Sermon: God at Work
September 8th, 2019 Rev. Betsy Perkins
First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
Scripture passage: Genesis 2:4-25
God At Work Creating
The Bible begins with a pair of creation stories. This one in Genesis 2 is the second of the pair. The first starts with the words, “In the beginning, God…” God the Spirit is hovering over the deep, the dark, the chaos. God then speaks the world into being – “Let there be light!” God creates order. God creates all the elements in creation. You may recall the familiar refrain of that first story, “And God saw that it was good. And it was evening and it was morning – the first day.” The second day, the third day, and on, until the end of the sixth day, when God finally creates the humans. In His image, God created them; male and female, God created them. It was the climax, the crowning achievement, “and it was very good”. After this God takes a pause, a rest, a Sabbath.
The storyteller then appears to move to the other side of creation and describe the wonder again from different perspective. Like looking at a work of art from a new angle to see new insights; or describing an event from another person’s perspective. First, the game is recounted by one sitting at the top of the stadium, and then it is recounted by someone sitting right down on the sidelines.
After the rhythms and refrains of the first story, the second story begins with a long, winding sentence that weaves its way from verse 4 all the way through verse 7, like the winding streams that water the barren earth till God takes some of that mixture of dirt and water and makes a living being. (what do you get when you mix dirt and water? Mud!) There is a pun in the original Hebrew, for God forms adam from the adamah, man/adam from the ground/adamah. Perhaps the closest we can come in English would be to say that God formed a human from humus.
In this second portrayal of creation, God is at work in many ways. First, God is like a craftsman or an artist “forming” the human. The Hebrew word for “forming” is one that is used to describe a potter working with clay. Next, God is like a doctor or paramedic, breathing the breath of life into the lifeless creature. We see God the gardener and God the farmer, out planting and watering and making things grow. God, the nutritionist and chef, cooking up trees that are good for food as well as appealing to look at. God, the landscape designer, directing the flow of rivers. God “forms”, again as the craftsman, the animals and birds, out of the same humus that the human is made from. Finally, the Lord God, “builds” a woman. It takes God, the engineer, to put together a woman!
As we consider these creation stories, it is important for us to bear in mind that they were not intended to be read as you would a textbook in science class, or the instruction leaflet in a model airplane kit – as literal, step-by-step explanations. These stories are true, but their truth teaches not the precise scientific details of creation, rather their truth teaches us about who God is, and who we are, and what God’s purpose and our purpose is in the world. We come to know God at Work!
For instance, we know geologically that there is not one central spring or river headwater that feeds all the great rivers in the world. We know geographically that some of the great rivers of the world are left out of this story – the Amazon and the Mississippi for instance. The story includes three great rivers in the land where the rest of the story of Genesis will play out – the Pishon, scholars have suggested this might be the Nile, as the land of Havilah may refer to Egypt. Other suggestions are the Indus or the Ganges. Next the Tigris, and the Euphrates. But along with three great rivers, the storyteller includes a tiny spring that provides water for the city of Jerusalem, the Gihon (also mentioned in 2Chr.32:30). So what truth what the storyteller pointing to? We know that it wasn’t a physical, geographical truth but perhaps a spiritual, theological truth about God as the source of life-giving waters flowing out upon the earth – maybe a truth that Jesus speaks of when he declares that he himself is the source of living water, and that when he is lifted up in Jerusalem, in the center of what appears to be a small and weak nation, the Spirit will become the source of living water flowing out of every believer, in every nation throughout the earth. Lots to wonder about!
God At Work with Co-Creators
For me, the greatest wonder in this story of creation is the wonder of humans being invited to create and take responsibility alongside God! The wonder of God’s gracious love that God would entrust His creation to humankind. The wonder of God’s willingness to share power and control over creation with one of His creatures. And like the Psalmist, I have to pause and ask God, “What is mankind that You are mindful of them, human beings that You care for them?” (Ps.8:4)
This creation story begins with a barren earth because there is no one to work the ground. When God places the man into the garden, the man is given the responsibility to work it and take care of it. God creates and brings each kind of living creature to the man and allows the man to name them. The act of naming something or someone in ancient times implied ownership or the acceptance of responsibility. Naming a child is an act of claiming that child as your own. Adam was naming every animal and claiming it as his own, as a child under his care.
I wonder if, as God brought each animal and bird to be named, if perhaps God felt a little like parents feel when they hand over the keys to the family car and watch as their child drives away for the first time. A little trepidation, a little concern, a little pride, a little satisfaction, a lot of love! I wonder if the environmental disasters that are happening today cause God to feel as a parent would feel when their child crashes that family car. You did what? Set fire to the Amazon forest? You’re using the ocean as a garbage dump? You’re overdrawing on the bank account of ground water and oil and minerals? You’re poisoning the honey bees along with the pests? You’ve created a substance that defies my natural law of decay and renewal?
God knew what He was doing when he told the human not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We still grab for the apple of knowledge with the desire to do it ourselves, to dominate, to assert our own will and take over, to make it about our own immediate gain rather than about the long-term welfare of the earth. We need to pause and recapture the sense of wonder in God’s creation. We need to recall a sense of humility and remember our responsibility. God is at work! We have been graciously, lovingly, wonderously invited to work as co-creators and care-givers.
God At Work Creating Community
God knew that this work could not be done alone. This creation story gives us a glimpse of God’s heart, as God shows concern and compassion for the man in his loneliness. God created the human to live and work and love in community, not in isolation. In that way we reflect God’s image, for God’s self is community, Father, Son and Spirit, a loving community of three-in-one.
So God goes about creating a “helper” for Adam. Robert Alter, one of the greatest Hebrew scholars of our time, has written that the English word “helper” is too weak a translation of the Hebrew word used here, ezer. The word ‘helper’ suggests an auxiliary function, like an assistant, a subordinate. This is not implied in the word ezer. Rather, ezer implies active intervention on behalf of another, like a fellow soldier or ally in a military context. Ezer is used in many psalms to refer to God Himself, such as Psalm 54:4 “Surely God is my helper/ezer, the Lord is the One who sustains me.” Or Ps.33:20 “We wait in hope for the Lord, he is our help/ezer and our shield.” Alter suggests that a better translation into English would read “It is not good for the human to be alone, I shall make him a sustainer beside him.” (Robert Alter, Genesis, 1996, pg.9)
So God takes one side of the man to create the woman. The Hebrew word that has traditionally been translated as “rib”, tselah, in every other place it is used in the Bible is translated as “side” or as “a part”. When someone refers to their spouse as their “better half” that is actually a great way of communicating what the storyteller is saying about God’s creation of the man and the woman. There is a sense of something missing, of being incomplete when we are not living in community with others.
It reminds me of Shel Silverstein’s book The Missing Piece. In the end, through its search and through trial and error, the shape discovers that it was created to have a missing piece, created to always have a sense of a need for another. That sense of being incomplete is not a failure or something to be ashamed of. The need to be in community with others in order to be whole is how God designed us. The first humans came together as one; they become one flesh, the storyteller says. Yet in the next breath, the next sentence, they are still two, the man and the woman, both naked, both vulnerable in their need for each other, and yet they feel no shame.
This is imagery about marriage and family, but it fits with the imagery for the church family as well, for the one Body of Christ that is made up of many members. I wonder if we might look around at one another and exclaim, as the man did, “This one at last, bone of my bones; and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called Christian; for from Christ was this one taken.”
God At Work – in Christ, in Us
God at work! God at working creating – creating life, creating purpose, creating community. But the humans defied the instructions given to them by God. They ate of that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and death did indeed enter into God’s good creation. And as the three-in-one God considered this together, looking in love on their world and the living creatures in it, grieving the loss and destruction, anticipating the pain and the dangers, the Son, the Christ, offered to humble Himself to set aside His divine privileges and power as God, and become one with their creation, to become a human being. I will become the True Gardener, the Good Shepherd for the sheep, he said. I will lay down my life for them, I will gather them together as one flock, one people, under one shepherd, one leader. (Jn.10:15-16)
And he did. Jesus is the Son, the Christ, the Savior sent from God to defeat death, to rescue us and to begin the process of recreating the world. He makes each of us a new creation in the image of Jesus Christ, to be creators ourselves, to be co-creators taking care of the earth and of one another, to participate as disciples in God at work. May we always remember our place as God’s handiwork, remember the privilege and responsibility of being invited to create and care and love alongside God. Our mission is to worship God, and to teach, encourage and practice discipleship! To see God at work, and to join God in that work!
Closing Song: “For The Beauty of the Earth” # 353
Add Your Comment