In the Garden
A sermon on Genesis 2: It all starts with a non-binary human, a garden created to bring joy and delight, and men and women as equal partners.
then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
this one shall be called Woman, this one was taken.”Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed. ~Genesis 2:7–9, 15–25 NRSV
The Genesis 2 creation story begins not with a formless void like Genesis 1. Instead, this creation story begins with dust and dirt. There’s no plant life and no rain. There’s no need for a garden because there is no one to till, or tend, the earth. So that is where God begins. By creating humankind.
Unlike in Genesis 1, where God speaks creation into being, here God gets Their hands dirty digging into the earth, shaping and forming humanity as a potter fashions artwork from a slab of clay. After creating the human, God brings them to life by breathing God’s very own breath into them.
I use the pronoun “them” here for the human because this story contains no Hebrew words for man or woman until after woman is formed. At this point, we only have the play on words, h’adam created from the adamah. The human created from the earth. At this point in the story, we do not have man or woman but a human who embodies both male and female, a non-binary human from which both man and woman will come.
This human is filled with the breath of God, which many of us think of as a soul. Whenever God feels far away, connect with your breath, and remember that God is so close that God’s own breath gives your life.
After creating humankind, the very next thing that God fashions into being is a garden. This garden is a gift for humanity, and its extravagance shows us something about the nature of God. You see, this garden isn’t simply functional. God could have created a tree of IV drips or plants of vitamin tablets, or rows of powdery nutrition bars to sustain humankind. Instead, God creates all sorts of different trees and flowers and vegetation that have unique shapes and colors and different smells and tastes. God makes a lush garden that is a feast for all of the senses as the human feasts for sustenance. God creates a garden that produces joy and delight in the human as well as food and shelter for them, so God desires for pleasure and happiness to nourish the human soul just as food and water nourish the body.
God gives the human a purpose: to till, or tend, the garden. Humankind has responsibility and is intended to work. As tilling the earth is necessary for a garden to grow, our work can be meaningful and create joy and delight. In her book The Very Good Gospel, Lisa Sharon Harper notes that the Hebrew word for till can also mean serve and protect. She writes, “Genesis 2 reveals humans’ essential calling, which is to serve and protect the needs, boundaries, and well-being of the rest of creation.”
Speaking of boundaries, God places some of those on humankind, as well. The human can eat freely from the garden’s abundance, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God warns that on the day that the human eats the fruit of that tree, they shall die. We’ll explore this next Sunday.
God decides that it’s not good for the human to be alone. They need a helper as a partner, so God once again gets busy creating. Digging into the earth, God begins to create all sorts of animal life. God invites the human to serve as co-creator by allowing humankind to name each animal after it is made. While the animals are marvelous, none of them proves to be a suitable partner for the human.
So God lulls the human into a deep sleep. As they slumber, our English Bibles tell us that God takes one of the human’s ribs to form another human. Now, in our story, the words for man and woman appear. So the woman comes from the man’s rib, a small piece of the man. Interestingly, that word for rib is only used one other time in the Old Testament, and that is to describe a part of the arc of the covenant. But, of course, the arc of the covenant wouldn’t have ribs, would it? This rectangular house for God had sides, not ribs.
Not only that, but let’s explore the kind of helper that God says the human needs. Many interpret these verses to support complementarianism, which states that men are the head over women. The Hebrew word for helper, ezer, appears 21 times in the Old Testament, and it’s always used in one of two contexts. It either refers to the kind of help that God gives, or it’s used as a military term describing the point person in a V formation. Neither of those sound like a subordinate helper, do they? Ezer describes a person who protects like God or defends like a warrior.
This story reads a little bit differently, doesn’t it, if woman doesn’t come from a broken-off little piece of man, but instead a non-binary being that encompasses both man and woman divides like a cell creating two distinct beings? If instead of woman being man’s subordinate helper, these two equal beings are created to protect and defend each other as partners?
This part of the story ends by telling us that man and woman are naked and unashamed.
This year we begin Lent in the garden, an extravagant gift of abundance and beauty and joy and delight for humanity. We start with an awareness that humans are different. The story addresses the gender difference, but we know there are many differences between people: ethnicities, races, sexualities, abilities, and more. We may be different, but we are all made from the same stuff: dust of the earth and the breath of God. Despite the differences, we humans are created as equal partners, or a team, designed to protect and defend one another and serve and tend all creation with humility and without fear or shame.
That’s not a bad place to start, is it? Sounds like Paradise Lost, doesn’t it? I guess it is. But it also sounds like a Kingdom, or to use a womanist term, Kin-dom, of God waiting to be built. The soil is waiting to be tilled. That is our calling. Amen.
