God Gives Humans Each Other
Pentecost + 13 – September 8, 2019
God’s Work, Our Hands Sunday
• Fitting that this reading from Genesis falls on this Sunday
• Start of new NL year – and we will hear all fall stories from the Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures before landing back oin Mark as the focus after Christmas
• 2nd version of creation, with he order of things being jumbled up a bit from Chapter 1
o Scholars suspect 2 different stories told to different audiences, at different times of their history as a people, and so focused on different details and descriptions of God’s work as creator
o Chapter 2 less cosmic than chapter 1 and with a God who is more up close and personal
• God apparently wants a garden – the earth and the heavens have been made, but there’s no plant or wildlife yet, not even rain – b/c there was no one to till the ground
• And so God makes a living being from the dust – an “earthling” as it were, and breathes life into its nostrils
• And then the LORD God is able to plant the garden, and puts the earthling there
o And trees grow in abundance, ones that are nice to look at and give good food to eat
o And a river flows to provide water
o And God gives the man a job, to till and keep the garden (as well as the command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil – but that’s a sermon for another day)
Even in Eden, there is a sense of vocation
And then God realizes that something has been forgotten.
• “It is not good that the man should be alone.”
• So God starts this creative work of forming every animal of the field and every bird of the air and bringing them to Adam (adam/adamah) to see and to give them all names (more vocation) – and whatever the man called them, that was its name
• But among them, the man did not find a helper as his partner
It is not good for us to be alone
• We are created to be in relationship – not just for marriage or romantic partnerships
• Not everyone has that After all
• But this sense that we need one another
• Even with meaningful work, with that sense of vocation, that God has created us with a purpose
o To care and tend to the world that God has made and placed us in; to be caretakers of the whole creation
o To contribute to the well-being of the world in some way
• There is the sense that we need one another
• Human life is not something that we can or ought to try to navigate on our own
• Not just that we need others to help us to complete the work God calls us to, but that we need the support and company and enjoyment of other people in supportive, helping relationships in order to be fully who God created us to be
God creates a partner-helper for the man
• God sees this need
• And when God realizes that none of the animals will be the type of helper the man needs, God creates another human being
o Made out of the earthling’s rib – not directly from the dust of the earth this time
o One who shares DNA and is “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”
o Sharing his makeup; like him enough to be a partner and helper in life
God gives us others to walk through life with
• This is the blessing (and sometimes challenge!) of life – that God did not design for us to go through it alone
• And that God gives us other human beings to be companions on this journey
o To be helpers and partners
o To offer support and encouragement
o And to work with us in the things that God has called us to do
• Christians understand that we were not placed on this earth just to do our own thing and meet our own needs
o God created us with purpose, with vocation –
o God created us to do God’s work with our hands and feet and bodies and voices and eyes and ears and all that we are
o To be partners and helpers of one another
o To look beyond ourselves and see a creation that is need of help, in need of hope, in need of healing
o And to offer our lives as part of the solutions
• God’s Work, Our Hands Sunday is one way of living out this idea that we are made to be in relationship, that we are created to tend to the earth that God made and the plants and animals, the air and water and earth
• And to help one another – b/c the journey isn’t always easy
o And some have greater challenges and obstacles than others
• We are designed to work together to bear the load, to offer a helping hand, to do what we can to make this journey more joyful
• To be united as one common humanity, that sees in each other fellow human beings who God created from the dust, knowing that God created us to care for and tend and help on another
• What a joy to be in partnership with God and with each other!
• Amen.
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