2021.10.10 | Our Empathetic God
“Our Empathetic God”
Genesis 2:18-24
Rev. Pepper Swanson
Oct 10, 2021
Hi everyone, it’s Pastor Pepper. I am back from sabbatical and happy to have this opportunity to preach for you today. My sabbatical was great but being home with one dog, one cat, and my husband Scott did give new meaning to the phrase: “preaching to the choir.” While they were a small but appreciative audience, like all Eden members, they were happiest when the sermon was followed by something good to eat.
As you may have heard, our daughter Lia went off to college in Toronto in August. I have to say I miss her fiercely. As I heard someone say recently, yeah, “Empty nest is a real thing!” I agree, it’s a real thing, like how hollowed out you really feel at first and how you get these life-like flashbacks of your child running around as a toddler or duct-taping her toys together. I can’t look in her room, cook, or sit at the family dinner table without missing her intensely. And, yes, I could use her help with the cat who has moved into my office 24/7 as a way of coping with her own empty nest in the bedroom next to mine.
So, true confession, today’s sermon is what happens when a pastor in the throes of empty-nesting starts meditating on her favorite Bible stories. I came up with a short list of stories I find comforting and found almost all of them are on the lectionary schedule for this fall. So, today is the first of my informal sermon series on God and empty-nesting and all the related human conditions.
Today’s story is from Genesis 2 and begins after the Lord God has made the earth and the heavens, formed man from dust and breath, put man in the Garden of Eden, and gave him some basic instruction on what to eat and what not to eat.
We can wonder what the newly-created man saw and felt as he looked around the Garden, which was lush with vegetation but devoid of animals or other humans. Perhaps it was like camping without squirrels and deer and finding yourself actually looking around and wondering: “Where is everybody?”
Humans must get that innate sense that having other living creatures nearby is good from the God because as the story continues, it is God who looks around and says, contrary to what God has been saying about most of the earlier creative work, “It is NOT good that man should be alone…”
And with that simple preface, God proceeds to make man “a helper as his partner,.” in the words of the NRSV. It’s important we don’t miss the subtle humor in the next part of the story. The Lord God begins to make creatures and take them to man to see what he will call them. And whatever man called them became their name. Given most animal names are rather short and uncomplicated, many have imagined this process as man being presented with creatures and grunting out words like horse, cow, bull, hawk, dove, utterance that will contrast sharply to how man responds to God’s best offer, which is woman.
Here’s how woman is created: God observes man and sees that none of these creatures has the potential to help man as a partner so he puts man into a deep sleep and takes a rib from man’s side, makes woman, and brings her to man. Man’s response is anything but a simple grunt. Man gives a little speech that shows how very pleased he is with what God has provided for him, saying, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.”
If you read the Bible to find out who God is, with respect to who we are, this is absolutely one of the best stories to look at. I love that God, as creator, looks at man alone in the garden, and says, “oh, that’s not good” and takes steps to correct the situation. I love that God sees man’s need for a true partner and proceeds to make him one, even though his first attempts are animals and birds. I love that God has not only endowed his creature man with intelligence and free will but also respects the creature enough to let it evaluate and name and respond to the other life forms. And, I love that God finally realizes that a true partner will be one that is more like man than any other creature, so like man that man practically jumps for joy when she is finally presented.
There are, however, a few things I don’t like about this Bible story but they all boil down to how it’s been misinterpreted over time and the way bits and pieces of it are used to limit, rather than celebrate, God’s creative power and God’s intent to see and respond to human need.
For example, many have, over time and still today, decided that God wanted man to have a subordinate rather than what the text says which is a “helper as his partner.” The underlying Hebrew word (ezer) does not imply a subordinate. In fact, the word is used later in the Bible to refer to God as a helper of humans. Ideas about subordination also flow from the taking of man’s rib to make woman. But for many Bible scholars, neither the words used or the method of creation are evidence that hierarchy between women and men was intended or that God thought that the help man needed was to have someone to boss around. It was we humans who brought the power dynamic to the story ages ago and it's proven difficult to remove.
Secondly, over time and today, many have also decided that this story provides the quintessential and legal definition of marriage as one man and one woman for all time. Again, however, the underlying Hebrew for “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” has a broader connotation than some give it, meaning more mutuality and equality than sexuality and marriage. And verse 24’s reference to man and woman becoming one flesh was probably a “moral” added to the story of a way to explain sexual attraction between men and women, rather than marriage. As many Bible scholars point out, marriage as such is not mentioned in today’s story.
You may recall that there is another ancient myth about sexual attraction that uses the same motif that attraction is driven by the separation of two beings that were formerly one flesh. In that myth, the Greek Aristophanes describes three double-sided creatures that were essentially male-male, female-female, and female-male, divided by Apollo, and destined to perpetually seek their other half as a way to explain the beginning of the varied types of sexual attraction that exists among humans.
When we can remove from our thinking all the ideas about female subordination and marriage that have been imposed on this passage, what remains for me is the lovely story of a Creator God who observes and responds to the needs of its creation, recognizing and respecting the creature’s intelligence and free will.
So whether you are suffering from “empty nest” or loneliness of another variety or from some other entirely different issue, I encourage you to remember that God sees and hears and knows your situation. We are blessed with an empathetic God who not only wants life to be good but who wants life to be abundant in love and happiness. Just as we think of ourselves as helpers to God who has no hands but our hands, so too do we need to think of God as our “helper as a partner” — eager to please us by creating and bringing to us others who will love and help us.
And I’ll end by offering this small prayer for all of us: Holy God, we know you see our situation and you know what is lacking and what is not good. We know you will act and bring us help, all kinds of help, until we name and rejoice in what completes and heals us. Until then, we pray for your guidance to see the options you present and the courage we to try new unnamed options.
May all of us, may each of us, live in an unfolding partnership with you to find and to sustain all that is good in this, your creation. Amen.