To Be in Relationship
To be in relationship can be hard! We have circles in our lives in which we learn and grow through both the joys and hardships of being human. This sermon calls for a commitment to relationship, recognizing that while brokenness and separation will most definitely occur, God’s intention is for us to strive for wholeness and healing together.
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Transcript
One of the greatest joys of my job is COG Chapel. Every other week we choose a cross-bearer who leads us into the nave to worship together. The preschoolers and their teachers kneel in these first few pews and together we follow a simple liturgy: We sing together, hear and engage with a story together, pray together, and remember we are blessed (and will be a blessing) when we are together. Generally, we begin the year at the beginning of God’s story, follow the story of the patriarchs, matriarchs, and their descendants, and finish the year with Jesus’s teachings and today’s story of Jesus blessing the children. We end the year with each preschooler receiving a blessing as they approach graduation and head off to Kindergarten. Their thoughts are the sweetest: gratitude for brontosauruses and monster trucks; prayers for their dogs, water, and baby brothers. At our most recent gathering together we stopped by the stained glass to recall our first story of the year: the story of creation. We remembered those things that God made and God’s proclamation of seeing creation as “good.”
Genesis begins with two distinct yet complementary stories of God’s creation of the world. The stories not only reveal how the universe came into being, but they also offer insight into who God is and who we are as God’s creation.
The preschoolers heard the first story in which God creates by speaking, commanding the cosmos into order. With each day, God brings balance to creation—light, land, seas, plants, animals. Finally, humans are made, male and female, bearing God’s image. Everything is declared “good,” and when God surveys the totality of creation, it is “very good.”
But in Genesis 2, the story is a bit different. Instead of speaking from a distance, God gets personal. God forms the first human (adam) from the dry earth (adamah). God breathes life into the human’s nostrils, bringing the creature to life with the very spirit of God. The story is intimate, one that places God’s own hands in creation.
Unlike Genesis 1, after God puts the human in the garden to care for it, God notices something that is “not good.” Despite the goodness of all that had been created, God sees that it’s “not good” for the human to be alone (bad), to be a lone part, to be separate. The solitary human is missing something essential—community, companionship, relationship. This says a lot about who we are as God’s creation…who we are as a human being. Our very being is to be in relationship.
God creates animals and invites the human to name them, engaging the human as co-creator in the process. But the loneliness remains. So, God tries something else. God works as a divine surgeon, removing a rib and building it into a second human being. This new creation is a perfect partner—“bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.” What was “not good” has been rectified by a deep and intimate connection between humans.
To take this further, the word helper (ezer) goes beyond assisting…but also has undertones of comforting, supporting, caring for, protecting and sustaining. There are times when God is described as an ezer to humans. This partnership between two humans becoming “one flesh” suggests compassion, encouragement, mutual joy, and common life. Naked and unashamed, they stand with one another in openness and loyalty.
Genesis 2 reminds us that God’s dream for us is to live in relationships of deep connection, not isolation. We are meant to be helpers and partners to one another, mirroring the love and beloved community found at the very heart of God.
But we know the next part of the story: A story of increasing human brokenness, beginning with the fall in Genesis 3. There’s disharmony—between humans and other creatures, between male and female, between humans and all of God’s creation. Disharmony escalates to murder in Genesis 4. And, Genesis 5 traces Adam’s descendants to Noah, highlighting the ongoing spiral of misery. By chapter 6, the disorder is so great that God is grieved, regretting ever creating the human.
This is the truth of being human. We’re fractured, broken. And living with other fractured and broken humans is hard. Even in a monastery, where monks seek God in community, if you ask where their greatest challenges come from, they’ll tell you, “from the other monks!” (The same might be said about residential seminary.) Our humanity is drawn out through our interactions with others: at work, at Church, our families, marriage.
The Pharisees and Jesus’ disciples ask about divorce. As we heard in Genesis 2, God provides for us “schools” or “laboratories” (“gardens”)—if you will—of love. Places in which we train and grow into being human. Places where we learn to love, often through the joys and hardships of living and growing with others. The Church is one of these “laboratories.” God calls us into community because we cannot be fully Christian without it. It’s about being in relationship with one another, the body of Christ, growing together in love. We hear these stories regularly in our epistle readings. But the growth isn’t possible without a commitment to the journey. God’s intention that marriage be lifelong is not an arbitrary rule but a necessary piece for real growth. In the same way, when we gather for Baptism we witness the commitment to a lifelong journey with Christian community. And we remember our own commitment by renewing our baptismal covenant, no matter how close we may feel to God on that Sunday morning or not.
Of course, there are times when separation is necessary. We know the pain of broken relationships. Yet even in the midst of brokenness, hope and healing are possible. We know that we’ve missed the mark. We know the way our lives should be. Our marriage vows, baptismal vows, ordination vows… our standard, our goal. We may fall short, but we hold to that standard. We desire wholeness, restored relationship, and harmony despite the reality of our brokenness.
At its core, marriage is not just a human institution for regulating relationships. Nor is the Church a group of like-minded people or a social club. They’re gardens that call us into the complexities of love and growing into being human.
We are blessed (and are a blessing) when we are together. For it is not good to be alone.