Genesis 1:1-2

Sunday, February 18, 2026

The Rev. Megan Collins

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We all have different coping strategies for living in the world right now. Dave and I watch a lot of movies. Lately, we’ve been specifically watching apocalyptic ones, stories where something happens and the world as the characters know it is ending. This week we rewatched a movie from 2020 called Greenland and then we went to see the sequel that just came out in theaters. 

In the first movie, a massive comet is headed toward Earth. At first it looks harmless, but then comet fragments start hitting the cities. Suddenly everyone realizes that this is an extinction-level event. A few thousand people make it into this underground bunker hidden below the surface in Greenland. At the very end of the movie, months after the impact, the doors finally open. The world outside is silent, and barren, and desolate. It’s terrifying, but there’s also this eerie sense of hope. It isn’t just the end of the world. It’s the beginning of rebuilding it.

The Bible actually has a word for what that kind of world looks like, a world that exists, but where life is absent. That word shows up in just two places in the Old Testament, in the middle of a vision of the destruction of an entire nation, and, interestingly, also at the beginning of the creation.

Today we’ll start our multi-year Bible project, where we will read through the entire Bible together and unpack it, and learn from it, and reexamine it. We’ll be starting right at the beginning today, in Genesis 1:1. It’s this really ancient story, but I think what we’ll find is that it is just as much about our lives right now, as it is about the beginning of all things. If you look at the world right now, or your personal life, and things seem a desolate, lifeless, or a little terrifying, Genesis is a place where we can find hope.

Before we jump into Genesis 1, let me preface the next few weeks. There is a TON to talk about in the first three chapters of Genesis. We need to look at sabbath and sin and gender roles and the environment and science and evolution, to name a few. We may not get to cover it all so we will also send out some resources for you to look at. But even with not covering everything, it will take us a few weeks to get through these first three chapters. But after that, we’ll pick up the pace. (Maybe). 

Today we will spend the bulk of our time in just two verses, Genesis 1:1-2, with one more preface. Genesis is a book about God. It’s not a science book. It’s not a history book. It’s a theological book. So that’s how we’ll read it. You can find truth in Genesis and also know that the world is more than 6000 years old. 

This week I opened up my Bible to start preparing the message. I went to the familiar words of Genesis 1:1. I was ready for that beautiful, familiar, passage that feels so dramatic. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth . . .”

But when I read the passage this time, what it said was this:

“When God began to create the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1, NRSVUE) 

What? Who rewrote Genesis 1:1? What is this new fangled Bible doing changing the very first verse? When God began to create? What is that? 

That feeling that I was feeling, and that maybe now you’re feeling, when a very familiar text is different from what you have always known, we should get used to that. As we open up the Bible over the next few years, and really look under the hood, it’s going to be uncomfortable. There will be a lot of these “what on earth?” moments as we unpack stories and verses that some of us have known our whole lives. Those Sunday School stories are buried deep. 

That feeling was me, this week. This new fangled translation came from the NRSVUE, the English translation from the Greek and Hebrew we use here in church. I was tempted to just change over to the NASB or King James where it has the one I know. The translations that kept it as “In the beginning. . .” But I also knew there had to be a reason why the NRSVUE was different. So I, reluctantly, went digging.

It turns out there are some really interesting and important things happening in the Hebrew in this one little verse, and it’s actually one of the reasons I think this one verse has something critical for us to hear today. But to understand it, we have to deal with the original Hebrew first.

Ready?

The word for “in the beginning” in this verse in the Hebrew is b'reishit. The literal translation of this word is “in the beginning of”, not in the beginning, but in the beginning of. The other way we see this word used is when the Bible describes the beginning of the reign of a king which makes sense, in that context. It might even make a little here, in this context, as we think of it as the beginning of the reign of God. But it doesn’t say “in the beginning of the reign of God” here. The way it's written doesn’t make sense grammatically, in Genesis 1. In the beginning of, and then there is no noun attached to it. 

It seems unlikely that this is just a mistake in the original Hebrew. With the book of Genesis being hand copied, over and over again, someone would likely have tried to correct it. Helpful scribes could make small changes to fix an error, but they didn’t do that here. Over and over again they copied this strange grammatical choice “In the beginning of.” This is why we have this new translation in the NRSVUE. It is trying to make this make sense grammatically while also preserving the original Hebrew. So the NRSVUE translates it “When God began to create the heavens and the earth.” It’s a way to say “in the beginning of God creating” instead of “in the beginning.” 

Dr. Lisbeth S. Fried, a Ph.D. scholar in Hebrew and Judaic Studies from NYU, translates it with a slightly different nuance: “At the beginning of God’s creating” (Gen 1:1, Fried). 

Okay, why does all of this really matter?

Listen again to the difference between our more well known translation: 

In the beginning God created 

and

 At the beginning of God’s creating 

When God began to create

What’s the difference?

In our more well known translation, God created, in the past. The Genesis story then becomes a story about something that happened one time, a long time ago, at the beginning of time, but now it’s over. In the others, God began to create, is creating. This creation story then is just the beginning of God working. The creating isn’t necessarily over yet. That initial creation story might be, but God isn’t done. 

You can see how this isn’t just a biblical language issue. This isn’t just something for Bible nerds to argue over. This is a theological issue. This matters for us. If we read it in the original Hebrew, it makes the case that creation isn’t over. 

Now, with that in mind, let’s read the second verse: 

“the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” (Gen 1:2, NRSVUE)

“the earth had been empty and unpopulated, darkness had been upon the face of the deep, and a wind from God had been swooping over the face of the waters.” (Gen 1:2, Fried) 

“And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.” (Gen 1:2, NASB)

In all of these versions, we have this dark, desolate emptiness. The spirit of God is moving over this void, preparing, planning, waiting.The one big thing missing is life. But before God addresses that, before God speaks anything into being, before God says let there be light and animals and people,

God moves toward what is empty. 

God hovers over what is lifeless.

God settles over those spaces that are waiting.

Those empty lifeless waiting places that God hovers over? They don’t just show up in Genesis. Again, let’s consider a little Hebrew. The Hebrew word Genesis uses for emptiness, or void, isn’t just in the pre - creation story. It comes up again in the Bible, just one other time. When the Bible authors use a specific word like this, there’s a reason. The second time we see this empty desolate void of a world is in Jeremiah 4:23. Jeremiah is a prophet in the Old Testament. While he is preaching, his world is struggling. The economy is falling apart. The political leadership is fully corrupt. Violence is increasing all around him. They are facing what seems to be the collapse of a nation. Sound familiar? 

Jeremiah sees what is coming. He knows where all of this could lead, and he reaches for the strongest image he knows. He says:

“I looked at the earth, and behold, it was a formless and desolate emptiness;” (Jer 4:23, NASB)

The image he pulls on for where his world is headed is the emptiness of creation before God speaks. He seems to be asking:

Could we permanently undo what God has done? Can God bring life back after this? 

Maybe you’ve asked this too. 

What if things get so broken there’s no coming back from it?

What if the damage in our world goes too far?What if we cross a line we can’t uncross?

Or, a little closer to home, 

What if my relationship is too damaged to recover? 

What if my faith has gone so dormant it’s past the point of return?

What if my grief or my burnout or my anger has flattened everything good that used to live here?

We aren’t the first people to look around and wonder if things are just doomed. Jeremiah certainly did. 

But if we read Genesis 1:1 again, God didn’t create once. God is still creating.

The prophets saw the destruction of their world. But they also saw something else was coming. Destruction caused emptiness and desolation. Then God hovers again. 

In John 1, in the New Testament, it says:

“1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.” (John 1:1-4, NRSVUE)

John begins his gospel with words that echo from Genesis: “In the beginning…” Again, there is no accident here in connecting the gospel to Genesis. This Word John talks about, the word that was with God in the beginning, the word that was the creative power of God, is Jesus. This means Jesus was there, in the beginning, with God. There’s a lot of trinitarian theology to unpack here, but for our purposes today, we see the cycle again:

God creates. Things fall apart. God hovers and creates again. 

If we believe what John wrote, that was the plan right from the beginning. It seems God knew creation would never be a one-time event. 

Life is fragile. Things fall apart. We need help. 

And over and over again, God hovers here. 

God hovers over what is lifeless.

God settles over the spaces that are waiting.

God creates, and then creates again. 

God isn’t done yet. No matter how bad things might seem, God isn’t done with this world.

Later in Genesis 1, we’ll hear that we, you and I, we are made in the image of God, which means there’s this imprint of God on each of us.  I know things are bad out there right now. I feel it too. I know most of us have no idea how to fix it. But I have to believe that God is hovering, and that we can’t give up. 

This week we remember the ministry of Martin Luther King Jr. It’s impossible to summarize everything he taught and accomplished. But this week, one particular quote stood out to me. In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote this, and he wrote it from a jail cell:

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. . .”

I know we all feel convicted by that one. Then he wrote this:

“Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of those willing to be co-workers with God.”

Co-workers with God. Or may we even be so bold as to call it co-creators with God, in some small human way. That’s who we are called to be in this time when things seem desolate. That’s what we do, while we wait for the next thing God will create. We co-work with God, who is absolutely not done yet. 

God’s not done creating in this world. 

And God’s also not done creating in you. 

2 Corinthians is a letter written to the early church in the New Testament. In chapter 5 verse 17 it says:

“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being!” (2 Corinthians 5:17, NRSVUE)

God is hovering over you, over your life. The spirit of God hovers over the places that seem desolate or hopeless. The place that feels broken or exhausted. God’s there. If you are feeling an emptiness, or a void, right now, maybe this is the moment when God is hovering waiting, preparing.

God’s not done. 

 That’s where we’ll stop, today, with these first two verses in Genesis, chapter 1, in our great big Bible read through. 

2 verses down.

31,100 to go.