I: Genesis 2:18-25
Today we hear a well-known reading from Genesis. It’s followed by the Psalm and prepares for the Gospel. It tells of Adam’s ‘aloneness’ and how the Lord leads him out of it through the Woman and on into marriage. It’s not an historical narrative nor a scientific account of how human beings began. Our reading of science and history are always shifting. Genesis offers something stabler. It’s really a “deep dive” through story and symbol into why we are as we are and do what we do.
At the beginning of the account, the Man – Adam – has already been formed and given life. He’s in a “good place” in every sense. He has a fruitful garden. He has a job, to till it and keep it. He’s friends with the Lord. But there’s something missing. There’s a lack, a hole. “It is not good for man to be alone”. He lacks a “helper suitable for him” – a supportive fellow human being who “answers” to what he is, corresponds to, complements and in a sense completes him. So, the tender Lord makes the animals and brings them to him. This is a great enrichment in the Man’s life. It enhances his stature and widens his responsibility. He “names” them. But still no “helper fit for him” was found. The search goes on. He’s still in some deep sense “alone”. He needs more. Then strange things start to happen. God acts. A deep sleep falls on him – God anaesthetises him, as it were. In the Bible, deep sleeps suggest God is at work in a special way. And perhaps he doesn’t want the Man getting in the way of what he is about to do. This final piece of creation – the Woman – is to be God’s deed only. So the divine surgery goes ahead, a rib is extracted, the Lord takes it and “builds” into Woman. This new creature, then, flesh from flesh, is human right through. And why is She made from a rib – not from the pinkie, say. Well, ribs are close to the lungs and the heart. They’re what’s closest to the heart. They protect what’s most vital and central in us. Thanks to the Woman, the Man can truly breathe, i.e. live. Thanks to the Woman, he will not lose his heart. He will remain human and open to God and to others. He won’t degenerate into a machine. And She is “built”, says Genesis. It’s the same word used for the building of Solomon’s temple. This new being is a temple.
When Adam emerges from his sleep, it’s on this his eyes open. The Lord leads the Woman to him. And he speaks – the first human speaking in Scripture. “This at last is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones…” It’s not just speech; it’s poetry, and we should probably imagine it being sung. It’s the first love-song. Adam’s search is over. He has been led out of his isolation. Now his existence makes sense, now he can understand why his body is as it is. He’s found a joy: a “helper fit for him”. “Fit for him”, corresponding to him, equal to him. And a “helper”. This is a special word. It is used here of Woman – two times. £ other times in the Bible, it’s used of a neighbouring country which acts as military ally of Israel on time of war. Then, some twenty plus times, it’s used of God – our helper in times of trouble. What a profile of the Woman emerges here? She has a god-like mission, not to wash the dishes, but to bring God’s help to the man in the battle of life, or better still, to march to victory with him.
This story is told from the Man’s perspective, but isn’t it reciprocally true? It is not good for the man to be alone, nor is it good for the woman. The man is an unsolved mystery to himself until he meets the woman and the woman in turn discovers herself as she takes on the mission given her.
Then there’s great last line: “This is why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two become one body.” Hence monogamous marriage. He is joined to “one” wife, not many. And first the man “leaves” his father and mother, home, and all its safety and security. It’s the first human exodus we all have to make, leaving hearth and home. But he “leaves” to be “joined to” his wife. It can be translated to “cling to”, “to cleave to”. He “leaves” to “cleave”. Just as Israel will leave to Egypt to cleave by covenant to the Lord at Mt Sinai. And the two become one flesh, a partnership, an allied force for good, bringing love and life into the world.
How much there can be in these ancient texts – much more than I have touched on here.
Perhaps, though, a concern may surface here. What about those who do not live Adam’s journey? Or whose marriages have gone terribly wrong, whose relationships are botched, or who never even get that far, who never find the right person, who feel stranded and single as life flows past them, or who just don’t feel a pull to the opposite sex. What about those called “to make themselves eunuchs” for the kingdom of heaven, those called to celibacy, however much they would love to be married? Are they to live outside the covenant? But these exceptions can actually enlarge our understanding of the divine purposes. This first covenant of Genesis, Adam and Eve, woman and man, is a pointer to the greater all-encompassing covenant between the Lord and Israel, God and humanity, Christ and the Church, Christ and the individual. Man is for woman and woman for man, but both of us are meant for even more. There is a searching in us only the Lord himself can answer. And so the married and the single both point beyond themselves to the Relationship that underpins and carries every other one. And together – especially in the Church, as believers – can be helpers, brothers and sisters, to one another as we journey together to the embrace of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
II Mark 10: 2-16
In the Gospel, following on from Genesis, the Lord affirms marriage: monogamous and indissoluble, one man and one woman and for life.
Then, naturally enough, he goes on to speak of children
The disciples stop them coming to Jesus, but he says, “don’t stop them”. “Let the little children come to me.” Worth pausing on that phrase. It suggests so much. Children are God’s creation and every child is called to come to Jesus. “Don’t stop them”, says the Lord.
We can stop them by going to the chemist and buying certain things, so that they never appear at all. Then if they are conceived, it’s possible to seek help from the Health Services they don’t see the light of day. Isn’t that a most blatant way of stopping them? A problem that has exercised me for years is, how will Christianity survive, thrive, give life in our time? How will we keep going? Beyond many beautiful reasons one might offer, there is a very simple, bodily, practical one: by having babies. If you’re a celibate priest it’s not easy to say this, but I notice the Pope is saying it more and more. The Western world is living a “demographic winter”. We are barely sustaining ourselves. If we want a future for our country and our Western world and above all for our faith, here’s the word that will empower us: “let the little children come to me; don’t stop them”. Don’t be afraid. “May you see your children’s children. On Israel peace.” How many times that word “bless” occurred in today’s psalm.
Let them come to me. I was disappointed that recently Aberdeen City Council voted against setting up a working group to consider more deeply the provision of Catholic education in this city, including a Secondary School. This provision is not what it should be. And so, here too, children are being denied the possibility of coming to Jesus along the path of Catholic schooling. We need not give in to this, but perhaps it is a salutary reminder of the responsibility that falls to our parishes and youth groups and, first of all, to parents. “People were bringing little children to him, for him to touch them” – parents surely. Let us have children, then, welcome them, not stop them, allow them to come, and bring them to Jesus to be baptised, to know him, love him and follow him.
