Maker of heaven and earth
Summer Sermon Series 2/7: Maker of heaven and earth
Sermon Preached by Rev’d Jules Barnes
Sunday 3 August 2025
‘And heaven and earth will be one!’ John 1: 1-4 Rev 20:11-21:6a
Almighty God, Creator. This is the section of the Nicene Creed we continue with today: ‘I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.’
Exactly these words, are the ones we sing each week in the Merbecke setting of the Creed, but the eagle-eyed amongst you will already have discerned that the Common Worship version – which we will say this morning – differs slightly; substituting ‘seen and unseen’ for the earlier ‘visible and invisible’.
Either way, we contend here with nothing less than the entire cosmos. As we established last week: ONE God; and now, maker of ALL things.
I am proposing to make three inroads into the vastness:
First, a framing of God’s creative action in Scripture.
Second, a look back to the 4th C context in which the credal statement on God as creator was formed.
And lastly, a consideration of some of what follows from our ‘being made in the image of God.’
Genesis begins the Bible with the creation story, and it concludes with the new creation of Revelation. The canon is literally ‘book-ended’ by God’s creative action. And cradled somewhere in between is the Prologue of John, which was our Gospel text today.
Ch 1 of Genesis is probably what first springs to mind. The familiar unfolding of how God created the heavens and the earth, day by day; separating out the formless void, making night and day, dry land and the waters; and systematically populating them with lights, vegetation, and living creatures of every kind. Culminating on the sixth day with the creation of humankind. A perfect Eden.
Now, let’s complement that account of creation and our creator by taking a different perspective from John. Top-down, rather than bottom up – in keeping with the Gospel’s trademark transcendent and eternal vantage point:
‘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 what has come into being through him was life, and the life was the light of all people.’
Recognizable elements of the creation – darkness, light, life, and the creator – but manifested now in The Word: before and after creation, and as integral to it. For The Word: is with God, is God, and has been since the beginning’. And: ‘all things came into being through him’.
As it continues John’s prologue makes it clear that the work of redemption is also intertwined with the that of Creation. God does not abandon his first creation after The Fall, but enters creation in order to restore it.
Affirming our faith in God as Creator, writes Alister McGrath ‘we do not mean that God created the universe many years ago and then left it unattended.’ ‘Rather, God exercises continual care over his creation… and now sustains all things through his Word.’
The NT picks up from the Old, the theme that God intends, in the end, to put the creation to rights: For ‘Earth and heaven, all things visible and invisible are made to overlap with one another, not fitfully, mysteriously and partially as they do at the moment, but completely, gloriously and utterly.’ (Tom Wright)
That’s the promise that resonates through the Bible, from the first ‘Big Bang’ of Genesis, through the second BB of Easter, to the vision of the new creation in Revelation.
A quick trip back to the 4th C now; the time when the Nicene Councils were agreeing the text of the Creed. Guided in their deliberations by Scripture but additional considerations too:
For example, the competing beliefs of the contemporary Gnostic and Manichaean movements, whose followers rejected the absolute of ‘ONE God’, as maker of ‘ALL things. For them there was a fundamental division between the material world and the spiritual realms. So, the credal description of God as maker of ‘heaven and earth’ along with the reinforcement of ‘all things visible and invisible’ may in part, have been to counter these influences.
Another bold cry, was of creation ‘ex nihilo’, that is literally, out of nothing (although these words are not in the Creed). ‘As the potter fashions the clay, yes, but unlike us, God did not use any pre-existing construction materials. The Almighty, her/himself, is the source of every thing; uniquely, eternally.
Now, the question we haven’t yet asked ourselves, is why God created in the first place. For God, says Rowan Williams ‘is, in simple terms, sublimely and eternally happy to be God.’
‘God doesn’t create out of need, loneliness or a desire for fulfillment. This means that God chooses to create only out of his own goodness in order to share his goodness with others.’ (So, Ortiz and Keating in their book on the Creed). God’s creative action is motivated by what he is – love – and he acts, to show and share that with us. (Could anything be more distant from the nominally generative process of AI?)
‘The creation sets up a relationship between God and what is not God’ says Thomas Aquinas, enabling us now to ‘see’ everything – visible and invisible – in relation to the maker. The highest heavens, the crawling things upon earth; the angels and spiritual realms above us; our physical tactile skin, the most hidden thoughts of our hearts. Everything, by its nature made good, as per the repeated refrain in Genesis.
Including us, humankind ‘made in the image of God.’ Whereas the other creatures are made according to their kind, we alone, are created in the image and likeness of God.
Which surrounds us form the get go with a sense of fatherly goodness: created by our heavenly father and with a dynamic orientation towards Him: a ‘god Torque’, Ortiz and Keating call it.
God loves and cares for us and wants us to have as much of his being and life and joy as possible. And has sent us his Son, saviour and redeemer, so that we can be fulfilled, in relationship with Him: as Augustine famously wrote ‘our heart is restless until it comes to rest in you.’
And ‘made in his image’, God did not hold back in giving us his freedom. Which means we can make good choices, near sublime things, and join the present work of the new creation. But equally, that we can make decisions which can be stupid, hostile or irresponsible to God and the flourishing and life of our one community of creation.
Ruth Valerio, environmental theologian, suggests that in Genesis we have perhaps been given a job description too. Her reading of the words runs like this: ‘Let us make human beings in our own image and likeness so that they may look after the rest of creation.’ She challenges us to show reverence and humility as we relate to all things in God’s created order and to act on the fifth Anglican mark of mission: ‘To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth’.
I believe in One God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
As we utter these words in our creed, they are not just about the beginning of the universe. They are too about our confidence in God who can once again make us one with ourselves and the world: about living now, as ‘those made in his image’ and called to this vision of the future.
‘Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. (no chance of return to primeval chaos)
‘See, I am making all things new’ says the one who sits on the throne in Revelation. Creation – redemption – the new creation: Eden restored; a radical re-newing of the cosmos, where ‘the home of God is [once again] among mortals.’ Amen
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Simply Christian, Tom Wright. SPCK 2006
Tokens of Trust, Rowan Williams. Canterbury Press 2007
The Nicene Creed, Jared Ortiz and Daniel A. Keating. Baker Academic 2024
Principles of Christian Theology, John MacQuarrie SCM Press 2003
I Believe, Alister McGrath IVP Books 1997
Saying Yes to Life, Ruth Valerio SPCK 2020 What is heresy today? Rowan Williams. Archbishop’s Lecture given at the International Centre, Telford, 2010.