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Sexagesima
The Fifth Sunday After The Epiphany
Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us,we beseech thee, the liberty of that abundant life which thou hast manifested to us in thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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The Fifth Sunday After The Epiphany
Sexagesima
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Scripture citation(s): Genesis 2:4b-25
A Sermon by
The Rev. Canon Carl Turner
on
Genesis 2:4b-25
✛
"Gardeners' World"
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audio_file: 357932
The Old Testament Lesson today is the second story of creation in the Book of Genesis. I love this story because it is the kind of story one would read to a child at bedtime. In fact, we should remember that the words of the scriptures that are now written down were once spoken – the oral tradition was what preceded all the books of the bible, including the Gospels. I guess the only ones that were not preceded by some kind of oral tradition are the letters to the emerging churches in the New Testament.
In our first session of the Pilgrims’ Course, we reflect on God as Father and Creator of the Universe. Many people who journey with us on our Pilgrims’ Course ask the question, “What does it mean to be made in God’s image or likeness?” It is one of the most common questions and that is why we explore it together.
The first account of the creation in the Book of Genesis is very different from the second account. In the first, God creates order out of chaos; we are told that in the beginning there is darkness, and that the Spirit hovered over the face of the water or the great deep. God’s creative Word utters the immortal line “Let there be light” and we are told that there was light and that it was good and that God immediately divided the light from darkness.
The word for Spirit – the word used in King James and the Revised Standard Versions of the Bible – is the Hebrew word for breath or wind [1]. God’s creative spirit breathes life into creation and God’s Word brings order out of chaos, and in such a way as to order time itself into days and weeks.
In the second account of creations, we have a story that is similar to many ancient creation myths that describe a cosmic battle, or a god physically making things with his or her hands. We see vestiges of these ancient near-Eastern myths in the Hebrew Scriptures such as in the psalms when we learn about “that great Leviathan,” (Psalm 104:26) reminiscent of the dragons of ancient cosmic warfare.
In the first account of creation, humankind is the culmination of God’s creativity. In the second account that we heard this evening, the creative process begins with the creation of Adam. Formed out of the dust of the ground, he is called Adam – the Hebrew word for the dust of the ground – Adamah [2]. But in order for the creature to be animated, God needed to breath the breath of life into his nostrils. There are many beautiful ancient depictions of this in some of the great churches of the world, and in the Orthodox tradition, it is the Word of God depicted as Jesus Christ, who breaths the breath of life into the nostrils of Adam.
In the second account of creation, after creating Adam, and animating him with the breath of life, God plants a garden.
Now, you have heard Fr. Gioia talk about the garden that he planted and nurtured in London. I, also, have planted gardens in several places, learning how to do it from my father, who adored his own garden when I was a child. Gardening is not simply about growing things, it is in our very nature as creatures who are made in the image of God to cultivate and to care for creation. When young people despair at the way that my generation has polluted the earth, I feel sad not because we should have known better, but because it reminds me that it is in our very nature to be stewards of God’s creation.
After instructing Adam in the ways of horticulture, God recognizes that Adam is going to be pretty lonely in this endeavor. So he creates all the animals, and has them pass before Adam, who names them. Unfortunately, not one of them is a very useful helpmate – elephants are not particularly sensitive partners when it comes to gardening! The second account of creation is, again, different from the first. In the first, God creates humankind in his image, male and female he created them. In this second account, like many ancient myths, God quite literarily gets his hands into the stuff of creation by anaesthetizing the man and removing a rib to create his helpmate, or partner as the New Revised Standard Version translates the Hebrew, and creates a woman [3]. Thus, like the first account, it is man and woman together that reflect the image of God back to him.
In our Pilgrims’ Class, I like to show a clip of the great Biblical Scholar, NT Wright, explaining how humankind is made in the image of God. He does so by describing the ancient understanding of a temple. [4]
Wright explores how all ancient temples, except the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, contained an image or likeness, often translated idol of the God to be worshipped, so that people would know which God or Goddess they were worshipping. However, Wright suggests, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is the whole created world that is the Temple: God created everything and he “saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31a). God placed an image of himself within it – that is, humankind – so that, in his words, “creation can appropriately worship him through that image, so that the power and love and sovereignty of God can be exercised in the world through the image.”
In other words, the caring for the garden is synonymous with responsibility for the whole of the created order, including all human beings living in that created order.
Now, many people like to understand the concept of being made in the image of God as being like a reflection in a mirror. That’s all well and good, except that it is very passive because it is simply a reflection. But being made in the image of God image is not like looking at yourself in a mirror in which God’s image is reflected back to him. Rather, Wright argues, humankind made as the image of God is more like an angled mirror in which (again to use his words) “the worship of creation is reflected up to God, and the stewardship and love and purposes of God are reflected into the world.”
Thus, this second story of creation is one of partnership not simply between Adam and Eve and the created order, including all other human beings to come, but partnership with God in whose image we are made.
All of this finds its fulfillment in the life of Jesus Christ who, as St. Paul says, “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation,” (Colossians 1:15). He is the new Adam – the one who came to restore the broken relationship between God the Creator and those he had made in his likeness. As St. Paul says so often, we are all called to be conformed to that image. That journey began at our baptism, and it does not end at our death – the whole of our life is a journey to become more Christ-like.
In John’s Gospel, unlike the synoptic Gospels, on the day that Jesus rises from the dead and appears to Mary Magdalene (significantly, in a garden) we are told that on that same day he appeared in an upper room to his disciples. Listen again to the significance of what John shares with us:
Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” (John 20:19b-23)
Jesus, the creative Word of God, who breathed life into the first Adam, now breathes God’s Holy Spirit on to his disciples and with it, the ministry of reconciliation. If you will, the Easter mystery allows us all to be more truly images of the Creator, and restore the broken relationships between humanity, God, and the world. If you will, by living out that ‘angled mirror’ by which we worship but also learn to serve, united in the love that has been poured out into the world through our Lord Jesus Christ. Or, if you want to put it even more simply, the way that we return to the origins of life by caring for creation and getting down to some gardening.
Sermon Audio
References
| ↑1 | רוּחַ |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | Adam = אָדָם Soil or earth = אדמה |
| ↑3 | אִשָׁה. = woman |
| ↑4 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8gtYZpnG1Y |
