Rev. Cari Pattison
Woodstock Reformed Church
Sunday, September 15, 2024
Sections of Genesis: Eve
“Begin at the Beginning”
Focus theme: Made in the Image of God
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Genesis 1
26 God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness…
27 So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and care for it and watch over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
29 God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.
31 God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
A 2nd account of the Creation, from Genesis 2
In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, … 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.
18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” 20 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.
21 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. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.”
24 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.
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This is the Word of the Lord; thanks be to God.
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Another version of the story goes something like this:
“So God tells Adam, ‘I’m going to make you a wife, a helpmate, the most beautiful woman who ever lived. She’ll be intelligent, enthusiastic, and uncomplaining. But it’ll cost you.’
“Adam asks, ‘How much?’
“ ‘An eye, an elbow, a collarbone, and your left knee.’
“Adam thinks for a minute, then asks, ‘What can I get for a rib?’”
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If you think this joke is problematic, try the original text!
Chances are, even the most non-religious, biblically illiterate person walking down Tinker Street, knows something about Genesis 1-3, and the story of Adam and Eve.
Not only the subject of bad jokes and memes, this man and woman leave an indelible image in our western imagination- as these iconic first figures of creation.
And while most of us assume we already know all there is to know about this story, going back to Sunday school-
much of what we know likely comes from art and literature and pop culture, more than it does from the Bible.
If you’ve read Milton’s Paradise Lost, or been exposed to most interpretations of Adam and Eve we’ve been handed, you’ll probably answer a predictable set of questions the way most people would-
Whom did God make first?
Who tempted them in the garden?
Who sinned first?
What did she eat?
And what happened as a result?
As a result of these interpretations, we’ve been given over 2000 years of assumptions about God, gender, Satan, sin, temptation, and relationships.
We as a church through the centuries have inherited concepts about sexuality, misogyny, and suffering that people form from these first chapters of scripture.
And we could easily spend a whole year of sermons unpacking both the beauty and the damage resulting from the reading and misreading of this text-
the ways this passage has been distorted and used to abuse women and justify misogyny- such that men and women lose out.
But what if there’s more than meets the eye?
Whether you take the book of Genesis literally, historically, or symbolically, you can’t escape the fact that this text is the animating force of the Judeo-Christian creation story! Every culture has its origin story, its way of explaining, “How did we get here?” “Why is life hard?” “How did evil enter the world?” “What is our purpose?”
But this week and next week, we’re going to look at what I think is the core of this text –
“What does it mean to be made in the image of God?”
Because at the heart of this story, that’s the question I hear.
And I believe it’s an important one God has for us today.
What does it mean to be image-bearers of the living God,
And what does it look like to recognize and honor the image of God in ourselves and in one another?
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And we will specifically focus on Eve.
We are entering a year of scriptures from The Women’s Lectionary, which I am really excited about!
After 4 years of preaching on Peter and Paul, Moses and Saul, Samuel and David, John the Baptist and Jesus-
I’ve been moved by so many of these stories-
But I realized I’ve been preaching 4 years on pretty much nothing but men.
Why does it matter? You ask. Isn’t that mostly what the Bible’s about?
One occasional church visitor, who happens to be a woman, considers herself religiously curious- but skeptical. She asked me one day, “Cari, how can you minister in a religion and preach from a Bible- that is basically by men, about men, and for men, with male language for God?”
Her question struck me.
By men? About men? For men?
I quickly loaned her one of my books on women of the Bible, which got me thinking-
“Why am I not preaching on any of this?”
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There’s a Chinese proverb that says, “Women hold up half the sky.”
And indeed, just as we all- of every gender- can learn vital truths from the men in scripture-
We all need these stories of the women!
And they are abundant! They hold up half the sky of our library of scripture.
We all- women, men, non-binary- have important things to discover from the many women in the Bible:
Stories that teach us not only about the lives and lessons of the women themselves- but highlight essential qualities about God, humanity, and the world around us and in us.
There are so many treasures of women waiting for us, we won’t even make it through all of them in the coming year- I had to pare down to what would fit between now and next summer.
My goal in this sermon series is to not only lift up the lives and lessons of these biblical women, but to relate them back to Jesus, and reflect on what they teach us for our lives today.
So let us begin at the beginning-
With Eve.
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Her name means “mother of the living,” though she’s not actually named until the very end of chapter 3.
You may notice in that first creation account I read, from Genesis 1- God says, “Let us make humankind in our image.”
Who is the “we”? Isn’t God a singular God?
Some scholars believe God’s referring to a heavenly council of angels, but many Christians have interpreted this first-person plural to refer to the Holy Trinity-
Genesis mentions “the Spirit hovered over the surface of the waters,” and John’s Gospel opens with “In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made, and without him not one thing came into being that was made.”
That is, the Spirit and the Son- the Living Word- were with God at the dawn of Creation.
And collectively, God said, “Let us make humans in our image.”
And then we’re told God made both the man and the woman at the same time- in the image of God he created them.
In the first creation account, there is no hierarchy- no first man, then woman.
She is not derivative of him- they are co-equals in the garden, made together on the 6th day, both reflecting God.
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What does it mean to be made in the image of God?
For years, people have pondered this.
Some have supposed that it means we actually look like God- in all our many different colors and features and sizes and diversity of appearances.
Others have posited that we’ve inherited our reason and intellect from God.
But what does that mean for the cognitively impaired?
Still others say we inherit our compassion, our creativity, our relationality, our sense of justice from God- our spiritual core, if you will.
Whatever it means to be made in the image of God,
It means there is something fundamental to who God is, that gets reflected back in us.
It’s also thought to mean, as I mentioned to the kids- that we are God’s representatives here on earth.
We bring something of who God is to this world, and to one another.
God created us in God’s own image and pronounced us “very good.”
That is the core truth of us, down to the bones and marrow.
That is who we are.
This week we’ll focus on recognizing and honoring the image of God in ourselves-
And next week we’ll look at how to recognize and honor the image of God in one another.
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But first - putting aside what we think we know about this text, let’s look at a few details from the original Hebrew in Genesis 2, the second account of creation:
God wants to make for Adam, which literally means “earth creature” - a helper.
Now the word here for helper is “ezer.” Its root has associations with strength and rescue. And guess who it refers to, every other time this word is used in the Bible?
God.
Think of Psalm 46- “God is our refuge and strength. A very present help in times of trouble.”
Far from being a secondary subordinate role, the woman here has come to bring strength and refuge to the man, as two fellow humans helping each other in the hard work of life.
And notice what a rib does. Go ahead, put your hand right here and feel one of your ribs. They protect your vital organs! They encase your lungs and heart! They assist your breathing. We could not really function in our skeletal structure, without ribs.
Once the man discovers the woman, notice the poetic and egalitarian language he uses to describe his discovery of the woman- “This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!” These are words of mutuality and equality. “I see myself in you, and you see yourself in me. We are of the same substance.”
Now does formative story mean that God’s ultimate plan is for man and woman and marriage? That this template is the rule?
Or does this story more broadly set up a creation theme, whereby God created us for community, for companionship?
As a single woman, do Genesis 1 & 2 still have good news for me?
I believe this account gives us not a heteronormative account of the nuclear family as the be-all end-all, but rather an introduction to God’s intention for humanity-
that we see the image of God in one another-
that we recognize “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” in our fellow humans,
and that we show up to offer help and strength and refuge to one another- as God does for each of us.
We are also told at the end of this 2nd chapter, that the man’s and woman’s bodies are a source of ease- and joy:
“They were naked and unashamed.”
Being alive in human flesh and blood, alongside another human, brings uncomplicated connection, peace, and closeness.
Again, whether you take this account as provable or parable, what mattered I think to the writers of Genesis is that we see it as a window:
A glimpse into God’s design for us as people on this planet.
The paradise plan of community and beauty and belonging, that deep inside we still long for.
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What does it mean to believe that I am an image bearer of the living God? What does it mean to believe my neighbor is an image bearer of the living God?
How does this apply to me?
Jesus connected to God every day in prayer- often getting away. He said whoever has seen me has seen the Father. I am in him and he is in me.
Henri Nouwen Sept. 5- let him love you.
Honoring your inner ‘yes’ and ‘no’ of the spirit
Leaning into Sabbath and rest
Believing that I am more than this time of my worst critics’ worst views of me.
It means choosing not to obsess over every calorie and food I put in my body, and what dress size I do or do not fit into.
Carol Yarmo and how harsh we can be with ourselves translates to others
Richard Rohr: Pain that is not transformed, is pain that’s transmitted
Henri Nouwen Sept. 12- my value beyond productivity.
The difficulty of the AT in NH:
Recognizing and honoring the image of God in me, means asking- not who am I better or worse than, but how can I bring out the gift that is in me?
The hostel in Rumney- I was not churning out blogposts or inspiring anyone
I was not “crushing the miles” and chronicling my insights in nature and friendship-
I arrived broken and beleaguered
Henri Nouwen Aug. 18- receiving the gifts of others, talk about the kids there
So here is your assignment for this week –
How can you recognize and honor the image of the living God in yourself?
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Let us pray.
Some time for quiet reflection…