Text: Genesis 2:18-25
Date: Pentecost XIX + 10/14/12
One Hundred and seventy-six years ago on October 2, 1836 naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) returned to Falmouth, England aboard the HMS Beagle after a five-year journey collecting biological data he would later use to develop his theory of evolution. Increasingly through the years his so-called “theory” has taken on the illusion of “fact” in the public realm even without passing the usual scientific tests that alone distinguish facts from theories and mere hypotheses from fantasies. Such is the wisdom of this world.
How mysterious on the other hand, and beyond any and all modern scientific inquiry is the revelation of the origin of all things given to us by God through His inspiration of His servant Moses in the first book of the Bible. In the first chapter of Genesis God told us of the creation of the world. “In the beginning” are the first words, which is a mystery in itself as it means God created space and time out of nothing—a concept I can’t even imagine. “God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void.” On the first day, light was created, and we are told that “God saw that the light was good”—not in the sense of the opposite of “evil” or “bad” but rather “complete,” “finished” and perfect. On the second day God created the heavens, and the dry land and the seas, and again “God saw that it was good,” complete, finished, perfect. On the third day God created vegetation and trees and “saw that it was good.” The fourth day saw the stars, the sun and the moon, “and God saw that it was good.” On the fifth day appeared fish and birds and again God “saw that it was good.” Finally on the sixth day of creation came livestock, creeping things and beasts (behemoths). They too were created “good.” Then man was created, humankind in the image of God, male and female, “and God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good,” complete, finished, “righteous,” everything working together according to God’s perfect design.
Genesis chapter two then begins with the description of the seventh day, the holy day, and we are told that God “rested,” not of course because He was tired or weary, but, like the word “good,” “rest” also indicates completeness. Now these two words, “good” and “rest,” with the meaning of completeness are important because in Genesis 2 suddenly the story, the film, the video, the DVD is turned back to describe the creation of man on the sixth day in greater detail. There we are told the shocking news that, after everything God created “good,” suddenly here God declares, something “is NOT GOOD!” What is not good? “It is not good that the man should be alone.” Again, “not good” does not imply evil or imperfection but only incompleteness. It is the incompleteness of being alone.
Can you imagine, then, on that day, God parading “every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens” before the man, almost as if to taunt Adam, each animal with its mate, male and female, like a grand wedding procession as it were, as Adam gave them their names? But, we’re told, for the man there was no mate, no “helper fit for him.” The word translated “fit” or “meet” means “corresponding,” a mate that is like the man and yet different in some way. There is, of course, the obvious difference of gender thus for the purpose of fulfilling God’s blessing and command, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28). Speaking as a man, it seems, however, that there is a more mysterious “difference” that men have never TO THIS DAY completely figured out! So the first woman came from the man, “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Yet ever since then every man or woman has come from a woman.
The incomplete, unfinished, partial, half done, “not good” quality is to be “alone.” The Hebrew word translated “alone” refers to isolation or separation. It is “not good” to be alone. I’m told there is no word for “independence” in classical Hebrew. Only God is truly independent. As sin entered the picture its primary effect is separation. In today’s Gospel Jesus’ enemies ask about divorce. Jesus points them to God’s original, “good” design, saying, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” Separation, isolation, to be alone is the effect of sin.
Our lives are pock marked by separation, isolation, loneliness almost every time we turn around. Sin still exercises its deadly influence in so many ways. Alone we face our days sometimes tempted to exult ourselves over our competition, our neighbor, standing alone. Then alone we mourn the great enemy of death that has taken a loved one from us. Alone we may turn to a variety of things to take away the emptiness, to fill the void, to numb the pain. So alone are we that we feel helpless, weak, at our wit’s end. St. Paul put it into words, saying, “wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24).
The answer to that question can be only One who has taken our loneliness and aloneness away, taken it into Himself. Like us Christ was born of a woman, born under the law of God. He came into our world in this way in order “to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:5), that we may no longer be alone but part of the great family of God. He endured temptation all by Himself, alone. He was rejected, despised, “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised” (Is 53:3). He was not only rejected by us but “we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted” (Is 53:4). Jesus, God’s Son, endured the hell of separation praying from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest” (Ps 22:1-2). The forsakenness, that solitude is, in a word, hell—exclusion from life. Christ endured sin, death and hell for us, for you, in order to liberate you from the darkness of all that is not good, from being helpless, alone. Only then was “not good” turned into “good,” when Jesus announced, “It is finished!” He has taken away the sin of the world and open the kingdom of heaven to all believers. God’s salvation is finished, complete, good.
You are no longer alone, therefore. You are no longer alone—with Christ. Even if everyone around you runs away from you, abandons you, you are still not alone. God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone.” Beyond the design of creation is the design of the Creator. It is not good that a man should be alone. That is, every man, every person, is created by God to belong to God. You are not on your own. You belong to God. You were bought with a price (1 Cor 7:23). Christ died for everybody. Not for everybody except you, but for everybody including you. You belong to Christ. And Christ belongs to God.
“Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom 7:24-25).