Bible Text: Genesis 2:18-25 | Preacher: Pastor Dorry Newcomer | Series: Genesis | Once upon a time, way back in the earliest days of history, Adam called out to God.  “Lord, I have a problem.”

“What’s the problem, Adam?” God replies.

“Lord, I know you created me and have provided for me and surrounded me with this beautiful garden and all of these wonderful animals, but I’m just not happy.”

“Why is that, Adam?”, came the reply from Lord.

“Lord, I know you created this beautiful place for me, with this lovely food and all of the amazing animals, but I’m lonely.”

“Well, Adam, in that case, I have the perfect solution.  I shall create a woman for you.”

“What’s a woman, Lord,?”

“This woman will be the most intelligent, sensitive, caring and beautiful creature I ever created.  She will be so intelligent that she can figure out what you want before you want it.  She will be so sensitive and caring that she will know your every mood and how to make you happy.  Her beauty will rival that of the heavens and the earth.  She will unquestioningly care for your every need and desire.  She will be the perfect companion for you!”

Adam could barely contain his excitement.  “Sounds great, Lord!”

Then God said, “She will be.  But this is going to cost you, Adam.”

“Cost me?  How much?”

God said, “She’ll cost you your right arm, your right leg, one eye and one ear.”

Adam pondered this for some time, with a look of deep concentration on his face.  Finally Adam said to God, “Ehh Lord, what can I get for a rib?”

The rest, as they say, is history!

 

Have you heard that one before?  What can I get for a rib.  When I asked some friends this week for jokes on Adam and Eve, one person said Eve was called woman because when Adam first saw her he said, “Wo!  Man!”  I thought that was cute.  Some of the jokes had a little bite to them, like this one, from a female:  God looked at man and decided he could do much better on a second try, so he created woman.  And this one from a male perspective:  Why did God create Adam before Eve?  To give him the chance to say something for once!

And so it goes.  There is no shortage of jokes about gender differences.  Men and women are different!  The big question is, what are we going to do with those differences?  We could celebrate them–like the French expression, viva la difference!  But often, instead of brothers and sisters in the human race celebrating and enjoying our differences, we struggle, as if we’re wrestling to see which gender is going to come out on top.  Times have changed a lot in America in the last forty years, but I still think we have some work to do in this area.

So let’s take a good look at our scripture today.  If you grew up reading the King James translation of the Bible, you might remember that in verse 18, where we see the word “helper”, in the King James it has the word “helpmeet”.  Did you ever hear that term, helpmeet?  God said it was not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helpmeet as his partner.  Somehow along the way we started to understand helpmeet as “helpmate”–as a subordinant.  But did you know that in the Old English, helpmeet means, “perfect match”?  There are many instances of 17th and 18th century poetry where the world helpmeet is used to describe a romantic partner, a true love, of finding your soul mate, one’s perfect match.  That was the prevailing meaning of the word helpmeet when the King James Bible was first published.  It’s good for us to remember that there was no hierarchy meant when that translation was produced.  Not one up, one down.  Not husband is in the executive and the wife is the assistant.  Helpmeet meant side by side, perfect match, perfect partner.

Even more important for us to look at is the Hebrew.  The Hebrew word that gets translated as helpmeet or helper is actually a word for savior!  It’s the word “ezer”–which means completeness, wholeness, even salvation.  You might recognize ezer from the word Ebenezer, which means rock of salvation.  In the Old Testament, people erected stones as monuments to signify that God had saved them.  If you were in trouble, and God helped you, you could put up a stone formation, an Ebenezer, a rock of salvation, as a reminder to you and to others that God is indeed at work for good in the world!

The word ezer is used 19 times in the Old Testament to refer to God’s saving acts toward humankind.  It is also used a few times to talk about a person acting to help another.  It does not make any sense to consider the helper as subordinate.  Usually we think of those who rescue us as heroes!  And we certainly would not want to risk blasphemy and say God is our subordinant!  Man alone is incomplete, not whole, lonely, doomed.  And what makes the difference for him?  What does God create to save him?  Woman!!!

I don’t know about you, but this understanding of woman, as man’s ezer, of man’s savior, is a game changer.  You know, no one ever told me that I had a certain place in society because of my gender.  It was one of those beliefs that I just kind-of absorbed, growing up in a small dairy farming community in the 1970’s.  I knew many strong women who were very active in my community and my church.  But there were very few women in professional or leadership roles.  It was as if the woman could attain a certain stature–but no more.  She could not outrank a man.  Do you know what I’m talking about?

And this belief, this was part of the church for most of us, maybe for much of our lives.  The United Methodist Church has officially been ordaining women since 1956, but if you talk to the women who were in that first generation of female pastors, they will tell you stories that will appall you.  Acceptance took a long time.  When we study the Bible, we see that male and female were created for egalitarian collaboration.  But sadly, the church has more often reflected the values of the surrounding society than the equal partnership depicted in Genesis chapter 2.

It’s hard to accurately assess the full implications of this.  One long-term effect, I think, is a continued power struggle between men and women in the church.  For so long, all official leadership positions could only be held by men, so women found their own ways to exercise authority.  Now I fear the pendulum has swung the other way, and we need to be very careful that men don’t get squeezed out!  As a human race, and even in the church, we seem to have a natural ability, a compulsion almost, to divide and conquer, to hold power over others instead of empowering others.  Whether it’s by gender, race, or class, human beings are experts at dividing into groups, and for one group to dominate and hold power over another group.

But that is not how God intended for us to relate to one another.  This whole chapter of Genesis is an amazing picture of intimacy and completeness.  Woman is made from man’s rib, and the Hebrew word used can also be translated simply as side.  Eve is created from Adam’s side, a powerful metaphor.  They are created to walk through life side by side.  Not in front of and behind.  Not one person having power over the other.  But side by side.  Adam and Eve, if you think about it, they start out as one flesh.  They start out as Adam, which in addition to being a proper name given to boys in our culture, is also a general term, a common noun that means something along the lines of “earthling”.  Human beings, formed by the dust of the earth.  God takes Adam’s side and makes Eve to be his side-by-side companion.  Human beings, we’re all in the same boat.  From dust we have come and to dust we shall return.  It is sin that prompts us to form ourselves into groupings and assign rankings to ourselves, as if some people were inherently more important or worthy than others.

Several years ago, I preached on this text and talked about the Hebrew word ‘ezer, and how woman was created to save man, not to be subordinate to man, and most people really appreciated it.  But one man got really upset.  He and his wife had a system:  he was the captain, she was the first mate, and that had worked for them for a long time.  Now I was telling him she was his equal?  He had a hard time with that!

I don’t think many men feel that way these days, or at least, they wouldn’t admit it.  But I still get a little nervous preaching on this text, because for as much progress as we have made in terms of equality for women, gender issues are still very complex.  Recently, we’ve begun to hear more and more about people for whom the binary system of gender doesn’t work.  They are uncertain or feel limited by the neatly fitting categories of male and female.  This is not a new phenomenon—but it is new in terms of it being talked about.  I will never forget the time a man confessed to me that he knew from a very early age, say five or six, that he wanted to be a ballerina.  Not a ballet dancer.  A ballerina.  He was born in 1929.  He went through his whole life with a shameful secret, that he was a boy who wanted to be a girl.  Even as an adult, even at church, he still didn’t feel like he fit in.

Isn’t that tragic?  In June, when we had a presentation on human sexuality here, the issue of gender was one of things we had the most questions about.  While there’s no shortage of jokes about rivalry between the sexes, at least we understand men and women being at odds with each other somewhat.  But when it comes to people for whom gender is a complicated issue?  Most of us haven’t had much experience with that, and it can make us nervous.

But actually, instead of being nervous, I think we can have confidence.  Like Dr. Spock advised new parents, trust yourself, you know more than you think you do!  We already know how to treat people who don’t fit neatly into the categories of male or female.  With respect.  With honor.  As people created by God, same as anyone else.  We don’t have to understand what is going on with someone’s sexuality or gender identity.  We are used to not understanding other people.  That’s why there are so many jokes about men and women!  We have never been great at understanding people different from us…and frankly, we don’t even understand ourselves all that well!

Generations of people have read this story in Genesis and have concluded that the main point is, we were created by God to be male and female, with the man in the one up role and the woman in the one down role.  But I think the main point of this story is that humans were divinely created for mutuality.  We were created for partnership.  We were created adam—earthling—and ezer—perfect match co-earthling.  We were created for respect and equality.  It’s not gender that is the point of this story.  It’s the worthiness of every person and the beauty of finding someone who is your perfect match, someone to go through life side by side with.

Of course, we know that doesn’t happen in a romantic way for everyone.  But it should happen in a practical way for everyone!  When I think about God’s dreams for Lima in the coming decade, I think God wants us to become a church that rejoices in working side by side with all different kinds of people.  We are created to be ezer for each other–not to do for others what they should be doing for themselves, but to offer our unique gifts, cooperating with others as they offer their unique gifts, and together make the world more life-giving.  I think God wants us to be a witness to the original intent of creation:  honoring the unique qualities of every person, regardless of their gender, doing all we can to support them so they can live into their giftedness and make the saving contribution they have been divinely designed to make.

This is a tough topic, and spoiler alert if you haven’t been reading the book of Genesis:  the topics don’t get easier!  So let me end with one more joke as a segue into next week.  Adam and Eve are in the Garden of Eden, and she offers him a piece of fruit from a particular tree.  He, of course, refuses.  She is insistent he should eat the fruit, but he is adamant.  Men don’t like fruit, he tells her, I’m not eating that.  She says, “Goodness gracious, Adam.  You act like eating this piece of fruit will be the end of the world!”

We’ve been living the consequences of that ever since, but we know sin is not the end of the world.  Christ came to usher in a kingdom that takes us back to God’s original intentions for humankind:  all of us equal earthlings, all of us sacred creations, all of us needing those different from us to be our ezer, our salavation.  Amen.