October 4, 2015 – Genesis 2:18-24; Psalm 8
Genesis 2:18-24; Psalm 8
A Sense of Wonder
Lectionary 27B – October 4, 2015
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
The French geophysicist Xavier Le Pichon was instrumental in establishing the study of
plate tectonics.
In the 1980s he descended to the floor of the Pacific Ocean,
at the time the deepest depth to which human beings had gone.
He spoke recently about his experience there.
He spoke about being at the place where the earth’s crust is constantly being renewed;
he said it was like being present at the moment of creation.
He saw creatures never before seen by a human being.
Because of the intensity of the darkness, there was no need for them to have
developed camouflage to hide from predators,
so their colours were brilliant and their crazy shapes adapted to their environment.
Of his experience he said this:
I felt like Adam. For me, all I could do was pray and give thanks. (Christian Century, Aug 5/15, 23).
One of the world’s foremost scientists,
Le Pichon experienced an intense sense of wonder at having seen things neither he nor
any other human being had seen before.
I think this sense of wonder is a key component of our spirituality as Christians,
and the intense gratefulness that goes along with it, as he says:
All I could do was pray and give thanks.
He describes his feeling like Adam in direct reference to our story from Genesis today,
where God creates a bunch of animals and parades them before the earth-creature,
the adam, the creature made from earth, adamah.
I don’t think it’s a man yet; it’s an undifferentiated earth creature, neither male nor female.
The problem in the story is that the earth creature is lonely.
God’s companionship, interestingly and amazingly, is not enough for the earth creature.
The earth creature needs companions also made from the earth.
God says God will make a “helper as a partner” in our translation.
In Hebrew what God says God will make is an ezer kenegdo, one of my all-time favourite
Hebrew phrases.
An ezer does mean “helper” in Hebrew, but most often it refers to God – not a subordinate – as
a helper, as in “God is my helper.”
But the story tells us that what God makes for the man is not an ezer who will be
superior to the earth creature either, but an ezer kenegdo,
literally a “face to face” helper: a companion, an equal,
someone in a relationship of complete mutuality with the earth creature.
So, in what I have said passes for comedy in the Hebrew Bible,
God creates a vast array of animals for the earth creature and parades them past,
hoping that one will be found suitable as an ezer kenegdo.
But really, there must also have been a sense of wonder in the earth creature,
seeing all these amazing creatures for the first time, like Xavier Le Pichon
at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
But the parade of creatures is just the beginning for the earth creature.
None of them are quite right for the role of ezer kenegdo.
So God takes a deep breath, places the earth creature into a deep sleep,
and takes a side of the man – not the rib, as in our translation,
but an entire side of the earth creature – and from it fashions a creature
very like but not exactly like the earth creature:
now there is man and woman,
another creature made from the very same substance and form as the earth creature.
And when the earth creature wakes, and opens his eyes,
he exclaims in astonishment and wonder:
Yes! This is what I’ve been waiting for!
This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!
Another human being with whom the earth creature can work to “till and keep”
the garden of creation.
Although “till and keep” can also mean “serve and care for” creation.
So now, the earth creature is no longer lonely – the earth creature has an ezer kenegdo.
The earth creature wonders at the creatures
and the earth creature really wonders at the ezer kenegdo.
According to the story, our primal experience is one of wonder and astonishment.
It’s our first and perhaps most important emotion.
Wonder and the gratefulness that holds its hand.
I told the story of the scientist at the beginning of the sermon to help show that
science and religion, like wonder and gratefulness, can hold hands too.
I know many of you wonder if you have to choose a scientific way of looking at the world
Or a religious one, but I do not in any way think they are opposites or enemies.
I don’t think you have to choose and I don’t think science and religion are in conflict at all.
The stories in Genesis One and Two certainly aren’t meant to give us a
scientific, literal description of how things came to be.
They are meant to tell us why we’re here, what we’re for, and what is of value in being human.
And by the same token, science is not meant to give us answers to those questions.
Science at its best may wonderingly take things apart and tell us how they work.
Religion at its best may wonderingly put things together and tell us what they mean.
I’m so grateful to science and scientists for opening up the world for me when I was child.
When I was in my early teens I eagerly awaited the latest issue of National Geographic for
the latest updates on space exploration.
They had wonderful pictures that were being sent back by
the Voyager Probes of Jupiter and Saturn.
They were so beautiful and full of wonder and mystery.
Those articles and their reflections on the origins of the universe and of our galaxy opened
the world to me in a way that I hadn’t experienced before.
I lingered over the colours of Jupiter and the perfect rings of Saturn.
Science cultivated in me a sense of wonder and astonishment that I have long cherished,
and that I feel is close to the heart of Christian spirituality.
The story in Genesis invites us into the same astonishment.
It invites us to be astonished at the earth and its creatures and to be grateful for them.
And it really invites us to be astonished at the wonder and mystery of one another,
as we companionably alleviate one another’s loneliness,
and work together for the service and care of the earth.
The value of wonder, and the high value of service:
this is what the story is trying to communicate,
not a literal description of how things came to be.
The Psalmist who wrote Psalm 8 has a similar sense of astonishment at
creation and at human beings.
“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
The moon and the stars you have set in their courses,
What are mere mortals that you should be mindful of them?
Human beings that you should care for them?”
Human beings seem so small in the big scheme of things:
the ancient Hebrews didn’t need the Hubble telescope to give them that feeling.
Yet, these seemingly insignificant humans have a high role given them by God in Genesis 2:
to care for and serve the earth and its creatures!
God has made them just little less than divine!
In order to care for the earth and its creatures, even as God also actively cares for and serves
the earth and its creatures!
Then it names those whom the earth creature got to name and was charged to care for:
the cattle and the animals of the field and the birds of the air.
Human beings, seemingly small and insignificant, have been given a huge role – a divine-like
role – in caring for and serving the earth and its creatures.
Our faith invites us to consider that that is our role – and science can complement that,
can hold hands with that.
Like those National Geographics astonished me with their pictures of our solar system,
where I was invited into a sense of awe for and wonder at creation,
so our faith invites us into a sense of awe and gratefulness for creation.
Our faith invites us to imagine that our purpose in life is to work with one another,
to be one another’s ezer kenegdos, to care for creation and care for one another,
and science offer us a way to do that, whether through the medical sciences or
the natural sciences or the applied sciences and research into
clean sustainable energy, wind power, solar power, and all the rest.
Sure: the folks at Volkswagen have reminded us that science can deceive us as well as help us.
And even as the Bible invites us into a sense of astonishment at human beings,
we are often not astonished at ourselves,
but when we look inside see things we are ashamed of and not proud of.
But the good news this morning is that one automaker and the things we are ashamed of inside
do not finally get to define us.
In the Biblical story, there is more, there is good news:
amazingly, God in Jesus becomes our ezer kenegdo,
our face to face companion, made of the same stuff we are:
To serve us and care for us in all our shame and lift us to become something better:
to transform us into the ezer kenegdos, the face to face companions we are meant to be,
made for service and made for caring,
made for astonishment and wonder and delight in creation – and
made for astonishment and wonder and delight in one another.
Shortly, like Xavier Le Pichon, we will pray and give thanks –
like a scientist lost in wonder at the bottom of the ocean –
for creation, its creatures, our place as their servants,
and for Jesus who comes to be ours, as he serves us with bread and wine.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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