One Humanity, One Earth
Sermon by Pr. Sharai Jacob on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi + Saturday, October 5, 2024.
Before I started seminary, I tried to create a sense of unity among the Christian organizations on my college campus. I was still figuring out how to speak about my faith as a Lutheran. I befriended students from the more evangelical campus ministry, and they were very verbal about the things that they believed. Speaking with them about my own beliefs didn’t really work out for me. They would quote scripture confidently and they seemed to have concise, prepared ways to explain their beliefs. When I tried to explain my beliefs, I had to first unpack the scripture, put it in context, and then by the time I made my point, they would already have decided that my beliefs aren’t backed by scripture. Sometimes I left those conversations actually feeling like my own beliefs weren’t really based in scripture. Until I went to seminary, I almost expertly avoided those difficult parts of scripture.
This week’s reading from Genesis is one of those difficult texts. It has been used for many years to justify sexism and homophobia. It has been used to teach us that there is only one way to be a couple or that women are less capable than men. It has been used to justify and solidify gender roles in such damaging ways, that I often dread having to read from these first chapters in Genesis. Unfortunately, I can’t exactly toss them out. Being a pastor and all, I had to dig into them. I had to question and wrestle, but eventually I found new meaning in this text. It takes so much work to see past the veneer that has been slathered over texts like this one. So, we’ll need to remove that veneer before we can really learn from this scripture.
The story we’ve been told is that Adam was a man who God created, and Eve was the wife who God created for him. But, let's look at that word - “adam.” What if I told you that Adam was not a name, but an adjective - in Hebrew this word is Ha-adam which is translated in other parts of the Hebrew Bible as “humankind” or “humanity” - or maybe “earthling.” The word Ha-adam doesn’t refer specifically to a man, Ha-adam is a person of unknown gender.
After God created this human, God decided that the human needed a companion. God created all the animals, but none of these creatures were the right helper to be the human’s partner. The same Hebrew word for “helper,” Ezer is used to refer to God as the helper of God’s people. The word translated as “partner” means something like “opposite/facing” - I think of two sides of a coin.
In order to create this helper-partner, God put the human into a deep sleep and then removed their rib. Except that the Hebrew word, tsela translated as “rib” in our reading, is usually translated as “side.” In Exodus and 1 Kings this word is used to describe the sides or chambers of a tabernacle. So God put the human to sleep, and took their side - like their whole left or right side - to create another human to be their helper-partner. Ha-adam means human, but the word ish means “male human or man.” The word Ha-adam is used throughout the beginning of the reading - right up until after the Woman is created. The human is overjoyed to meet another human - a woman. And then the human calls themself “ish,” man.
At the end of our reading we hear about how men leave their families to cling to their wives. But this line is also really interesting because in ancient patriarchal societies, things didn’t actually work that way! It was always the woman who left her family to marry a man. It still works that way in many modern cultures. How odd that this scripture switches the roles? Could it be that this line of scripture is meant to undermine the stereotypical roles of men and women in marriage?
When we put it all together we can see a different way of understanding gender, humanity, and gender roles. If men and women are two sides of the same coin, then women must not be less than men, but equal partners. Men and women were created to be each other’s helpers and are able to fill whatever familial roles they want to.
There is scripture to support that women are not lesser beings created to serve men, but an equal because women are a full half of the original human.
The original human seems to have been created with all genders or no gender - an androgynous human who God made from the earth, breathed life into, and called good - long before gender even existed! Yes there is scripture to support that humanity existed before gender, even before the biological sexes!
This reading tells us that we were created as one humanity, from one earth. That not only are we one humanity, but every animal, bird, fish, bug, reptile, and mammal - is our sibling of Earth and Spirit. They were all created to be in community with us. They are meant to be our companions - not to be brutalized and captured, but to be loved and cared for. This scripture names that it is a human need to be part of the whole community of creation! It is not good for humans to be alone - so God created animals and new people and a way to create more people - so that we could all be here together.
When we run into difficult texts that have been used to clobber us with oppressive beliefs - it can be tempting to give up and ignore that scripture. But when we choose to dig in, we bolster our faith. This digging doesn’t have to happen alone. We can dig into hard scriptures through discussions with our loved ones or our fellow congregants. We can remove more of the veneer through reading scholars’ works or considering the wisdom of nature. Community is powerful enough to help us wrestle with scripture so that when we start to scrape off the veneer that has been used to hurt us, we can find the words we need to help us heal.
