Eric Lemonholm

June 26, 2011

Proper 8 A – with alternate Scriptures

Genesis 2:4-25, Psalm 104, Matthew 10:40–42

Creation 2.0

In the Letter to the Ephesians 2, Paul writes, “⁸For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—⁹not the result of works, so that no one may boast.¹⁰For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”

As John Nunes pointed out at the Synod Assembly last week, the word Paul uses for God’s handiwork is poiema. We are God’s poiema, God’s handiwork.

What does poiema sound like to you?

It’s where we get the word poem.

We are God’s poems, God’s poetry, God’s handiwork, God’s creations.

You are a poem, composed by God.

Last week, we heard Genesis 1, the first Creation story in the Bible.

Now, we just heard the second Creation story in Genesis 2. Creation 2.0.

These stories may well have inspired Paul’s description of us as God’s poems.

One of the awesome things about the Bible is that the inspired authors and editors of the Bible did not share our modern mania for consistency and coherence, our penchant to reduce the multiplicity of voices and narratives in the world to a single monotone, monochromatic message.

No, the Bible is rich and variegated.

God speaks through many voices, from multiple perspectives.

So, when the inspired authors of Genesis had two stories of Creation, they simply placed them side by side.

It’s only our modern mania for totalizing, totalitarian explanations that makes us want to mash them together into one story.

The way to reverence these stories as God’s word is not to twist them and twist science and try to force all the pieces from these different puzzles together.

The way to reverence these stories as God’s word is to respect their own integrity and read them side by side as unique, inspired perspectives on God’s Creation, alongside the explorations and discoveries of modern science – and the rest of Scripture.

Let’s dig in! Genesis 2 – on page 4 of your worship bulletin

First, notice that, though Genesis 1 always called God “God,” here God is always called “the LORD God” with “LORD” in all capitals.

Now, whenever you see “LORD” in all caps in the Bible, the original word is a name, God’s name “Yahweh.”

So throughout this passage God is called “Yahweh God.”

When this passage and much of the Older Testament were written, the people of Israel called God Yahweh. It’s the same with Psalm 104 that we read today: the LORD is Yahweh.

It’s a personal name for God. Yahweh.

It’s only later that, out of reverence, the Jewish people – and eventually Christians – began to think of God as “He who must not be named,” and so starting calling Yahweh “the LORD” instead.

That reverence for God’s name is good, but at the same time you miss a deeply personal connection with God that the writers and first hearers of the Older Testament had.

“In the day that Yahweh God made the earth and the heavens” has a different feel to it than “In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.”

So with respect – and apologies if necessary – I am going to be so bold as to call God Yahweh today.

“In the day that Yahweh God made the earth and the heavens,” the plants and herbs of the field had not yet sprung up, because of a lack of rain and a lack of someone to till the ground.

So, Yahweh God takes some of the earth – the dirt, the ground, the adamah – and out of that adamah Yahweh God forms a human, an earthling, an adam – God’s poem.

“Adam” is the word here translated “man” or “human.”

Adam means earthling, or human – child of humus, child of the earth.

Yahweh God takes some earth, and breathes into it.

God’s breath is the breath of life.

Earth and God’s breath together form a living human being.

In Eden, which means “delight,” Yahweh God plants a garden and places the human being in it, to till and care for the garden.

In the garden, God plants many fruit trees, including in the center of the garden the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The one rule that God gives the human is not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We’ll hear more about that next week.

Yahweh God soon realizes, however, that the human is alone. God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.”

The human, the adam, needs a friend, a companion.

In this Creation story, the animals are created after the first human.

God creates the animals out of the ground, and brings them to the human, who names each of them: but none of the animals are found to be equal partners for the human.

Finally, Yahweh God causes the human to sleep, and makes a partner out of the human’s rib – another of God’s wonderful poems.

Now, there is man and woman, male and female – in the original, ish and ishah: partners, companions, friends.

The Adam, the human, becomes man and woman, ish and ishah.

This is the biblical origin of human relationships, life partnerships, what we call marriage.

The two become one flesh, one life together, lovers, lifelong companions, poetry in motion.

And, note that the original purpose for God creating a companion for the human was not procreation – having children – but rather companionship and partnership in the task of caring for the earth.

Also, note that this text should not be used as a club to clobber single people – or gays and lesbians. The fact that God creates male and female as partners does not diminish other forms of partnership.

Although both the man and woman are naked in the garden, they do not know shame, because they have not yet eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

But that is a story for next Sunday.

We call these two Adam and Eve, but they have not yet been named.

That happens later. They don’t need names yet.

Genesis 1 tells us that these adam’s, these human beings, are created, male and female, in the image of God.

Created to be in relationship with one another and with God.

Created to care for the plants and animals of the earth.

This chapter shows us what human dominion over the earth should look like.

We are Yahweh God’s stewards, called to work together to care for God’s good creation for the benefit of all creatures. That is our original calling as human beings. We are stewards of God’s creation. We are called to care for creation as God cares for it.

Genesis 2 and the following chapters also give us a very intimate picture of Yahweh God.

God is the master Farmer, planting gardens and raising up animals.

Yahweh God painstakingly sculpts the human out of clay, and then lovingly breathes life into him.

God perceives that the human is alone, and lonely.

So, Yahweh God personally brings the animals to the human to be named and see if one can be the human’s companion.

Finally, God transforms the singular human into two people, male and female, ish and ishah, so that humankind can have companionship, so that the poetry can be a chorus rather than a monotone soliloquy.

This is not some infinitely distant God who set the universe in motion and then checked out.

This is a God intimately connected with Creation – including these fragile earthlings.

Yahweh God plants trees and shrubs and all manner of plants.

Yahweh God gets elbow deep in the dirt to knead it and form it into poetic sculptures – humankind and the animals.

It is not incomprehensible that this God would take on flesh and become human like us and with us in Jesus the Messiah, our Savior and Lord, for us and our salvation. Amen!