“So That None Should Be Alone”
Genesis 2:4b-9, 15-23
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
7/9/17
The creation stories in the first two chapters of Genesis
create in me a sense of awe and gratitude. Imagining the cosmic scope of the
story in Chapter 1 is like sitting on top of Buffalo Mountain and watching the sun
set over the plateau to the west, and the stars come out over the Appalachian
highlands to the east. Reading the earthy, nitty-gritty detail of the story in
Chapter 2 is like watching my wife at work in her garden.
Both stories offer magnificent and compelling, but
thoroughly distinct images. They harmonize well enough, but any attempt to create
unison between them yields artificial results. We can no more overlay the two
stories and get one authoritative history than we could overlay photographs to
the east and west of Buffalo Mountain and get one coherent perspective.
Think
about it: Did God take seven days to create the universe, as described in
Genesis 1, or a single day as described in Genesis 2? Did God make all the
animals first then human beings, as in Genesis 1, or the human male, then all
the animals, then the human female as in Genesis 2?
The
discrepancies do not overwhelm the sophisticated brilliance in Genesis. Aware
of the limits of language, the ancient storytellers used images and symbols to suggest what their hearts felt but their
words could not adequately describe. Feel free to disagree, but I have to
interpret the creation stories as statements of faith rather than historical
documents, as poetry rather than science.
Back
“in the day that God made the earth and the heavens,” says Genesis 2, all was
dry and barren. But, in this pre-beginning, beneath the surface, a spring flows.
Down in the unconscious depths, the possibility
of water churns like undreamt dreams and unwritten songs. And all that
potential needs a vessel. So, God pulls the waters upward, through the dry and
gritty void. Streams and rivers flow. They feed the sky. Clouds gather. Rains
fall. Plants take root and grow. But who will tend them? Who will enjoy them?
Scooping
up a handful of water-logged dust, God infuses it with ruach – with breath, a holy spirit. Into the enlivening stew, God adds
humankind – a unique blend of matter and spirit, consciousness and
unconsciousness, instinct and innovation.
“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,”
sings the psalmist, “the moon and the stars that you have established; what are
human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet
you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and
honor.”
In some way, all living things share God’s breath; so all
living things are holy. And the deep capacity for awareness of self, awareness
of the waters above and below, grant to the human a particular holiness, a
particular likeness to God. This gift will get all humanity into a bit of a
pinch, but first, the man is simply to care for all that God has created. He
has more than existence. He has something to do, something to give his life
meaning. He has a calling, a vocation.
Having formed the man of dust and water, having blown
animating breath into his nostrils, God sets the man in the garden to till and
keep it. He is free to eat and enjoy all of it – with one prohibition: Do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil. Being as much like God as he is, knowing good and evil would
be one burden too many on the man’s heart of flesh. He’d have trouble bearing that
burden without mistaking himself for God - especially if he’s alone.
“It is not good that the man should be alone.” What a
profoundly revealing thing for God to say. In the first creation story we hear
God say, “Let us create humankind in our image.” And later in the second
story, after Adam and Eve have been exiled from the garden, God says, “See, the
man has become like one of us.”
God
doesn’t have some kind of multiple personality disorder. The storied image in
which we are made is one of relationship. To be like God in the healthiest sense necessarily involves others. This
is the point of Trinitarian language. God is one, but because God is Love, the
essence of God is relationship.
The philosopher Charles Taylor wrote: “One cannot be a self
on one’s own.” The man needs an other
because loneliness diminishes both our humanity and our holiness.
So, God experiments with animals. And they’re wonderful, but
the man needs more than dogs and dolphins, copperheads and chickadees. He needs
a partner who will both counter and complete. So, God closes the man’s eyes and
sends him into a deep, self-emptying sleep. During that time of unconsciousness
and vulnerability, God removes a rib, one of the bones that protect the man’s
heart and other vital organs. From that piece of the man’s foundational
structure, God fashions another human being, a woman. At last the man has a
companion, someone who may expose his heart a little bit, but one who cures
loneliness.
Let’s
remember, loneliness and solitude are two very different things. We often choose
and enjoy solitude for Sabbath renewal, but loneliness is the curse of exclusion
from community. The creation story in Genesis 2 declares that exclusion and
loneliness run counter to God’s will – for everyone. No human being should be
alone. We need each other the way scripture needs both creation stories.
Who we are and what we do as human creatures, we do in community.
As a place of creativity, the Church is called to share in God’s eternal breathing.
By telling the ancient stories and living our new ones, we wade in the waters
of all that is seen and unseen, of that which is and that which is becoming.
As a place of purpose, the Church is called to nurture
vocation. We till and keep the God-planted garden on which all human beings
depend, and in which we all may experience our strengths and weaknesses, our God-given
gifts and those of others.
As
a place of worship, the Church encourages prayerful solitude, where we learn to
listen for and to relate to God. And as a place of community, we do not
tolerate loneliness. We welcome, enjoy, struggle with, and forgive one another.
Each day, may you look deeply into yourself. May you see
both your fragile dust and water held together by God’s holy breath, and your
own extraordinary beauty and potential. May you sit in wonder before yourself
and others as you would sit on a mountain top, watching the sun set and the moon
rise.
We are indeed “fearfully and wonderfully made” in God’s
image. We often know that image within us by acknowledging the selfishness, the
violence, and other brokenness within us, as well. Whether we want them or not,
both realities, both stories our ours. One participates in God’s creativity and
joy. One struggles with it, and often denies it.
The
more we love one another as God loves us, the more we experience and share the
God within us and within others.
We’re
in this life together – all of us, all of our stories. And this must be God’s
intent for us, so that none should be alone.
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