Twenty years ago this fall, I quit college. 

I hadn’t meant to. I’d returned to the University of West Georgia, having followed a girl down there. My junior year started pleasantly enough, but then things took a turn. My job was falling apart and it clouded my judgment. My relationship with the girl wasn’t great and that was clouding my judgment, too. And I lacked resiliency. 

So, several weeks into the semester, I quit. I withdrew from college, packed up my stuff, and moved home. Within days, I was working at Toys R Us in Rome, and playing a lot of video games in my spare time, unsure of what my next steps were. 

While in my head, when things were quiet, I wondered to myself if I was a failure, if I had screwed things up royally, if I would find footing again. At the time, this failure was the dominant story of my life. 

The stories we tell matter. 

Let’s hear one of the primary stories scripture tells us: the story of creation from Genesis 1. I’ll be sharing selections with us.

Scripture 

The stories we tell matter. 

On a bitterly cold January day in 2008, I walked out of counseling techniques class in graduate school and wandered aimlessly around campus. I felt broken in my sense of self. I had to come to grips with some hard truths: I was full of myself, I was a terrible listener, and a poor empathizer. But in the way I interpreted that moment, I felt that I, myself, Ted Goshorn, was bad. 

So I wandered aimlessly around campus, through the snow and the cold, unsure of what to do next, wondering if I would ever come back together. 

It was a moment of internal chaos, much like the season I worked at Toys R Us and wondered if I’d find footing again. That chaos was the dominant story of my life, and it defined how I viewed myself. 

I’m sure we can all think of stories like these: times in our lives where chaos settled in and not only challenged or broke our sense of self or our sense of reality, but left us wondering if there could ever be a time of order again; order being the opposite of chaos. Would there be a way that things could be restored? Could we become whole again? We tell ourselves the story of that moment; the way that our life has led to this time of chaos, and it becomes easy to look backwards and see a whole history of chaos, a way that life seems to have inexorably led to this moment of chaos. It becomes easy to tell ourselves a story of life as chaos, one that will always be that way.

The stories we tell matter. 

For many years, the priests of the Israelites recounted this story of creation. They told of it to children, they instructed the people who came to worship and made sacrifice, they kept it in front of the people. There’s a beautiful ordering to this story of creation. It begins with God, who out of God’s grace and love crafted the world as we know it. We’re probably all familiar with the seven days of creation, doing one thing after the other, creating in an orderly way, just as we heard a few moments ago.

Not only was there the order of something created six days in a row, in a gradual and orderly fashion. There’s also a symmetry to the creation story. On Days 1 through 3, God creates the framework, like building out the foundations and frame of a house. On Days 4 through 6, God fills in the details. And then, at the penultimate day of creation, God made human beings, out of God’s own image. When we talk about the imago Dei, when we talk about bearing the image of God, when we talk about, with Psalm 139, being fearfully and wonderfully made, we go back to this penultimate moment of creation. 

Which leads to the ultimate moment of creation: the creation of sabbath rest. God has designed us humans to work six days a week and take a seventh day of rest, for our good. And so, in all of this story, we see how God created in an orderly fashion, out of God’s love and grace.

The stories we tell matter.

In Babylon, the priests find themselves in exile. They are surrounded by Babylonian religion and by pressure to convert. In the Babylonian creation account, one god gets mad at a goddess, and begins to create things like rivers and land in order to punish and hurt this other god. Like a capricious king, the primary god uses creation for his own advantage and benefit, especially for personal retribution against the goddess who has made him mad. The Babylonian creation account is disorderly, uninspiring, and in a word, chaotic. 

And the Babylonians are not alone. Every culture around the Ancient Near East had a similar creation account, where gods get mad at each other or where gods get mad at humans and out of that anger, spite, jealousy, and hurt, they create the world. Not only this, but the gods in these creation accounts created humans either as their personal slaves or as a tool to hurt another god with whom they had a rivalry. Humans were created to be used and abused by the gods. Every culture in the Ancient Near East told a similar story. Every culture grounded itself in an origin story of chaos. 

Every culture except one. 

The Israelite priests continued to tell this creation account while experiencing the chaos of exile; while imprisoned in a foreign land against their will. They placed special emphasis on this story because they believed firmly that God created out of order, rather than chaos. They believed that God created humans not to be used and abused but out of God’s love and grace, bearing the very image of God, a reflection of God into the world. 

They believed that God is of order, not chaos. And that their whole story as a people, the story they told about how God has provided for them, chosen them through Abraham, given them the land, set them apart as a people, believed in them, and would provide for them again in the future, all that story found its grounding in the beginning of the world; in the story of an orderly creation. 

The story of creation defined their understanding of themselves: God was for them; God would order their chaos. 

The stories we tell matter. 

What stories do you tell? 

The stories we tell ourselves define our sense of self. For me, in those dark periods of life, it was easy to think that the chaos defined me; that life would always be chaotic, characterized by some level of darkness, and that I would just need to get used to it. That there would be no provision, nor restoration, but only the chaos. And when we’re experiencing chaos, it’s easy to look back at our lives and see reasons to justify that narrative; to believe that it will always be that way. 

But that’s not what the priests did; that’s not the example scripture sets for us. The priests could have viewed life that way: they could have only told the story of their sin and the sin of the people. They could have only told the story of their own kings and leadership who made bad decisions and followed other gods, breaking the law and the Ten Commandments. They had their own stories of chaos to tell. 

And while they told those stories, in order to learn from them, they didn’t allow the story of chaos to define them. 

Instead, they went back to the beginning, looking at how God had created: out of order, not chaos; out of love and grace, not anger or jealousy; out of good and not for evil. They made that their primary story; a story that God was for them, not against them; that God would order their chaos. They went back to the beginning to find faith.

That’s true for us as well. And so this morning, let us go back to the beginning.

Whatever chaotic stories we’re telling ourselves; or whatever sin, our own or someone else’s, has come to define us; or whatever evil we have experienced that has created a defining story, telling us who we think we are, let us follow these priests and go back to the beginning. 

For we as Christians find our beginnings in baptism. 

That’s our primary story. 

Hear the words we say at the very beginning of the baptismal liturgy, “Brothers and sisters in Christ: through the sacrament of baptism, we are initiated into Christ’s holy church. We are incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation and given new birth through water and the Spirit. All this is God’s gift, offered to us without price.” In other words, at our baptism, just as at creation, God orders our lives, chooses us out of love and grace for us, claims us as his own for good. 

Just as God created out of order, not chaos; out of love and grace, not anger or jealousy; out of good and not for evil; so God does the same work through our baptism. Our lives are grounded in God because God chose us, God claims us, God is for us. Chaos may reign for a night, but order comes in the morning. 

The primary story we should tell ourselves is the story of our baptism. There, in the waters of baptism, we experienced God’s ordering. The sacramental language we use in our liturgy, the words I pray over the water when we come to baptism, begin that way, “Eternal Father, when nothing existed but chaos, you swept across the dark waters and brought forth light.” We claim God’s ordering of our lives at baptism from the very beginning of scripture and the world, when the Spirit of God hovered over the dark waters. The words then go on to recount how God ordered chaos: God saved Noah from the chaos of the flood, God saved the Israelites from the chaos of slavery in Egypt, God saved the people from the chaos of the Red Sea and the wandering in the desert; God saved all of humanity from the chaos of sin by sending his Son, Jesus Christ. 

God moves for order; God always wins against the chaos. And that goes for the chaos in our lives, too. God is a God of order, not chaos. And in our very beginnings, at baptism, God claims that truth for our lives. 

The stories we tell matter. 

At my baptism, God claimed me. If I look back through my life, I see God moving to order my chaos. 

That moment of disorientation at JMU, as I wandered through the snow, created within me a deep well of empathy and skill at listening that are primary for me today. That moment at Toys R Us was transformative as well. From there, I returned to Berry College where I found a renewed sense of self, experienced healing, developed resiliency, and met my wife. Out of love and grace, God ordered my chaos. 

That’s the promise of our beginning in baptism, just as we see in the creation story of Genesis 1: God orders the chaos. 

The stories we tell matter. 

What stories do you tell? 

If they’re stories of chaos, look back and see where God has moved for order. Faith, as the author Philip Yancey famously put it, means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse. If you’re living in chaos now, we can have that faith because if we look to our past, to previous experiences of the chaos, we can see how God has moved for order. 

If you’ve moved beyond a situation of chaos but believe your life is hopeless, that there will only be chaos, if you’ve found yourself in a place of depression or grim resignation, know that God has a better plan, one marked by order, not chaos. God will move to create order. Go back in your life, look for where God has moved for order in the past, and tell that story. The stories we tell ourselves matter; they define who we are. Look for the stories of redemption, of ordering the chaos, and tell those stories. 

And if you’re in a good place and telling yourself stories of order, give God thanks and continue to recite to yourself those stories. Remember the ways God has provided and allow that to form the foundation of your faith, so that when the chaos comes again, you will remember that God will move for order. 

That’s why, this morning, we will remember our baptism. A powerful and wonderful part of our liturgy is to come to the font and have the sign of the cross made on our foreheads with the water. In remembering our baptism, we remember that God chose us, God claims us, and God is for us. Chaos may reign for a night, but order comes in the morning. All because of our beginnings in baptism. All because God is a God of order, not chaos.

At baptism, just as at creation, God created out of order, not chaos; out of love and grace, not anger or jealousy; out of good and not for evil. God is of order, not chaos. Whatever stories you’ve been telling yourself, start with that story; the story of your baptism. For the stories we tell matter. Remember your baptism, and be thankful. 

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Amen.