The First Sunday of Epiphany Year B

The Baptism of Christ - The First Sunday of Epiphany

Genesis 1.1–5
Acts 19.1–7
Mark 1.4–11

What is nothingness? We have no concept of it. Our image of it consists of the absence of things that we can picture and describe, which is very different from the nothingness before creation. Genesis struggles for the words to describe non-existence – ‘formless’, ‘void’, ‘dark’. Although no words can actually describe nothing, Genesis is trying to convey a powerful sense of absence. Without God, there is nothing. Into this nothingness, God comes, and then there is, at once, something describable. God comes as wind, or breath, or Spirit, depending how you translate it, and before he does anything else, he speaks. ‘Let there be light,’ he says. At once, God begins to make sense out of the world. He begins to make it intelligible, imaginable, by using language... 

Taken from Lectionary Reflections – Year B by Jane Williams