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September 20, 2020 Divine Liturgy Series, Number 3   Genesis 1:6-8   This is the third sermon in a series of homilies on the divine liturgy.   We have begun our study by looking at the first chapter of Genesis to know clearly who God is and how he has created us and the world in which we live.   We have begun this way because it is essential in worship to know who you are worshiping and who you are because of your creator.   The nature of the one you are worshiping shapes the way you worship and the action of the worshiper is shaped by one’s self awareness.   In the first two sermons we looked at the nature of God and we looked at the first day of creation.   Today we will address the second day of creation which often is overlooked and misunderstood.   In fact it is safe to say that the meaning of the second day of creation is so obscure that it is mostly ignored.   “Then God said let there be a firmament in the midst of the water let it divide the water from the water and it was so. Thus God made the firmament and God divided the water under the firmament from the water above the firmament so God called the firmament heaven and God saw that it was good and there was evening and morning the second day.”   It appears that after the first day of creation all that existed was basically disorganized water.   So on the second day of creation God begins to bring order to the created world and begins to organize and set up the water system that would eventually be one of the primary sustainers of creation.   We now have three components of the material world: we have the water below the firmament, the water above the firmament, and we have the firmament itself.   The water below the firmament is basically the sphere of what we call earth completely covered with water,  we have space or sky surrounding that sphere and then we have water above the sky whose nature is not completely understood.   Scientifically we understand now that the world is set up with a water system and interaction between the water that exists on the earth and the water or humidity that is in the atmosphere or above the atmosphere.   We Know that this system is very sophisticated and very intelligently designed to keep the world relatively stable in terms of temperature and environment.   Firmament represents what we call the sky or atmosphere or space.   It’s possible that before the great flood the the waters above the firmament or sky existed in the form of some type of canopy or greenhouse cover extremely dense with moisture and which allowed light from above but kept out some of the more harmful radiation of the sun which would be created later.   (In the description of the great flood we read about catastrophic changes to this water system, both the waters below the firmament and the waters above the firmament. We will not say more about that at this time but will address it in greater detail when we discuss the fall of mankind and the great flood.)   The reality is that we do not know the exact nature of the firmament and the waters above the firmament in the beginning but we do know that the fathers of the church interpreted it so that this is exactly what happened on the second day and that it was the second step in the creation and the ordering of a sustainable and nurturing world.   We see that God in a very intelligent and ordered way step-by-step is preparing creation for the inhabitation of some special form of life, that is humanity.   Going back to the first few verses of Genesis we see the action and involvement of the holy trinity,  the Father speaks,  the Son creates and the Holy Spirit hovers over the water.   God is Trinity and we must worship him as Trinity otherwise we are not really worshiping him at all. This is the foundational point of the divine liturgy which we are going to be studying throughout this liturgical year, God as Trinity and humanity in the image of God.   The second day is an affirmation of this one basic premise: Creat