economy could do so. Berry goes on to powerfully observes that humanity must see ourselves as a part of the Great Economy of all things if we are going to live in a way that is ultimately good for ourselves and the created order we are tasked with caring for.

He acknowledges that we need “little economies” in order to function well as people and societies. But also that those “little economies” must be subservient to the Great Economy, which takes seriously this that we are members of creation. He writes:

‘…The Great Economy is not a “side” that we can join nor are there such “sides” within it. Thus, it is not the “sum of its parts” but a membership of parts inextricably joined to each other, indebted to each other, receiving significance and worth from each other and from the whole. One is obliged to “consider the lilies of the field,” not because they are lilies or because they are exemplary, but because they are fellow members and because as fellow members, we and the lilies are in certain critical ways alike.

(For those who would like to read the entirety of Wendell Berry’s “Two Economies” essay, it is available as an attachment below.)

Genesis 1 places humanity as members within the whole. And Genesis 2 places humanity in relationship with each other, a huge emphasis of Paul’s writing in the New Testament when he describes us as “members” of one body. This is important enough to Jesus that his prayer right before going to the cross, as written in John 17:20, is “I pray also for those who will believe in me through [the disciples] message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.”

As the songwriter Ben Lee sang 20 years ago, “We’re All In This Together.” All of humanity. And all of creation, in relationship with God. We can try to deny it and reap the consequences of trying to escape it. Or we can embrace that this is a part of the created order and work together to help everything thrive in the way it was always meant to be.