In the beginning
Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan, University Chaplain
Readings: Genesis 1:1-5, 24-27; Colossians 1:15-20
You may just have arrived in St Andrews. Your environment may have only stretched as far as the four walls, narrow bed and empty desk of your room; a forest of arms around you in Welcome to the Bubble; and the long walk from breakfast to chapel this morning. But there is more to nature in St Andrews than the dangerously slippery leaves on the South Street pavements. There’s the West Sands, miles of beach and breakers on the shore. There’s the ancient golf links, home to skylarks and gorse, bounding hares and the occasional eagle. There’s the Lade Braes, a charming woodland path where you mark the seasons changing from snowdrops to daffodils, bluebells to ducklings on the mill-pond. And there’s the East Sands, home to the May Dip – but we’re getting ahead of ourselves, it’s only September. Whatever else is true of St Andrews, you cannot forget we are part of creation.
And this time of year is called by some churches the Season of Creation, with Bible readings and music to help us reflect on nature. Our Principal read some of the Bible’s most famous words, from an account of creation in Genesis. The chapter speaks of God creating light, sky, earth, plants and trees, the sun, moon and stars, creatures of sea, air and earth, including human beings. The verses include beautiful poetry:
1In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
But, you may be thinking, such words have no place in a University. Students will be doing modules such as BL1101 Biology 1 covering cell diversity and the origins of life, cellular structures and fundamental processes. Or AS1001 Astronomy and Astrophysics 1, which explores the structure and evolution of the Sun and other stars… and the large-scale structure and ultimate fate of the expanding Universe.
And yes, the Bible is not science, but maybe we can live with that. Genesis tells a story with mesmerising detail, but at its heart, it says simply that without God nothing could have come to be, that in the beginning, there was God. For me, I share that conviction. For me it is possible, indeed, it’s true to believe in God as creator in that sense, as the source and giver of life, while also believing that the science we research and learn here is true and of incredible importance. Believing in God as creator does not imply the bone-headed folly of creationism.
Today of course marks another beginning. Of the academic year, Orientation Week, Freshers Week, of, for the first time in your life, trying to keep alive the plants you ambitiously bought yesterday, of wearing a red gown in the Red Gown, of sharing living-space with random strangers who unaccountably have never watched Heated Rivalry; of somehow making yourself adoptable by the right kind of third-years (or if you a third-year, finding amenable freshers for your Raisin shenanigans); beginning to delve enthralled into the depths of human knowledge and imagination.
And a new beginning too for many parents and other supporters here: that journey back home in a strangely quiet car; getting used to a house where no-one has breakfast around 11.30; the odd absence of mysterious laughter punctuating phone calls; the difficulty of letting go when you know that there is no alternative to letting go; the joy that your offspring has actually called. Voluntarily.
But, as the wonderful poet, novelist and Professor of English here, the late John Burnside put it in a novel called The Devil’s Footprints: Everything begins before we see it beginning. New students here are hardly a brand new creation, emerging fully formed at 18 and three-quarters: they have been loved into being, through childhood, schooling, travel, and, in some cases, through a whole career before giving University a go later in life.
Yet in some ways, University is always a new beginning. Who will I be? What will I wear to Clan Warfare? How will I find the way to my first Philosophy lecture? What will I talk about over breakfast in John Burnet? How will I make friends? How should I spend time on my own? Who should I say my favourite Doctor is at the Dr Who Society stall at Freshers Fayre? (It’s Tom Baker, obviously.) We create ourselves, in some ways, even if we have wisely left off curating ourselves on Instagram.
Could I suggest that part of that new beginning, that discovery of who we are is about what we are committed to? And here again, the scriptures of this Season of Creation can help us. The choir sang Psalm 148, a kind of reprise of Genesis, including these verses:
Let them praise the Name of the Lord: for he spake the word, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created.
He hath made them fast for ever and ever: he hath given them a law which shall not be broken.
These verses are about our human role as creatures – praising God who has made this extraordinary universe, and sustained this beautiful, endlessly fascinating planet through time, and given the world his law. Law – God’s good law – is for creation’s good: guidance to help the world flourish. In other words, part of our role as human creatures is to discern what makes for goodness in our world, our community, our family and among our friends, and to do our part to make it come about. In short, our role is to let love emerge.
There are a thousand ways to do that in a University: giving time to the Charity Campaign; volunteering with Nightline, the listening service for students by students; doing tech for a Mermaids show; playing that crucial part in the fifth team for your beloved sport; jamming with Jazzworks; becoming an usher right here in the chapel. But perhaps more than anything, in the season of creation, we might consider our role as part of nature.
Not that we could escape it. As we spent the past few weeks preparing for the beginning of the academic year, every screen was filled with the power of nature – the fires engulfing the Gironde in France, Aragon in Spain, Salamina in Greece and the Cairngorms in, yes, Scotland. And then the floods sweeping away whole villages in Nepal and Tibet as a Himalayan glacier gave way. As we begin another year in the University, climate change continues on its unmerry way, heating the oceans, disrupting our weather, transforming habitats. It’s not clear that the people directing policy in many governments and companies have creation’s good at heart. Maybe it’s time for a new beginning.
Let me conclude with one example of a student who discovered who he was in the midst of nature, and showed unforgettable commitment to his fellow creatures
In early January in 1800, a student called John Honey was worshipping in this chapel one morning when word came to the congregation that a small ship, the Janet, from Macduff in the north of Scotland, had run aground near the East Sands. Honey joined with others at the scene, and led the rescue. He swam to the stricken vessel, and secured ropes for the Master and four further men to reach safety. But they were too weak to use the ropes, and so Honey swam over and over to the Janet and brought the men back one by one. On his final trip, he was struck heavily on the chest by the ship’s mast, but still made it back to shore, and all the crew were saved. Honey received the Freedom of the City of St Andrews; the citation states:
This is the only gift that this corporation can bestow on you, for your wonderful and unexampled exertions in rescuing from the jaws of death the master and four seamen of the sloop the Janet of Macduff, wrecked in these sands of St Andrews, and who, but for your humane and unparalleled exertions, at the imminent hazard of your own life, must inevitably have perished.
Honey became a parish minister in Perthshire, but died in his mid-thirties, possibly of complications from the rescue.
He is remembered throughout the University. There is a fine stained glass window of the rescue in the organ loft in the Chapel. Students of Computer Science will spend much of their time here in the John Honey building. The Students Association make the John Honey Award to a student who shows outstanding service to the student community. But most famously perhaps, students make the Pier Walk weekly, after worship, following the path Honey took to the harbour, and then walk out into the sea along the pier before returning safely to town. All are welcome to make that walk today after the service, perhaps a touch more slowly than John Honey and always following the marshals’ guidance, and indeed on any Sunday after chapel.
Everything begins before we see it beginning. He himself is before all things, says Paul to the Colossians. There was love in God from eternity which spilled over into the beginning of the universe, when God created the heavens and the earth, said, “Let there be light,” and all life emerged including humankind in his image. And every year, there is a new beginning in this town, when thousands of students return to people these streets and join the community of creation already here, ready, waiting and now delighted you have joined us again. However you are committed to your fellow-creatures, I wish you the blessing of God, Creator, Redeemer and Companion of our world.
END