"We’re Not Alone" - Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

We’re Not Alone
Pentecost 13 – Narrative Lectionary 3
September 8, 2019
Grace, Mankato, MN
Genesis 2.4b-25

A number of years ago, while I was in seminary, Jan was in a bad car accident. She was not wearing a seatbelt and was ejected from her car. Because my family had grown close to Jan, her husband Ned called me to be with them at the Baltimore trauma center where she was on life support. It was my first experience walking with a family through dying and death and it was someone I knew. Jan was taken off life support and died quickly. In her late mid-40s, her death devastated many people, especially her Ned.

Not long after the funeral, I was a bit shocked when Ned rather off-handedly said to me, “I’ll get remarried. I’m not meant to be alone.” Now, Ned meant no disrespect to Jan or her memory; if anything, it was just the opposite. He wanted to have again what he had with Jan. That day I learned a lot about how men and women cope with loss, but also about the strength of relationships.

 “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner” God says. Today we begin anew our yearly trip through the Bible, beginning with the Old Testament and the creation story in Genesis. We’ll read the Bible as it is meant to be read, as the story of God, God’s world, and God’s people. At Christmas, we’ll pick up the Jesus story and follow it through the Gospel of Mark through Jesus’ life, passion, death and resurrection at Easter. Then after Easter, we’ll read about the story of the early church in Acts, 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians. It’s something of a mad dash, but through it all we’ll get the sense of God’s unwavering commitment to us and our world.

 “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” This verse and the seven following are among four passages I read with couples preparing for their wedding. In reading this passage, we discover that from the very beginning God put men and women in relationship on equal terms. Although you can’t see it in English, we know this because the word for “helper” is most often used in the Old Testament to refer to God. Clearly God, as our helper, is not subservient to us. It is only after the act of disobedience in the Garden of Eden that relationships are perverted. But here we see God’s original intent for humanity, that it live in cooperative partnerships with one another.

Before I explore that idea, a few caveats are in order. First, Ned’s experience aside, it would be misguided to assume that men and women are incomplete, that we need someone else to make us whole. It is true that couples bring different gifts into marriage. As I often observe, if Cindy and I were alike one of us would be unnecessary. Even so, each and every one of us are complete human beings. Similarly, it would be wrong to say that this text is just about marriage and that we should all be married. The “aha” moment that the man experiences when presented with the woman is the same beautiful moment that happens when God brings people together around God’s creative purposes. We are “bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh” of one another.

At the heart of the story is that God is intimately involved with creation, especially humanity. For God, creation is not a “one and done” affair. God’s creative activity continues. Not only does God continue creating, God does so cooperatively with humanity. We are, as Phil Hefner states, created co-creators. Even when humanity breaks the covenantal bond with God, God continues to hang in there with humanity. As we’ll see as the biblical story unfolds, humanity gets it wrong more than it gets it right. But the biblical story also demonstrates God’s faithfulness in the midst of our faithlessness.

God cares so deeply about and is so intimately involved with creation that God is “all in.” Just as God has built community, cooperation and collaboration into creation, in the person of Jesus Christ, Immanuel, “God with Us,” God wants us to know that we are never, ever alone. In Jesus’ death and resurrection, God heals the brokenness of the world and works to restore relationships to what God originally intended. In whatever kind of relationships you find yourself today, know that God is present and working there. For God is our helper and partner. Thanks be to God! Amen.