The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.” So the Lord God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The Lord God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man. When he brought her to the man, the man said, “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of ‘her man’ this one has been taken.” (Gen 2.8, 21-23)
In one of his many theological books, the renowned Dominican scholar, Edward Schillebeeckx, recalled for his readers the fascinating historical fact that, as he wrote, “According to all kinds of apocryphal writings, even the angels were offended by God’s love for man.” While these non-canonical sources are not familiar to many people, the notion that the angels were jealous of God’s love for the humans he created has persisted, some of these early writers claiming that the fall of Lucifer was because he refused to bow down to the man and woman.
Whether fanciful thinking or truthful insight, the idea that even the angels were offended by God’s love for humans finds strong support in the passage from the Hebrew scriptures, a canonical text, that we consider today, a selection from the creation story found in the second chapter of the first book of the scriptures, the Book of Genesis.
Before going any further, it is important to remember that there are two stories of creation that are recorded in this text, one in the first chapter and the other in the second chapter, two quite different versions of the event, the first probably more familiar to people, with the creation of everything in the world in six days, ending with the creation of the man and woman, made in the image of the Creator.
The second account, considered by scholars a much more ancient text, reverses the order, and so begins with the creation of the first human out of the clay of the ground, and then proceeds to the creation of the other living creatures. Whereas in the first account everything is created by a command from the Creator, here we see a very hands-on Creator, digging into the mud and forming with his own hands, not only the first human, but also all living things, a picturesque portrayal that almost insinuates the attentive activity of a child playing in the mud.
Even a less than careful reading of this creation story makes clear that the Creator is intimately involved in what he creates and that he creates for the wellbeing of his human creatures. As soon as he has finished forming Adam out of the mud, he plants a garden and places Adam there, providing him with a hospitable home in which to live.
But, as the early Christian writer, Gregory of Nyssa, once observed, “With God, there is always more unfolding,” so the Creator does not stop, but continues, creating next “various wild animals and various birds of the air, bringing them to the man to see what he would call them,” in this way showing that these creatures were for the man.
Fascinatingly, the writer offers an addendum, writing, “But none proved to be the suitable partner for the man,” implying that the Creator’s intention in putting these other creatures in the garden was to provide the man with companionship, again showing the Creator’s deep concern for his first creature. Now, seeing that the animals did not provide the man with satisfactory company, the Creator, putting the man into a deep sleep, removed one of his ribs and fashioned a partner for him, this one called a woman by the man.
Again, the scene presents here a hands-on God, working while the man is asleep, taking a rib from him, closing up the space with flesh, and “building up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man.” Whereas the Creator in the first account is characterized by his voice, the Creator in the second account is characterized by his hands, an anthropomorphized deity that works with his hands and walks in the garden with his creatures, always close by, caring for them as a mother with her children.
Both accounts want to convey important, even if different, truths about the Creator and about the creatures he has made, the first offering a picture of an omniscient and omnipotent creator who speaks from on high into the nothingness, his word doing the work of creation, the second offering a picture of a visible and compassionate creator who walks upon the earth, his hands doing the work of creation, the latter offering a keen foreshadowing of the Christian belief in the Incarnation.
Certainly, this second version offers a rebuttal to the hand-scribbled graffiti found on the wall of the New York City subway system that read, “God is alive. He just doesn’t want to get involved.” Reading the second account of the creation, we see the opposite is true. This God very much wants to get involved. And the cause for his involvement, as we have seen, is because he loves the humans he has made by the work of his hands, a love so real and so excessive that it evokes jealousy in the angels.
And perhaps that is why both stories of creation survived through the long history of the Jewish people, a people too often persecuted and put upon by greater powers, a people who often wondered if God was far removed from their concerns. With the second story of creation, the answer was clear. He was not distant, but was close, their concerns his concerns, their suffering his suffering. He still walked with them, even if the garden had long ago disappeared.
Surely, that message is as much needed now as it was during the centuries of struggles for the Jews , as foreign powers enslaved them, assailed them, and later displaced them from their homeland. While we may not suffer from the brutality of foreign powers, we suffer from other powers that seem equally intractable and insurmountable, these alien forces called poverty and adversity, inequality and insecurity, disability and infirmity, to name just a few.
Often feeling hapless and helpless, we find ourselves also questioning God’s concern for us, his presence among us, his knowledge of us. The text from the Hebrew scriptures that we hear today offers an antidote to that fear, reminding us that as God was at the beginning, solicitous and alacritous, so he is now, ever unchanging, ever caring. Even now, he does not hesitate to get his hands dirty, working in the mudpiles of our lives, molding life from the clay.
That same belief or hope is spoken aloud by Frederick Buechner in his book, Speaking Secrets, when he writes, “The God of biblical faith is a God who started history going in the first place. He is also a God who moment by moment, day by day continues to act in history always, which means both the history that gets written down in the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle and at the same time my history and your history, which for the most part don’t get written down anywhere except in the few lines that may be allotted to us some day on the obituary page.”
Pondering at length the God-who-is-with-us, Buechner offers this consoling thought, “Events happen under their own steam as random as rain, which means that God is present in them not as their cause but as the one who even in the hardest and most hair-raising of them offers us the possibility of that new life and healing which I believe is what salvation is.”
Certainly, this is the message of Rabbi Jesus, also called Emmanuel by his believers, God-with-us, his walk upon earth representing in a real way the walk in the garden, his concern always for the humans beside him, his hands reaching into the mud pits bringing life where there was death, hope where there was despair, and strength where there was weakness. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be because the Creator does not abandon his creatures.
A national newspaper carried a story this past summer about two brothers in Iowa, Cole, age 10, and Blake, age 8, who were riding their bicycles near their home when they discovered a group of dead baby turtles crushed by cars as they tried to cross the busy road. The brothers climbed off their bikes and began to help other small turtles get across the road.
Not content to consider their work done, the boys returned to the crossing every day for the rest of the summer to help the turtles cross the road between the marsh and the lake where the turtles looked for new nesting spots. They asked three friends to help them with the work. One of the boys, nine-year-old Keygan, explained, “The turtles seem okay with us moving them but they usually tuck their heads inside as soon as we pick them up. We’re helping them see a lot of extra days, and that makes me feel happy.”
Ever vigilant, the boys have had to hold up their arms on occasion to stop a car if the turtles are on the move. Estimating that they had saved more than two hundred turtles over the summer, Keygan said, “We do it because they’re living things. We don’t want to see them run over and killed.” Hearing the boys’ story, we know they are the children to whom Rabbi Jesus said the Kingdom of God belongs.
If these young boys can work each day to save turtles simply because they’re living things, how much more does the Creator of the man and the woman work on their behalf because they also are living things, the first he molded into human form from the mud, the first in whom he breathed his breath, the first he guarded and loved as his own.
Today, that primeval story of creation comes to life again from the pages of sacred scripture, telling the story of a God head-over-heels in love with the humans he had formed by his own hands, a love story that unfolded before the eyes of the onlooking angels who, seeing the depths of God’s love for these creatures, could only stand and stare in awe, asking themselves what God saw in these mortals, generally weak and unquestionably fragile, that he did not see in them, perfectly formed and undeniably fierce.
Perhaps it was their weakness that he loved, children whom he taught to walk, the work of his hands who, if they were going to make it to the other side of the road, would need him every step of the way. Rabbi Jesus, intimately knowing the heart of the God of Genesis, assured us that it is a love that has not ended but has grown with the eons, as the Creator continues to watch over his creatures, raising them up when they fall and skin their knees, wiping their tears when the day has been too long, and holding them in his arms as they fall asleep when the last night comes.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 