Our pattern now and for eternity
Readings: Genesis 2. 4-25
Have you ever gone on one of those package holidays where a bunch of tours and visits are programmed in and you’re taken to a museum and are told you’ve got 2 hours, then the next thing and you’ve got an hour, and then the next thing. You have to keep on schedule because you’ll miss the bus or the ship and they’ll go on without you. You get a really good look around, a good overview but really you’d like to spend a bit more time in each of those place but you don’t want to get left behind.
That’s going to be my approach to that first reading from Genesis this morning, an overview of lots of the strands this passage gives us. I want to explore how, as we look back to the beginnings of everything, we see the pattern for our life, for the ordering of creation and, even here, before the fall, the foreshadowing of our redemption and of the end of all things.
Now the first stop you always come to whenever you’re preaching on the first few chapters of Genesis is do we take this literally or figuratively. I’m going to breeze straight past that question, because that’s not what I want to do, we’re going to skip right past that debate, for with either understanding this passage points us deeper, to wonderful and key truths for us to grasp.
Back in Genesis 1 we hear the account of the 7 days of creation, and we hear it as though we were stood beside God looking out at it all. We have this cosmic perspective. Now, here in chapter 2, we rewind a little and come at it again but from the ground, this feels a much more human perspective, we’re stood on the earth and it’s a watery waste. Everything is ready to go, but it’s like it’s waiting for something.
It’s like all of creation is holding its breath and in this silence God forms the first human. It’s a wonderfully intimate image of God moulding and forming Adam. The very stuff of creation being used to create him. And then as creation holds its breath, God breathes out, the breath of life enters Adam and he lives. Again it’s this wonderfully intimate image of our creation, the very breath of God enlivening Adam.
There’s this wonderful fused nature about humans which this points to. We’re dust and earth, formed from the stuff of the universe, we’re physical and fleshy. But we’re more than just physical forms. We’re spiritual beings, filled with the breath of life, the spirit of life, enlivened by God. But we’re more than just spiritual. In humanity the stuff of creation and the breath of God are brought together, we’re not God, but we’re not just dust and ashes either. We’re not fleshy bodies animated by spirits, or spirits entrapped in fleshy bodies. We’re the union of flesh and spirit, each of us formed by God in that wonderfully intimate way, each made is his image.
We’re the crown upon creation, created for relationship with God, created to care for creation, we’re made in his image and in that sense we’re to represent him to creation. We’re his stewards, his ambassadors, to act on his behalf in creation.
But as God looks upon Adam in the garden we hit upon a discordant note. Up until now at every turn God looks upon what he’s creating and ‘it was good’, that’s the constant refrain, God looks at what he has made as he goes along and it’s good. Until suddenly he see’s Adam alone in the garden and suddenly what he sees is not good, it’s not good for humans to be alone.
And so he parades in front of Adam all the animals to see what he calls them and to see if a suitable helper can be found. And in this sense humanity’s dominion over creation is established, as we name each and every thing, putting it in its place. But no suitable partner is found.
On the one hand as wonderful as animals are, as great as pets are, as loyal and good as they are, they aren’t enough, they won’t fill that need for companionship fully. And on the other hand, whilst God is enough, in God we can find all we need, that isn’t to be the norm. God has created us with needs and he has also created the means to satisfy those needs. As humans we need companionship on our level, not just below us in the animal world, and not just above us in God. But alongside us.
We’re created for relationship. Just as God is not singular, but Trinity, so we are not to be alone, but find our place in relation to one another, find our delight in one another. We’re created for both horizontal and vertical relationship. God alone isn’t enough in some sense. Which means we can’t say ‘I have God, therefore I don’t need the church, I don’t need my brothers and sisters’, because even when everything was still perfect, humans needed other humans. We’re not to go it alone, we’re to gather together, as we do today.
And so God fulfils this need, creates a helper for Adam. Eve. Now the word helper here isn’t derogatory, it’s not placing Eve under Adam as inferior to him. The same word we translate as helper here is also used of God in relation to Israel throughout the Old Testament. It’s not speaking down in any way. Adam and Eve are different, men and women are different, but not in a superior, inferior sense, rather in an equal sense, given to one another.
Now what we have here as Adam beholds Eve and things are once again good is two things which we dare not risk confusing. We have the first marriage, and the first human community, as I touched on back in October. And I say we dare not mix them because all too often we do. We conflate the second into the first and read this as saying that marriage is normative, as what completes us. But it’s not true. We’re not halves of a person looking for another half to complete us. What we see here is also the first human community, we’re human beings who need one another, created for one another. That’s what it means for it not to be good for us to be alone.
And that leads us to two really important points.
Firstly that marriage is a wonderful thing, a beautiful thing, and I’ll circle back to unpack that more in a moment. But you are no less a perfect human if you’re single for your whole life. Singleness and celibacy is an equally wonderful and beautiful thing, both Jesus and Paul commend it as almost, no actually, as the better of the two.
And the second point which this leads us to is that marriage isn’t the supreme form of relationship which all other relationships must bow to. It’s the most intimate form, but not the supreme form. If we conflate the first human community and the first marriage together we risk seeing life as a quest to find the other one and to then spend the rest of your lives staring into one another’s eyes oblivious to all others. Even in marriage other relationships are important, no, vital, for healthy lives. Marriage isn’t to exclude others, instead it’s a microcosm of community, it’s supposed to draw others in, particularly those who are not married.
And I labour these points because for too long marriage has become an idol both in the church and the world. That you aren’t complete until you’re married. That to not be married or to not have sex is to leave you incomplete or unfulfilled. That to deny someone marriage of sex is to diminish them. It’s not true. Jesus is the most perfect human who ever lived and he never married, never had sex. No-one would call him incomplete or unfulfilled.
Marriage is good, the union of husband and wife is a beautiful thing which should be upheld and respected. As the Bible witnesses to us repeatedly, it’s the proper place for sex, the proper foundation for children to be born into. The Bible holds marriage in very high regard, but we aren’t to idolise it, to hold it as the supreme good, God is the supreme good.
This is how creation is patterned. This is the vision. Humanity called to steward and safeguard creation, to be God’s ambassadors in creation. We’re elevated from the dust with the animating Spirit of God so are more than just spirits or just dust. We’re created for relationship with God, but also with one another. Created to find fulfilment in human community and companionship. And marriage given as a gift to be the proper place for sexual intimacy and as the foundation of family life, but not as an idol, instead as a place where others, single and married, are also drawn around.
That’s the pattern now, but finally, and briefly, I wanted to touch on the final thing that this passage points us to. For as well as it laying out the created order, it also, as I mentioned, points ahead to the redemption of creation and you might be wondering about that. We’re going to fastforward past chapter 3 and our fall, our rejection of God and his ways and the coming of sin and death, through thousands of years of history to the coming of a man.
Because here at the very beginning God is pointing us to what marriage represents, what it’s signposting us to. For the Son does leave his Father in search of his bride. Leaves to cleave to her. It’s Jesus. God the Son leaves the majesty of heaven, leaves his Father’s side and becomes human to be joined to his wife, that is the church. It is God the Son who leaves to be united with his bride.
And this isn’t a coincidence, the signs point deeper still. Look at how Eve is created. Adam is put into a deep sleep, a death-like sleep and his side is opened and his bride created from what comes out. Sound familiar? As Jesus hangs dead upon the cross as the church is redeemed, his side is opened with the soldiers spear and at once blood and water flow out. Now this is medically correct for someone crucified (I don’t really want to think about how we know that, but we do), but it’s also deeply symbolic. For the Sacraments in many ways are what make the church, the waters of Baptism grafting us into God’s family uniting us in Christ’s death and resurrection, and the blood of the wine of the Eucharist joining us to him, strengthening us in him. The church is created in water and blood, Christ’s bride drawn from his side.
Here in the perfection of Eden, before anything has fallen, already Christ is being signalled, already all signs point to the perfect man, the second Adam, who will undo the failures of the first Adam. Already in the union of this first man and woman, we see a vision of the wedding banquet to come at the end of all things where Christ the groom, and his bride the church are at last united forever. Both completely uncovered before one another without hint of shame.
I told you it was going to be a rapid tour. But here in Genesis, right at the beginning, God gives us both the pattern of our life now, and the signs of the one to come.
Amen.