Created in Relationship

September 8^th, 2019  “Created in Relationship”   Rev. Heather Jepsen

Genesis 2:4b-25 with Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

         This morning we begin something new in worship, the narrative lectionary.  This preaching cycle will begin my 14^th year preaching my way through the church calendar.  After 13 years of the revised common lectionary, which is over 4 times through the three year cycle, I have decided to try something new.  When I was at the Festival of Homiletics preaching conference last spring I heard about this alternative cycle of readings, the narrative lectionary.  This is a four year cycle of readings that annually cover the biblical narrative with a goal of centering us as believers in God’s story.  From now through Advent we will follow the cycle of the Old Testament, then we will read the Gospel from Christmas to Easter, and then after Easter we will read about the early church.  The idea is that in a whole year we will get the whole scope of the scripture readings, or the narrative of the story that is the Bible.  Some of these readings will be familiar to us, and some we may never have read before.  Either way, this is new territory for me and for you and my prayer is that this will be a season of fruitful thought and reflection.

         What better place to begin our reading of the whole Biblical story then at the beginning?  Today we will hear the story of creation, but this is a story you might be less familiar with. Unlike Genesis chapter one where God creates a new thing each day and calls it all good, Genesis chapter 2 tells a different story of creation.  Wait a minute!  Two different stories?  Two conflicting accounts?  Yes!  The ancient Israelites didn’t have any trouble holding these two ideas in contrast to each other.  Unlike our modern tension between evolution vs creationism, the ancient Israelites had no such sense of things being either/or.  Rather, they were able to hold all these differing stories together.  The creation narrative was never meant to be a scientific explanation of the beginnings of the world.  Rather, it was always meant to be a story.  This is not about how we were made or where we come from.  Rather this is about how much God loves us and how God created us to live in the world.  This is all about relationships, not about science.  So let’s read this story together.

         (Read Genesis 2:4b-25) 

         Wow, isn’t this a different telling than the one we are more familiar with in Genesis 1?  Gone is the structure and order, gone is the God who has a plan, and gone is the idea that creation was made good or perfect.  This creation tells a story of a God who is learning as God creates and this creation is called “not good”.  Let’s look closely at each element.

         In this beginning everything is connected.  We start with no plants because we have no rain yet and no workers to till the ground.  There cannot be plants without the connection of nature and man to work together.  The Lord begins by forming man from the dust of the ground.  Like a potter with clay this is a “hands on” activity.  The man is fashioned and shaped, each curve and mark lovingly added.  Think of that the next time you bemoan your own shape in the bathroom mirror.  From your ear lobe to your elbow all the way down to your big toe, all those curves and crevices were designed by a loving creator.

         But man is just a form of dust.  There is no life in us.  God must breathe into us spirit and that is what happens next.  The breath of life, the very air that is God’s life force, is blown into our airways, giving us our own breath and life.  This is what makes the man more than a dirt creature; this is what makes the man a living being.  And now that we have a person to work the earth, the lord plants a garden.  I love the word usage here.  Yes, the Lord makes the plants grow but the Lord first plants the garden.  Anyone who has worked a garden themselves knows the joy of digging a hole, planting a seed, and waiting for life to sprout.  The Lord doesn’t speak a garden into being.  In this story, God plants a garden with God’s hands.

         The next section tells us about the rivers near the garden.  We hear about their origin source and into what other lands they flow.  Notice that there are other lands outside this garden of Eden.  And if there are other lands, then surely there are other people who named and lived in those lands.  Why do we always assume that Eden was the only place where people were?  The Bible doesn’t tell it that way.

         The Lord takes the man he has made and puts the man in the garden.  The man has a job.  Yes, work at creation!  Work is good and part of our created order.  The man is given the task of tilling the garden the Lord has made.  The man needs the garden and the garden needs the man.  Already, relationship is being established as the root of creation.

         It is so interesting here in verse 18 where the Lord God looks at the man and the creation and decides it is “not good”.  This is so different from chapter one where everything is good over and over.  Here is a creation that is “not good”.  Here is a creation that is unfinished, that needs more.  But what does creation need?  God will have to try a few things to come up with the right answer.

         First God forms all the animals and the birds.  Just like the man, all of the other creatures are fashioned from the dust and filled with the breath of life.  Together God and man engage in an act of co-creation as God presents all of the animals to the man and the man gives all the animals their names.  Again this is all about relationship. 

         Names will be an important theme in our first few sermons of the narrative lectionary, and names are an important mark of relationship.  Here man names all the animals, the first steps of forming community.  Just like the first thing you do when you bring home a new pet, you give it a name so a bond can be formed.  Even farmers name their farm animals, like all the cows out a Jeff and Dianna’s farm are named after hurricanes.  It is how we tell animals apart and it is how we refer to the animals.  The first thing you do when you meet someone is exchange names.  The act of naming is an act of creation and it is an act that is grounded in relationship.

         Even with all the animals, nothing is a suitable partner for the man, and so the Lord God tries something completely different.  Rather than forming a new creature from the dust, God forms a creature from the very substance of man.  Taking a rib from the sleeping man, God forms the perfect partner, a woman.  And no, men don’t have fewer ribs then women.  Remember this is a story and not a science class.

         This new creation is just what was missing.  Rather than being another mud creature, this is bone of bone and flesh of flesh.  This is the perfect complement to man.  Man looks at the woman in wonder; this is the ish-ahh to the ish in Hebrew.  This is the whoa . . . to the man.  This is what will fulfill the need for relationship.  With only God, man was unhappy.  With only animals, man was unhappy.  We need to be in relationship with other people for creation to be complete.  Creation was not good until relationship was formed.  And so, the story teller says, we continue to pair off, attempting to share the whole of who we are with another person.  We develop a practice of forming new family units and sharing our lives without shame.

            Our text for today is a great example of scripture as story.  The God we read about in Genesis 2 is learning and growing. This God doesn’t have a plan for creation, rather this God is learning along the way.  This God is trying new things and experimenting.  This God is looking for answers to problems.  And this God is co-creating with man.  Whatever man names the animals God calls them.  And it is man who decides when the right partner is found, not God.  The earth creature is driving the story as much as the divine creator.

         When we read this text in our modern setting it serves as a great reminder to us of the role we play in creation.  We are made to be in relationship with all of the things that God has made.  This story reminds us that all of these things are connected.  There can be no plants without the hand of man to sow and till the fields.  All of the animals, though not perfect, are our partners.  We don’t stand atop some hierarchy of creation.  Rather, we are simply one part of an interwoven system.  The animals were made the same way we were and they possess the same breath of life.  Doesn’t that call us to treat them with respect?  The plants were formed by the same God who formed our bodies; doesn’t that call us to treat them with care?  This earth is not ours for the taking.  Rather this earth is part of a system we were formed to be in togetherness with.  We were created to be in relationship with all other parts of creation.  As our collective greed threatens death to our planet, we threaten death to our very selves.

         As generations have passed, God has continued to form a people.  We were created to be in relationship with God and with each other.  Our Psalm for today reminds us that God has lovingly fashioned each of us with care.  Paralleling the vision of a God forming us out of the clay of mud, the Psalmist tells of a God who knits us together in our mother’s womb.  Like a grandma knitting a scarf, God carefully fashions each row upon row that will make up our being.  This God knows us intimately; this God is one with us.  We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and we are wonderfully known by this God who sees each moment of our day.

         Our story for today reminds us that God has formed each one of us, in all our unique ways, with love.  Not everyone will find a partner like the story says, and some partnerships look different then woman and man, but everyone needs to be in relationship.  We need our relationship with God and we need our relationship with each other.  Be it the community of church or work, school or home, family or friends, each of us is made to be with others.  And so too, we were made to be part of the beautiful and connected created world, from the plants and animals, to the birds and fish.  All of these things were made to work together. 

         In the creation story of Genesis 2 we read that humans were made and it was not good for us to be alone.  And so God formed all the plants and animals, as well as other humans, so that we could be in relationship with each other.  May we remember and honor all of these relationships, from the ant under our foot to the birds of the air, from the fish of the sea to our neighbor in the pew.  All of the life on this planet is part of the good and glorious interconnected creation made by a God who loves us and who loves all the rest of creation.  Amen.