The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost | 6 October 2024 | Genesis 2:18-24 | Samuel David Zumwalt |

Genesis 2:18-24 Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

¹⁸ And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” ¹⁹ Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.

²¹ And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. ²² Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.

²³ And Adam said:

“This is now bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”

²⁴ Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

HOLY KEYS: BE ONE FLESH!

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

The psalmist asks: “What is man that You are mindful of him?” (8:4). The question is addressed to God within the context of a song of praise for creation. There is childlike wonder, yes awe, in that psalm as the author considers the works of God’s hands and his place in God’s design. The psalmist understands that he lives in the magnificent presence of his Creator and that God has given him the stewardship of His creation. We are not alone in a cold, vast universe. We are the work of God’s hands, and He has given us caring work to do while we yet have life and breath.

Inspired and inhabited by the Spirit of God, the psalmist sees his place in the order of things. Unlike God, who has no beginning or ending, this man knows he is a creature of limited shelf life. With heart and hand and voice, the psalmist rightly praises his Maker and Owner while he has life and breath. The trajectory of his life is a response of gratitude for who and Whose he is.

On the other hand, the unregenerate human being, the old sinner that exists from conception and remains even after Holy Baptism, is, after the rebellion in the Garden, a narcissist. Whether he or she is thought to be a nice person (or kind and decent) says much about his or her public persona but nothing about his or her inner self. Our Lord Jesus says, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts…” (Matthew 15:19). Even when we are looking good and feeling good, what is going on inside each of us may be hidden from our neighbors but never from God. He knows us.

The old Adam or Eve, the old sinner inside, so has to be in charge that he or she is worst when handling God’s Word. The old, hard-living, comic actor W.C. Fields was asked what he was doing reading a Bible. He answered: “Ah, yes, looking for loopholes.” Unlike many today, Fields understood his place in creation. With age, ultimate questions pressed on his psyche.

In our reading from Genesis 2, creation is incomplete. Each day of creation, the LORD God has called good, but it is not good that the man should be alone. The beasts of the field and birds of the air are delightful in their varieties, but the man is not meant to be alone with the animals. He needs someone to help him. The same word is used elsewhere to describe God’s help. The LORD God forms the woman even as He formed the man. Together, they will be one flesh. Together, their bodies will be fruitful and multiply. They are literally made for each other. They are made to reproduce. Their relationship will be primary as will all future men and women, who have left home to marry. This is indeed God’s biological design. Now, men and women bodily complement each other, and, now, God’s creation is complete: very good.

After all the Covid nonsense we were put through, it’s comical to hear people talk about following the science. Well, if you follow the science, male and female bodies are made for each other in order that there can be offspring. There really are only two biological sexes. God gave us genitals in order to reproduce. If you follow the science, at the moment of conception, there really is a new being with his or her own DNA. If you follow the science, the picture of a ten-week-old fetus on our church’s digital sign shows that’s not just a clump of cells growing and also that’s not the mother’s body. Reproductive science and God’s story in Genesis really do agree. So much for that nonsense about religion being for people too stupid to master science.

Forty-five years ago, my Old Testament professor was quick to talk about this reading from Genesis as an etiology. He said it explains why there is such a strong attraction between men and women. Two years later, there were already several gay students and a recently arrested bisexual professor at our slowly dying seminary, all with powerfully contrary desires that made the Pentateuch professor’s comments seem rather antiquated. Of course, this was only the overture to the Old Adam or Eve (or whatever) getting control of the biblical text like potters with clay.

The Old Adam or Eve narcissistically mines the Scriptures for “treasures” that affirm what the Word proscribes. On the other hand, whether in Genesis 2 or Matthew 19, a man leaves his parents to become a husband and woman leaves home to become a wife. Their complementary bodies become one flesh in God’s designed way that normatively results in their being fruitful and multiplying. But, yes, it is possible in numerous ways for male and female bodies to behave pleasurably, just as it is possible for complementary bodies to become one flesh and not result in reproduction. And it is possible to be fruitful and multiply apart from the marriage of one man and one woman… and that’s not even beginning to explore the ways one can technologically reproduce apart from God’s design. Indeed, the narcissistic self chafes against any suggestion that God’s design is both normative and very good citing, all the while, the various exceptions.

The history of Israel that begins in Genesis 12 gives example after example of what goes wrong when one violates God’s design. Rather than affirming polygamy, the narrative shows what happens when a man has more than one wife and has children by more than one woman. Just to name two, coveting what is not his leads David to adultery and murder, and his polygamy makes it even worse. Not-so-wise Solomon has 700 wives and 300 concubines, and the seeds of his boundless hubris sprout in the subsequent generations resulting in the destruction of David’s old kingdom. Some of the narratives tear at the heart, because they are timelessly present today.

It is difficult for the old Adam or Eve, the old sinner inside, to deal with limits of any kind, and he or she is most dangerous when he or she gets religion. No longer in the center now occupied by the old sinner, God, or rather the old sinner’s concept of God, is malleable. God’s Word is changeable with sophisticated hermeneutics. Almost any text, but especially this text from Genesis 2, can be turned on its head to say what it does not through philological gymnastics by the well-degreed master of the text bringing out “new treasures” that become a defense of one’s own self or of those for whom one is sympathetic (perhaps a sibling, a child, a colleague). Yes, one can always cite one more authority and one more brilliant study and one more “aha.”

The Torah, of which Genesis is the lead book, provides not only a narrative but instruction for Israel’s life together, yes, but the first eleven chapters apply to all humanity. This is why St. Luke’s genealogy of the Lord Jesus goes back to Adam and not only to Abraham as in Matthew. God’s incarnate Son Jesus must be the new Adam, obedient even unto death on a cross for sinful humanity who has lost Paradise in our rebellion and in bondage to the unholy trio of sin, death, and the devil. Without the shedding of Jesus’ blood, there can be no forgiveness of sins, no eternal life, and no salvation for sinful humanity. Holy Baptism will be God’s work of joining sinners to the death and resurrection of His Beloved Son, in order that a new child of God can be born with the promise of the new creation that will come fully into being in the resurrection at the end of space and time as we presently know it.

The old Adam or Eve, the old sinner remains while we are in this flesh, and he or she must be drowned daily through contrition. The new obedience, which is the new life in Christ that has been laid over the old, is not an affirmation of the old… as if the Gospel were merely God’s unconditional positive regard for the old sinner. The death of Jesus is wasted if He is treated as a literary Deus ex machina (as in those ancient Mighty Mouse cartoons, swooping in to save the day momentarily and then leaving us in the same precarious condition). The old Adam or Eve can don a clerical collar, be vested with robe and stole, and preach moving sermons that make sure we know how much Jesus gets us, and inspire others to rewrite the Scriptures, too. But those without sin do not need a physician, and our text from Genesis 2 will not cease accusing those who are comfortable in their departure from God’s design. At the great judgment yet to come, those who have aspired to teach will be judged more strictly (James 3:1). Caveat emptor!

All of us sin and deserve temporal and eternal punishment. That is the uncomfortable truth about each of us… not merely in the externals of what we do and don’t do but in what our sinful eyes behold and sinful hearts desire. One may never legally break the marriage covenant and yet be an adulterer watching hours of porn or an adulterer quietly sleeping around. One may never legally break the commandment against murder of someone outside the womb but quietly destroy a unique life within. One may use the label “husband” or “wife” apart from the clear understanding of Genesis 2, but what is legal or even perhaps blessed does not change God’s normative design. We sinners need a Savior, but He cannot save where there is no sin. All the sinner can do is kneel before the cross saying, “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.” The forgiven child of God can begin again by forsaking the old life, which as any recovering addict knows is always one day at a time at best. God’s grace and mercy provide release from bondage in order that we might be new.

Lutheran is not what’s on the sign, the building, the bulletin, or the constitution. Lutheran is proclaiming Law and Gospel in faithfulness to the biblical text. Shouting “grace” or even using slogans like “justification by grace” or “simultaneously saint and sinner” does not make one a Lutheran. Preaching the universality of sin and the judgment that God speaks upon it is the necessary condition for the preaching of Christ crucified for sinners. Where there is no sin, the blood of Jesus is wasted like the pints one sees on the floor beside a corpse in a trauma center. Where sinners hear the forgiveness of sins through the shedding of Jesus’ blood for sinners and cling to that promise, there is Gospel, the actual release from bondage to sin, death, and the devil.

Again, Lutheran is not therapeutic affirmation of brokenness as if it were simply created is-ness. Lutheran is Acts 2:37-38, where sinners, having heard Whom they crucified, are cut to the heart and cry out, “Brothers, what must we do?” Peter responds, “Keep on repenting and be baptized.” When they are baptized, according to Acts 2:42, they continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread (the Lord’s Supper), and the prayers (the psalms prayed in the Temple). They are now no longer their own. They are now part of God’s people through the blood of Jesus. They are now hearing the Word, confessing their sins, receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, and being shaped in a new life by praying the psalms.

When asked about divorce, our Lord Jesus points us back to God’s original design. When He gathers little children to Himself, He points us to the vulnerability of children when their parents divorce. Love of neighbor is more than therapeutic affirmation. The children of God love the neighbor who is their husband or wife both before and within biblical marriage and love the children they conceive from before conception through natural death. The old Adam or Eve, the old sinner inside, will not survive physical death for the children of God. For some, sadly, the Word of God is quite clear that the resurrection of the body will not be good news. Where there is no sin, the blood of the Lamb cannot give the forgiveness of sins that willfully goes unheard.

So, the practice of Baptism is daily contrition and daily throwing oneself upon the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. The practice of Baptism is not a mere rhetorical pronouncement that comforts the comfortable. The practice of Baptism is becoming who and Whose we were designed to be and who and Whose we will be when we are raised in imperishable bodies in the new creation. In the interim, it’s a battle out there and in every heart, mind, body, and soul. We pray: “Let your holy angel have charge of us that the wicked one may have no power over us.” We hasten to hear God’s Word and receive the Sacrament of the Altar saying, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!”

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

—

©The Rev. Fr. Samuel David Zumwalt, STS

szumwalt@bellsouth.net

www.societyholytrinity.org

St. Matthew’s Evangelical Lutheran Church

Wilmington, North Carolina USA

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Bulletin insert

Holy Keys: Be One Flesh

Praying

Our Lord Jesus, you have endured the doubts and foolish questions of every generation. Forgive us for trying to be judge over you, and grant us the confident faith to acknowledge you as Lord; for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.” (Lutheran Book of Worship, 28).

Listening

Genesis 2:18 “… ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.’”

Tertullian [Late 2^nd – early 3^rd century theologian in Carthage, Tunisia]: “[God]… provided also a help meet for [the man] that there might not be anything in his lot that was not good. For God said that it is not good for the man to be alone. He knew full well what a blessing the gender of Mary would be to him and also to the Church” (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Genesis 1-12, 64).

Genesis 2:21 “And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam…”

St. John Chrysostom [Late 4^th – early 5^th century Patriarch of Constantinople, Turkey]: “Lest the experience cause Adam afterward to be badly disposed toward the creature formed from his rib and through memory of the pain bear a grudge against this being at its formation, God induced in him this kind of sleep. God caused a drowsiness to come upon him” (67).

Genesis 2:23 “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”

St. Augustine [Late 4^th – early 5^th century Bishop of Hippo Regius, Algeria]: “Even in the beginning, when woman was made from a rib in the side of the sleeping man, that had no less a purpose than to symbolize prophetically the union of Christ and his Church. Adam’s sleep was a mystical foreshadowing of Christ’s death, and when his dead body hanging from the cross was pierced by the lance, it was from his side that there issued forth that blood and water that, as we know, signifies the sacraments by the church is build up… Therefore, woman is as much the creation of God as man is. If she was made from the man, this was to show her oneness with him; and if she was made in the way she was, this was to prefigure the oneness of Christ and the Church” (70).

Genesis 2:24“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

St. Ambrose [4^th century Bishop of Milan, Italy]: “If the union of Adam and Eve is a great mystery in Christ and in the church, it is certain that as Eve was bone of the bones of her husband and flesh of his flesh, we also are members of Christ’s body, bones of his bones and flesh of his flesh” (71).

Reflecting

1. What has God created man to be and to do? In other words, what is man?

2. For what reason did God create male and female bodies to be complementary?

3. What happens when the husband-and-wife relationship is not primary among all human relationships?

Learning

The Ten Commandments

AS THE HEAD OF THE HOUSEHOLD SHOLD TEACH THEM IN A SIMPLE WAY TO HIS HOUSEHOLD.

The Sixth Commandment

You shall not commit adultery.

What does this mean?

“We should fear and love God so that we lead a sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do, and husband and wife love and honor each other” (Luther’s Small Catechism).

Doing

1. Pray for every unbaptized child, youth, and adult you know and for the child’s parents, too.
2. Pray for your unchurched loved ones and friends. Invite one or more of them to worship.
3. Commit yourself to the study of God’s Word at St. Matthew’s.
4. Practice saying the sixth commandment and its explanation every day. Rehearse it with others in your household or with a Christian friend over the phone. Discuss the following question. In what ways does the sixth commandment offer hope and encouragement to families everywhere?
5. Participate in the Life Chain this Sunday at 2 p.m.
6. Set aside time daily, preferably first thing, but when you are able to focus, to hear the Word of God, to reflect upon that Word, and to ask the Holy Spirit to grant you grace to be shaped by and conformed to that Word. If you haven’t previously done so, please pick up a copy of the Portals of Prayer devotional booklet on the table in the narthex. Daily lectionary readings are on p.191 in the front of the Lutheran Book of Worship (Year Two, Week of 20 Pentecost).
7. If you regularly look at pornographic images, stop. Get blocking software if you are tempted by availability on the internet. If you have a hidden stash, destroy it. If you need help, ask. Such an addiction can destroy a marriage from within or, for the unmarried, create problems in a marriage later. Pornography does not just lead to adultery. It is a type of adultery even before marriage.

For Husbands and Wives

Repeat daily: “I (name) take you (name) to be my wedded wife (husband), to have and to hold from this day forward; for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish until death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance, and thereto I pledge you my faith.”