Sermon of the Month - October 2008
Introduction:
§1. Bible
Today is Bible Sunday. Later on, we will be led in prayers by Dorothy, our Bible Society representative, with prayers from the Bible Society. But first, I want to say just a few words about the Bible, as an introduction to our first theme on the Garden of Eden.
There are many approaches to the Bible, and many questions people ask because of it. You may have asked a number of questions yourself. Sometimes people ask questions about why different parts of the Bible speak in different ways – the difference between the approaches in the Old and New Testaments for example. Another related set of questions come from the way the Bible tells the same story in different ways. This is most obvious with the four gospels. Scholars early on struggled with this, and came up with a solution: a way of combining the four gospels into one roughly consistent story. In the process all the variations were taken out, and instead of four gospels we ended up with one. Other people may not have combined the gospels formally, but they have done so, informally, ironing out the creases so to speak, to make one smooth, utterly consistent story. It stops all the awkward questions – many of them at least – but it does so at the cost of silencing the Bible itself, and replacing it with our own words, our summaries and the rest.
But I believe this is to miss the point of the Bible. The Bible is not the same as the Qu’ran. I’m not speaking about the claims made by Christians and Muslims about divine authorship, but the provenance of these holy books. The Qu’ran was written in one lifetime, with one author; the Bible, over a thousand years and more with scores of authors. We could go on. The Bible has many authors, was written in many different eras, and has many distinctive differences in its books.
But I want to home in on just one reason why trying to flatten the distinctives in the Bible is a bad idea. I believe that it’s no accident that with all the most important stories of the Bible, we do not have only one take on it. We’ll home in on creation in a moment. But take the salvation of God’s people from slavery in Egypt – and see, we get two different takes on that: first we get the story straight in Exodus and Numbers; but then we get it in the form of autobiography in Deuteronomy. So we get the Ten Commandments twice, in Exodus 20, and again in Deuteronomy 5. And if you look very carefully, you can see subtle differences in the way they are expressed: two, subtly different angles. The history of Israel and its kings, comes twice: a straight narrative in the books of Samuel and Kings, but in 1 and 2 Chronicles, first we are taken back all the way to Adam, at least in terms of genealogies, then, in 1 Chronicles chapter 9, it starts at the end, and an explanation of that disaster: the people of Judah went into exile because of their unfaithfulness, and the return to Israel after exile. Only then does it tell its main story – with that focus. It’s in the form of flash-back.
But the biggest story in the Bible is the story of Jesus, of God’s act of salvation for us in Jesus Christ, and to my mind it’s no accident that God has given us not one, or even two, but four gospels. Instead of thinking it’s inconvenient that we have different elements in the story, and perhaps getting worried about the tensions and differences between them, let us honour what God has done in giving us four gospels. He’s given us four different angles on the story of Jesus. He’s given us two ways of seeing the liberation of Israel from Egypt and of the history of Israel’s ups and downs.
§2. Eden
In Genesis we have two stories of creation, two angles on God’s creation of us humans beings, male and female in this world. They’re not competing stories, but they give us two complimentary angles on our creation. The first one we have completed. This is the story of creation in a series of days, six days of creation, ending with the seventh day, the day of completion, the day of rest. That places us within the cosmos. It tells us we are the end-point of God’s creation. God’s creation is good, and as we are made, created, designed by God, it is good, we are good, everything is right, fit for his purpose.
But now we move on to the second story. This tells the story of our creation in the context of the Garden of Eden. It tells the story of Eden, that world which is good. It tells the story of the creation of life, and the granting of life, the breath of life to us human beings. It tells the story of Adam and Eve. Now at one level this is the story of two individuals, one named Adam and the other named Eve. But it is far more than that. Names are not meaningless sounds in Hebrew, they are deliberate and packed with significance. The name Jesus, Yeshua, means ‘God saves’, for example. So the names Adam and Eve and significant. Adam means mankind. Adam is humankind. He is the human race personified. This is his name; but that is also his significance. Eve means living. She is the mother of all the living. So we have the story of Adam, and Eve, but we also have the story of mankind and life.
The six-day creation tells the story in a grand, cosmic way. The garden of Eden tells the story in a homely, folksy, personal way. It tells the story of stewardship, just as Genesis 1 does. But Genesis 1 tells it formally. It tells how God told mankind – male and female, made in his image – to rule over creation, and to harvest it, and take care of it. Here in Genesis 2, it is more homely and personal: the man interacts personally with his creation, naming each creature, taking charge over creation in this way.
Then the story takes a turn: it introduces man and wife, and we shall return to that shortly. But the story of the Garden of Eden does not end with this idyllic picture of good creation. In this very personal picture, it tells the story of our fall from grace, and this not only dominates chapter 3, which we turn to next week, but the whole of the next ten chapters of Genesis, we will come back to over successive weeks.
§3. And God Made Woman
Genesis 1 tells of God simply creating humanity, male and female in his image, but Genesis 2 provides a contrast. Again it tells the personal story: it is not good for man to be alone. Man – Adam – is introduced to all the animals, and at first it sounds all so impressive, but then the deadly conclusion is reached: For the man himself no suitable helper was found. Other translations put it better: no companion in the Good News Bible, no partner in the Revised English Bible and the Contemporary English Bible. It is Genesis 2’s equivalent in some ways to the statement of Genesis 1 that we are made in the image of God. Partnership is part of that. We are made for relationship, and the relationship with have with the animals is not equal partnership.
The man is put into a deep sleep – as the commentators put it, we are not spectators on God’s miracles of creation, and the same is true in the New Testament: no one actually sees the miracle of resurrection, just its effects.
Then after the miracle of creation, the man is introduced to the woman, and exclaims with delight: This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh – that’s a way of emphasing the flesh and blood relation. Men and women may be different, but we are part of the same flesh and blood.
He adds, she shall be called ‘woman’ for she was taken out of man. The two words in Hebrew here are Ish for man and Ishshah for woman, and the expression of the man’s delight here.
The man and the woman are created as partners, and we should not think that the woman created from the man points to any superiority or primacy of man over woman. Conflict between the sexes, division, assertions of superiority and inferiority are not the theme of Genesis 2; they are the theme of Genesis 3. This is the story of the creation of man and woman before the fall. This is the world as God intended it. This is man and woman as God intended us. And the relationship between us is one of partnership and love. Genesis 2, indeed implies equal partnership. The relationship is of harmony and love. There is no division, no hostility, no alienation, no awkwardness.
One last point. This passage comes before the fall, but we live in a fallen, broken world. Does this mean these words have no relevance? That they are only interesting as history, and prehistory at that? Well the answer of the New Testament is a clear No. When Paul, or indeed Jesus himself, wish to comment on marriage, Genesis 2, verse 24, is the verse they turn to most often: For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. They are not looking back wistfully on a perfect, but lost, irretrievable and irrelevant world. They are reminding us of God’s intentions for us. We live in a sinful, fallen world, where our human relationships include a lot of hurt. Relationships between the sexes don’t always work out. But when Jesus quotes this verse in the gospels he tells us what God wants for us. He intends us to live as partners, where we don’t damage each other, we care for each other. That’s a challenge for all marriages, because we all fall short of consistent love. But it’s a challenge for all other relationships, too, relationships in the workplace, in the school or college, in the community, and all human relating. For we all fall short of true love, the love of God. That doesn’t make the standard irrelevant. It is the right, the perfect standard. We fall short, as we shall see next week. But it is right to remember God’s perfect plan for us. It is also right to seek his help, his forgiveness, his healing when we have fallen short.