SermonStudio

Solitude; Bobby Fischer; the Pluses and Minuses of Pets; Something About Sexism; the Delight of it All; an Unfinished World and How God is a Real Talker and What That Means to Us.

The central point of the text before us is contained in that phrase, "It is not good for the man to be alone." (Genesis 2:18) We all need solitude from time to time, to pull away, look at ourselves, ponder and evaluate. We need time to pray with a thorough honesty, to purge, to meditate; and then to find and re-establish and reground our roots and foundations. We all need that. We should take time for it. That is solitude; and it is good.

But "alone" - that is something else. There are creatures created to be alone - the shark, the oyster - and for them it is natural. But it is not good for us to be alone. There are those who try but every hermit has a very strange, if not downright crazy streak. Remember Bobby Fischer, probably the greatest chess player ever to live? The last I heard he is closed up in some seedy hotel in California with his chess board. He does not even have an opponent to challenge. He plays only against himself, hour after hour, day after day, month in, month out.

It is not good to be alone. Even when people most aggravate and frustate us, we know we cannot be alone. In life we must have others with whom we can share our joys and sorrows, our work and play, our frustrations and successes, our thoughts and feelings.

We are created for community, for sharing. Solitude from time to time, yes, but only so that we can re-engage. We are not sharks or oysters. We can't be human alone. There is a book with that title.

Our Genesis writer in his magnificent down-to-earth way describes a first attempt by God to answer this need of His creatures for companionship. He makes animals, pets, and then brings them before the man to name, in that action symbolizing and asserting our human superiority and relationship over all these creatures.

Do you have a pet? We've had so many that, as I look back on it, I wonder whether, overall, my lifetime job title really could not be "zookeeper" rather than "pastor."

At various time under our roof, fish, two mutts, then a boxer and a lab. Cats without number, turtles, snakes, frogs, toads, salamanders, vats of fish, gerbils, white rats and guinea pigs, spiders, parakeets and a crow. A partial list which does not include the creatures who boarded with us, shall we say without authorization, and we named them all as they were brought before us: Shadrach, Benjamin, Zsa Zsa (she was the boxer), and Simon Bar Sinister, Adolph and Nikita. And we had authority over them, for the most part.

Pets are fine. It is good for our children to have pets. Through pets we can teach them responsibility and respect for life. We talk to our pets and, in their responses, read in our human responses, and so it can help us talk to ourselves and others. Pets can be good. But sometimes our attraction can become a sickness. The lady in the supermarket line had a shopping cart brim full of canned cat food. The bill fell just short of one hundred dollars. I shook my head in disbelief. When my turn came, the register girl filled me in. "She'll be back again once, maybe twice, before the week is out. There is a barn behind her house where literally hundreds of cats live and breed." I caught the newspaper notice of her death a couple years later. The cats - wild and disease-ridden - were destroyed.

We Americans catch, process, and feed to our house cats a quantity of fish so great that, if it could be diverted, it could satisfy the minimal protein requirements of all the world's hungry.

There is in our attraction to our pets perhaps something that needs to be watched. Because at the real root of it, in our attraction to our pets, we are reaching and striving toward something else. God made all the beasts of the field, but among them all, Genesis tells us, there is "not found a companion fit for him." For our aloneness, the pet is only a second-best, not what is fully intended. We are striving for, reaching for something beyond, something deeper, more full. We need a peer, an equal if we are truly to share. It is human companionship, a human sharing that we really crave and need. That is what Genesis says.

Well, if a peer, a companionship of equals, is what we need, why do we have in this text this demeaning, sexist phrase, "a helper fit for him"? Here are all the images of male superiority, male dominance and female following after to serve the needs of himself.

Let's admit it, as you read that phrase "a helper fit for him," it sounds demeaning. But let's also be a bit careful here. That is how one group of people chose to translate into English, certain squiggles in the written language of the Hebrews. There were others who saw fit to use other words. The King James translation rendered it "a help meet (an archaism meaning suitable) for him." "A helpmate" suggests The Jerusalem Bible: "a helpmate suitable for him" a little later on. "A companion for him", "a helper suited to his needs," says the popular Living Bible, and later "a proper helper." "Suitable helper" is according to the New International Version. "A partner for him" offers the New English Bible, later, simply "partner." Nothing sexist in that latter one, is there? Is that one group that perhaps acquiesced to feminist pressures?

Actually the phrase is something of an awkward one in the Hebrew, which has led one Hebrew scholar to suggest the equally awkward, but he is convinced, quite literally accurate translation, "counterpart for his strength." Nothing demeaning, nothing denoting or suggesting a secondary status.

The fact of the matter is that the precise Hebrew word usually translated in this text as "helper," (ezer, in Hebrew) in virtually all other places it is used in the Bible, refers to God as "helper." As in that well-known and favorite Psalm 121 "I lift up my eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help (my ezer)." Or in Psalm 146, "Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help (his ezer)." So surely there is nothing in the word that would in any way denote "a weaker sex" or a secondary status. Rather if you really wanted to make the effort on the basis of that word, you could probably more easily make a case for a stronger sex and a primary status.

Now I'm not suggesting a translation here because I can't really think of one that would do all of this justice. And that inability to form this adequately may be a bit of evidence for the feminist case that our language really is inevitably, inescapably sexist.

So we'll just leave this particular matter here. The term "helper," overwhelmingly used for God himself, is a highly exalted term and there surely is simply nothing in it to justify the demeaning subordination that is the general impression in the way it is usually translated and used.

What is given here simply is the basis for a full and free, and yes, equal sharing and intermeshing and interacting in human companionship, where the needs of one are met by the other and vice versa because we can't make it alone.

And having said that with emphasis, the most important point to be made next is that this need and mutual dependence is not to be spoken of grimly but with delight in this mutual dependence and interaction. A supreme gift has been given by Creator to creature.

I most often feel The Living Bible goes too far beyond what Scripture says, but at this one point, at least, they've captured it. As God places the woman before the man, the man who could not find the companionship he needed in his pets, "This is it!" he shouts.

In that delighted response not only are all the complimentary companion-creating difference between the sexes affirmed, but likewise are all human relationships and dialog. This delight, Genesis is saying, is intended for all human interaction. Black and yellow, red, white, Jew and Greek, barbarian and Scythian, slave and free, tall and short, young and old, whenever any two of us engage, "You are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh," and in that engagement between us there is to be wonder and delight.

There is wonder and delight because it is what God has given, and since it is God-given in that dialog we can find not only each other but Him as well. This can happen because, when we talk and engage in this supreme gift of God, this condition structured into creation to answer our aloneness is there as an expression of the nature of God himself, who is a God himself in dialog with His creation and with us.

We can talk to each other because the one who has created us and all that is is a talker himself. We dialog, we have been given that ability, because he has the ability and engages in dialog. That is our nature because it is his nature. It is what we are because it is what he is, and in that image he created us.

This is expressed by our Genesis writer in a magnificently concrete way. There are those who are offended by this concreteness, in philosophical terminology, by these anthropomorphic pictures of God walking in the garden in the cool of the evening and talking to his creatures. But do not dismiss that picture too quickly. In this primitive form comes some theology quite profound.

Note first, why does God enter this dialog with us? Answer: because we live in a world incomplete and still in process, on its way to what it will yet be: animals that need to be ruled, a garden that needs to be tended, tilled, human dialog which is there as potential. It is a world of many horizons, a world that God is not yet done with. He enters this dialog with us to engage us with Him in this task of completing his creation. So Genesis tells us.

And when the human species is given the mandate to till and keep the garden, it is our human function and place to join God and ourselves to engage in this process of creation, to tame and nurture, to mold and form and give shape, to guide the growth of creation so that it will be in accord with his design. That care and completing of creation is our human task and destiny. So Genesis tells us.

And when God is described as speaking to us and touching and walking in the garden, it is primitive in its visual imagery, to be sure. But, what that is saying is that here we have not a God who has done his part and departed, but a God who remains in dialog with his creation and with us. We speak to him, we pose our questions, issue our complaints, yes, we can even argue with him. He hears and responds; with him we give and take; we consult with him as we work as his cocreators. So Genesis tells us.

And it is because he is in dialog with his creation and us that he creates a creation in which we can be in dialog with each other, as, not just alone, but with our fellow human beings we seek to be co-creators, shapers and molders of the earth and the life he has given. So Genesis tells us.

No, don't call that primitive. It is profound in its image of the nature and destiny of human life. We are placed here in this life by a God who is still creating a world. He has given us the high privilege of sharing that work of creating with him. He is a God who continues to engage his world in dialog as he creates. He has placed us here with each other, and together we can share as we engage each other in dialog over our common task. So Genesis tells us.

This is how he created us and why. He works and creates. So he created us to reflect that nature of his as we work and create. He is in dialog with us and his creation, and he created us to be in dialog with him. And as he is by nature in dialog with his creation, he created us to be in dialog with each other, "bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh."

It is not good for us to be alone. We are not alone. We are with each other.

It is not good for us to be alone. We are not alone. We are with him. So he has made his world. So he has made us and placed us in it. With glory and delight we speak to him and each other. So the message of Genesis.