Sunday, September 10, 2023
Spirit of Hope Lutheran Church, Lincoln, NE
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (narrative lectionary)
watch this service online (readings start around 25:20; children’s sermon starts around 28:52; sermon starts around 37:55)
Reading: Genesis 2:4b-25
In the children’s sermon today, I brought a container of Play-Doh. I asked the kids if the whole glob of Play-Doh was all made up of the same stuff (yes), then split it into two pieces and then smaller pieces and asked them if it was still made up of the same stuff (yes). We talked about how in the bible story we read, God makes humans from the dust of the earth (not exactly Play-Doh, but close enough) and basically splits the same ball of clay in order to make the first two humans. And not only that, but all the things God makes — trees and plants and birds and all different kinds of animals — God makes them all out of the earth, just like humans. In a way, that makes us family with creation — we’re all made of the same stuff. So we talked about what it means to be part of a family, how they love us and care for us and how we have responsibilities and have to do things like chores as part of how we love and care for them back — God also calls us to do this for the earth.
Many years ago, back when I lived in Lincoln the last time, I was in a bible study at Grace Lutheran Church. This particular study focused on looking at the bible as a whole, and we spent time tracing out some of the major overarching narratives that run throughout the whole book. We started with the first few chapters of Genesis — of course — creation, the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, all that. And then we came to the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4. And in our discussion, the bible study leader made a comment that has stuck with me ever since. After Cain kills his brother (spoilers!), God comes to speak with him and asks him, “Where is your brother Abel?” Cain immediately gets defensive and is like, “How should I know?” And he asks God a key question: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Our study leader proposed that you could honestly interpret the entire rest of the bible as God’s answer to that question, which is: a bold, resounding, all caps “YES! YES, you are your brother’s keeper.”
We see the seeds of that planted from the very beginning, here in the second chapter of Genesis. We have this story of God creating the first humans, shaping them by hand from the dust of the earth. At first, God just makes one human – but God isn’t satisfied with the idea of this first human being alone. So after trying out a few other options, God decides to make another human so they’ll have each other for company. But instead of scooping up another handful of dust from the earth, God decides to do a quick bit of divine amputation, and suddenly one human creature becomes two. Two people who are one flesh – it kind of makes you hear the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself in a whole new way!
Now, there’s an important note to be made here regarding translation – and stick with me, because this is gonna get nerdy. Just about every version or translation of the bible I’ve encountered translates this story in more or less the same way: the old familiar tale where God creates a Man, knocks him out, and yanks out one of his ribs in order to create Woman. This telling of the story – as popular as it is – has also had the unfortunate effect of casting women as being literally lesser and secondary to men. (As a woman literally on stage, in charge, holding a microphone, you can probably guess that I take issue with this!)
But that translation gets a bit dicey when you start digging into the original Hebrew – specifically, when you look at what translators decide to do with the Hebrew word tsela. Tsela is a word that appears dozens of times throughout the Old Testament, and it’s the word that in this passage is translated as “rib.” In fact, this story is the only place it’s translated as “rib.” Everywhere else it appears in scripture, tsela is actually translated as “side.”
So it’s not very accurate to say God took a rib from the first human to create the second one; God took a tsela, a side. This gives the distinct sense that God split the first human right down the middle in order to create two humans, one from each side. So the first two people God creates are literally made from each other – two halves of a whole.
While we’re here digging around into the Hebrew, it’s also worth taking a moment to appreciate some of the fun, punny wordplay in this passage that’s hard to capture in the English translation. You may have noticed that neither of the first two humans is named in our reading for today, even though we know them as Adam and Eve. However, the word adam actually appears in this passage 16 times. Almost every time “the man” is mentioned, what the Hebrew actually says is “the adam.” The only exceptions to this are when it talks about the man leaving his family to be with his wife, and when the first human names himself Man and his wife Woman – in both these cases, the Hebrew uses the more specifically gendered ish for man and ishah for woman.
Adam is also the word used in Genesis 1 when God says to Godself, “Let us make humans (adam) in our image.” It’s used again in the following verse, where God creates humans (adam) – “male and female” God creates them. 🤯 So again we see that we have a questionable bit of translation in Genesis 2: this choice to translate “the adam” as “the man,” when in reality “the adam” should be translated as “the human.”
And actually, even that doesn’t quite capture the full meaning of adam. That’s where the punniness comes in. See, adam is directly derived from the Hebrew word adamah, which means “earth” or “ground.” So really, what we’re talking about in this passage is an “earth creature” – or, as we jokingly said in my Old Testament class, an “earthling.” (Actually, the professor of that class suggested that to preserve the Hebrew pun, we should start calling the first human “Dusty” instead of “Adam,” lol)
Anyway, it’s worth getting into the weeds a bit in these texts, because the language used here matters. Understanding some of these translation choices is important for helping us to address some of the ways that humans have misinterpreted and misused the stories of creation throughout our history. In the case of Genesis 2, these word choices have given us this male-dominated story that has often directly led to the devaluing of women.
There’s a similar issue in the first chapter of Genesis, with the verse where God gives humans “dominion” over the earth and the living things on it. This one isn’t really a translation issue. It’s more that humans have often interpreted that “dominion” as free license to exploit and mistreat creation for their own ends – instead of understanding that what God truly calls us to is stewardship of the earth.
I think this passage from Genesis 2 shows us in a really visceral way just how wrong that interpretation is. And it goes even deeper than a matter of poor stewardship. I noticed something in this passage for the first time as I was reading it this past week: In the beginning of this story, God has made the earth. Then a stream rises up to water the ground – from the earth. Then God forms the first human – from the earth. Then God makes fruit trees and vegetation spring up – from the earth. Then God makes “every animal of the field and every bird of the air” – you guessed it – from the earth.
All these things God makes come from the same source: the earth. They are all made of the same stuff. These first two humans God creates are not just made from each other – they are of one flesh with all of creation. It’s a surprisingly scientifically accurate revelation of scripture! We are of one piece with the rest of creation – and that should influence the way that we view and treat the earth. This earth is more than just a resource or a heap of raw materials waiting to be extracted. We and the earth are intimately related. Creation is more than where we live – it is our family. Creation is our family, every bit as beloved by God as we ourselves are. Together with us, creation is part of the family of God.
And just like in any family, we are meant to be in relationships of mutual care and love. In this family, the earth shelters us and feeds us, giving us drinkable water and breathable air and everything we need to flourish. And we, in our turn, are called to be like loving siblings, taking responsibility for the well-being of creation and treating the earth with care and respect. We are called to love one another and all creation with the same love with which God – the heavenly Parent of our family – first loved us.
We humans are still struggling, hundreds of generations later, with that same question that Cain asked way back at the dawn of creation: Are we our siblings’ keeper? And the answer God gives us is still that same bold, resounding, all caps YES. Yes, we are our siblings’ keeper. And they are ours. And together, we are one beloved family in God, who is the keeper of us all.
This is the Day 