20th Sunday after Pentecost

Growing up, one of my best friends was Rob Parker. Rob’s dad was an avid hunter, and they always had a dog. He was particularly fond of German Shorthaired Pointers. They never had any cats though. Rob’s mom didn’t like cats. “Because”, she said, “they’re sneaky. You never know where they are, and then next thing you know you’re tripping over one.”

And you know, Rob’s mom was right. Cats are sneaky. They’re so quiet and stealthy. Unless they get a sudden attack of the night crazies. And yes, you do, on occasion, end up tripping over one. No doubt about it. But sneaky can also be good. Because of his innate sneakiness, my mom and dad’s old cat, Euripides, toothless and clawless, was still a consummate mouser. You can’t just automatically write off sneaky. Jesus, for example, is unexpectedly fascinatingly sneaky in today’s reading.

First, is how Jesus addresses the question posed by the Pharisees. “2Some Pharisees came, and to test [Jesus] they asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’”

Seems like a straightforward enough question, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” But look at how Jesus responds! “3He answered them, ‘What did Moses command… you?’”  They don’t even have to add “Asking for a friend.” In the blink of an eye, he takes a hypothetical, theoretical abstraction and makes it real, concrete, and consequential, and quite possibly even calls them out for the real reason for asking this question.

“What did Moses command you?” Either they don’t get it, or they intentionally ignore it. They want to keep it abstract: “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus won’t let go: “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you.”

What Jesus does next is not only sneaky. It’s radical, even revolutionary. According to Deuteronomy 24:1, it was easy for a man to divorce a woman. “​1 Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; she then leaves his house…” (Deuteronomy 24:1) That’s it. You don’t like her, for whatever reason, you write her a certificate of divorce and BOOM!, she’s gone!

There are two problems with this. First, it left a woman out on the street with no income, no home, and no security. Life suddenly became quite perilous. Second, this law gave the woman no such reciprocal action. A woman could not present a man with a certificate of divorce, regardless of circumstances.

Now look at what Jesus does here! “6But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” 10Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; 12and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

Notice first that Jesus’ response is in two parts. There’s what he says publicly to the Pharisees and then there’s what he says privately, to his disciples when they ask him for clarification. For the sake of clarity, I’m going to squeeze together the two key sentences, skipping over that which muddles things (at least for the sake of this sermon). “6But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. ’ 7‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8and the two shall become one flesh.’…Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; 12and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

First, Jesus reaches all the way back to the beginning of Hebrew Scripture, quoting and conflating the first account of creation from Genesis 1 and the portion of Genesis two, which we have for today. Genesis 1:27 states “27So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27) Jesus reminds the Pharisees that both men and women bear the image of God. You could even go so far as to say that the true wholeness of God is represented of God only in the full diversity of male and female. “27So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

In a culture where women weren’t even second-class citizens, this is a radical statement in and of itself. But then, when talking privately with the disciples, he pushes the boundary even further, reminding them that this radical quality is not an abstraction, but that it must have its expression in the real world. Jesus says to the disciples “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; 12and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

When we read that (or hear it), the first thing that hits us is the apparent harsh judgment of those who divorce their spouse. But don’t let that distract you from the deeper, more profound point that Jesus is making here. In Jesus’ view of the world, even in its brokenness, where people get divorced, there is total and complete equality between men and women. “Whoever divorces his wife…; …and if she divorces her husband…” Even amid our incompleteness and brokenness, the expression of God’s sustaining love and energy finds their deepest expression in the first principles of creation.

“27So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” The creation of humankind is the pinnacle of creation in both creation accounts. Or is it? Our human self-centeredness is what leads us to believe that the creation of humankind is the pinnacle of creation in both Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. But pay attention. Because I don’t think it is.

“27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ 29 God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. 31 God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (Genesis 1:27-31)

The problem is that, over the millennia, as we’ve read this text we’ve become ever more human-centered in our understanding of it. And this last segment of Genesis 1 doesn’t help. Because up until this point, at the end of each day, that which has been created has been pronounced to be “good”. It’s only after the sixth day, and the creation of humankind, that the day’s work is pronounced to be “very good”. But when we think about it in our minds, we skip several verses. We go right from verse 27 “27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”, to verse 31: “31 God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” And we place ourselves at the pinnacle of creation: we are God’s crowning achievement. Except that we’re not.

The pinnacle of God’s creation is not us, but the delicate, intricately interconnected web of relationships that’s talked about in verses 28-30. “28 God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ 29 God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’”

“…[Then] the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. 8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil… 15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.

When it comes to our relationship with the earth and all of creation, we very quickly are drawn back into the delusion that we humans are the pinnacle of creation. We confuse dominion with domination. They are not the same.

Our calling is to be in the image of God, caring for the whole world. The good news about what god is doing in the world has to do with the care of creation, and not solely forgiveness. Human beings are a part of the whole of creation. God is continually at work in creation and calls us to be at work with God in caring for creation.

We need to remember that God so loved the world, not just human beings. In the story of Noah, God makes a new covenant with all creatures, not just human beings. In the book of Revelation what is promised is a new heaven and a new earth. Again and again, throughout the bible, references to creation are to the whole of creation.

If God loves the whole earth, then we are called to love the whole earth. “…[To] subdue the earth and have dominion” – we tend to understand that as domination and exploitation without giving consideration to renewal.

Domination implies having power over something. Dominion implies sharing power with God. In fact, the word translated as “dominion” is the same word that denotes God’s relationship with the world. God’s relationship with the world is that of caring for it. We humans, created in God’s, are also called to care for and tend the earth.

The God of creation shares the creative process. In 1:11 God declares, “Let the earth bring forth…” The earth is coparticipant with God in bringing forth further creatures. God gives power over to the creatures to carry out further creative responsibilities.

Dominion depicts the sovereignty of a king. In biblical culture, the king is everything. All hopes and dreams and fears rest with the king. If Jesus Christ is the model of Kingship, we do call him Lord (Dominus) after all, then how does Jesus exercise dominion. Jesus’ focus is on the least of these. (These little ones). That’s very different than saying, “Use the planet however you want.”

Creation is declared to be good, a Hebrew word which means “life-furthering”. How do we preserve the life-furthering/regenerative capacity of the earth?

In the second creation account, Adam is called to till and keep/serve the soil. We’re here not just to enjoy the garden, but to make it work. The word which means “to keep” is the same word that’s used in reference to our neighbors. It’s a word that refers to relationship, not ownership: Caring, loving, responsive, interactive relationship.

If we wish to truly understand our role as stewards of the earth, we need to properly understand our primary identity: our creatureliness. We are mud-people, created from the earth. We are kin with the earth. We’re made of the same elements as all the other creatures and earth itself. We’re tremendously dependent upon all these other creatures that live among us. Just like the billions of microbes that live in and on us and depend upon us, we are dependent upon nature, not separate from it.

We are here to take care of creation, so that creation can take care of us. Creation is an on-going process. It’s open-ended. There’s a lot of work yet to be done here.

AMEN