Narrative Lectionary, Garden of Eden, September 13, 2015

Transcription

1 Narrative Lectionary, Garden of Eden, September 13, 2015 This is our third year of using the Narrative Lectionary for our Sunday readings, and as you know, every fall we begin in the Hebrew Bible, what we sometimes call the Old Testament. I like to call it the First Testament, because I believe God still has a covenant with the Jewish people. The Second Testament is the covenant that God has with us in Jesus Christ, the covenant that brings us Gentiles in. So we start this morning with the second story of creation in Genesis chapter 2. The sanctuary Bible calls this Another Account of Creation. The editors of Genesis inherited two stories of creation, and they decided to use both of them. They placed them back-to-back. Many scholars believe they come from two different times in Israel s history. And like having four gospels, it s so rich to have two stories of creation. The first story, you remember, from Genesis chapter 1, is a day-by-day account of creation. On the first day, God creates night and day. On the second day, God separates the waters, and creates the sky and the oceans below, and so forth, day by day, until on the sixth day, God creates animals, and then humans. At the beginning of the second story of creation there s already a world, no plants yet, but a stream rises up from the ground, ready to water everything that is coming. God doesn t begin a day-by-day process of creating, God begins by creating a man. And I love the details of this version. In the first account of creation, God speaks and everything comes into being. In this God second accent, God bends down and forms out of the clay the first human. And then God performs CPR: God breathes life into this first human being. In fact, that is when the text says he becomes a human being, when life is breathed into him. This is one reason I love that we have these two stories. In the first, we discover that we are made in the image of God. We have God s imprint on us. God doesn t make junk. And in the second story, we hear that we are made from the earth. We have God s imprint, and we are made of very humble materials. 99% of the human body is made up of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus, the stuff of the earth.

2 So when we put the two stories together, we have God s imprint on us, and yet God insists on using very humble materials to create us. And I love that God gets God s hands dirty. God bends down to create us, to be in relationship with us. The text doesn t say that directly, but if you think of God s actions here, God is like a sculptor who reaches down into the clay and forms the first human. And while God is kneeling, God breathes life into the man. What an intimate picture of Creator and creation! That s a great picture of God. God is always bending down our way, getting God s hands dirty in our lives. However much we struggle, whatever muck and mire we find ourselves in, God has a track record of coming to find us, bending down to breathe new life into us. Then God changes from being a sculptor to being a gardener. God plants a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he puts the man. And God creates trees and plants, everything that is pleasant to look at and good for food. God places in the garden the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So we have a man created out of the clay, in relationship with God. We have a place for him to live in. And now he is given a vocation. Identity, place, vocation. And what is his job? God places Adam in the garden of Eden to till it and to keep it. Here s something helpful about the Hebrew word to till. Till doesn t just mean to plow the land, but also to serve the land. That has a different feel, doesn t it? God places him in the garden to serve the land. The land and the man have a relationship. The land is not to be exploited, but to be served. That says something about the way we do or don t care for the land, doesn t it? The land is a gift to us to serve, to care for, to cherish. And then God sets a limit on the man. God says, You may freely eat of every fruit of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die. We might hear this prohibition and think, Why wouldn t God want Adam and Eve to know good from evil? Isn t knowledge of good and evil a helpful thing? Well, isn t God the only one who truly knows good and evil? We are not meant to know absolutely good and evil. That s God s business. We are left with limited

3 vision. We see in a mirror dimly, Paul says (1 Corinthians 13). If we had perfect insight into good and evil, we probably would use it to judge others. God says, I will be the judge. That s a fruit I don t want you to touch. There are boundaries. Oh, but we don t like boundaries, do we. We think we d like unlimited freedom. If you talk to someone who deals with addiction to drugs or alcohol, or to work, we call that workaholism, they ll tell you that no, you can t do anything you want with your body without there being pushback. You can t put just anything into your body. If you overwork your body, you will discover the pushback. Our body has limits. When we push the boundaries in our relationships, people get hurt. Maybe the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is symbolic of boundaries in general. God says to the first couple, There are limits. There are limits to what we can do to our bodies. There are limits in our relationships. The world we live in has limits. Warmer temperatures and rising seas tell us that we have surpassed the limits of what our atmosphere can handle. God has given us boundaries. God sets up a garden with incredible variety and abundance, but says, There are limits. There s one fruit I need you to stay away from. So God created the first human being; God gave him a place to live and a vocation. God set some limits. Everything seemed good. But then God says, It is not good Why is it not good? It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper as his partner. This verse has been interpreted incorrectly for many centuries of the church s existence. I will make him a helper as his partner. When we hear the English word helper, we think Daddy s little helper. We think subordinate. We think inferior. You re the boss; I will be your helper. But the Hebrew word for helper, ezer, is used 21 times in the Hebrew Bible, and 16 of those describe God as the helper. Obviously God is not a subordinate, God is not inferior, and yet God is described as a helper. Eve as a helper to Adam does not imply subordination. These first two human beings, male and female, are complementary and equal. We cannot imply the subordination of wives to husbands from this text. The Hebrew word doesn t support it. So how does God accomplish this creation of a partner for Adam? God parades all the animals and birds in front of Adam, and says, How about this one? No? Well, then. How about this one? No again? And every time an animal appears in front of

4 Adam, he names the animal. That says to me that there is a relationship of care and protection in this area of creation as well. When Adam names the animals, there is the sense that he is in relationship with them. He gets to know them so that he knows what to name them. Again, there is a sense here that we are to care for all of creation. Fred Ruhnke is a Lutheran pastor who taught at Portland Lutheran School for many years. Pastor Ruhnke would often preach at churches when the called pastor was away. I believe he preached here a number of years ago. A pastor told our text study group recently that when Fred would visit a congregation, sometimes someone would lament the fact that their young people would leave the church after they were confirmed. Fred would ask, What are their names? Very often the church member could not name them. And Fred would say, That s the problem. You didn t know who they were. You didn t have a relationship with them. Knowing someone s name implies at least that we care enough to be in relationship with that person. Adam names the animals, which implies a loving, caring relationship with this part of creation. But when he doesn t find a creature that satisfies his needs, God puts him in a deep sleep, and performs rib surgery. God takes a rib and forms the first woman. And when Adam sees her, he says, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken. Yes, this is the one! This one I like! Now, maybe you re saying this morning: So this is the order of creation, man and woman; that s the God-designed model for relationships. So that should end the discussion about gay marriages. Well, if creation ends with this story, then maybe you could argue that. But creation continues. After all, God doesn t call creation perfect, as if it can never change or develop. God says creation is very good. And it is not static, it evolves. God s created order is still in the process of becoming. Obviously male-female relationships are fundamental for the human species to continue. But not every relationship is named here in Genesis. Notice that single people are not named. We wouldn t look at the story of creation here and say that single people fall short of what God wants. Notice that couples without children are not a part of the creation story. We wouldn t say that childless couples are out

5 of God s will or unnatural, even though couples without children are not mentioned here. God s creation calls for unity, not uniformity. There is diversity in creation that is to be celebrated. So I don t believe these stories of creation keep us from believing that same gender, monogamous, loving relationships cannot be God-pleasing. I believe they are within the sphere of God s creation that keeps evolving. This passage ends, Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed. This is the passage Jesus quotes in the gospels when the religious leaders ask him about divorce. Jesus says, Moses allowed it because of your hardness of heart. Moses gave you an out clause. But Jesus calls them back to this creation story, and says, Let s go back to the ideal. The original intent is to stay together. In Mark s gospel, he says there is no reason for divorce. In Matthew s version of this encounter, he says the only reason is unfaithfulness. Apparently by the time Matthew s gospel was written, which was later than Mark, Matthew realized that some in his community needed to be able to end unhealthy marriages where unfaithfulness was an issue. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians says that if an unbeliever wants to leave a relationship with a believer, then the believer should let them go (1 Cor. 7). Jesus says, Keeping a marriage together is the ideal. That s the goal. But we Lutherans especially ought to know that we are sinful people; we fall short of what God has for us; we often fall short of the goal that God designs for us. And we know that marriages fall short of the goal, and come to an end, certainly sometimes before a divorce brings the marriage to a legal end. And God offers us forgiveness and a new start. That s death and resurrection at work in our closest relationships. As I close, let me share with you a spiritual discipline I d like you to try this week. This fall some of us are deepening our faith using some new spiritual practices. We just looked at the second account of creation. Friday I was walking in the morning, and came around a corner, and I was bathed in sunlight. And the phrase came to mind, Lord, lighten my pathway. I began to pray, God, lighten the pathway of soand-so who struggles with depression. Lighten my pathway as I face decisions

6 today. Lighten the pathway of our world leaders. That phrase kept coming back to me as I walked and prayed. When you are out in nature this week, even driving in your car and noticing God s world, find a portion of creation that will help you pray. I have this exercise written up on the homepage of our website, with some daily Scripture readings for the week. May you know a deeper sense of God s presence as you practice this spiritual discipline. Amen.