Genesis 3- 3 Loving Relationships
Think of a connection or bond that you have with someone. It can be family, friend, neighbour, even the postie, your dog or cat. Think about what binds you to them and the depth and limits of that bond.
Some will be deep, some will be lighter in connection, maybe for example limited to a passing smile at the checkout of a store. Why are there different levels of connection? What makes us able to be open and vulnerable with one human being, but have boundaries towards another?
Now think about what you gain from some of those stronger more deeper bonds. And think upon the heartache when we or they do something that slices through the trust we have with them.
The bonds we make with people, pets, even things, have the ability to be healing and affirming. But they don’t half go wrong from time to time, even if that’s only for a little bit.
We’re going to hear now from the drama group a well known piece of bible. It’s one that we often throw into the trash can of our minds because, it just doesn’t seem to fit our modern world. It’s part of the creation narratives and it’s dealing with some of the questions about the bonds we have with one another.
We might think it twee and meaningless for our world. But it’s trying to do an important job and if we allow it to be the story it needs to be, we will hear, just as we would with any writing at all that we might borrow from the library or elsewhere, the truths and values that the writer was trying to convey or get their mind around. That’s the whole point of writing, and that’s the point of the stories we have about creation in the bible.
Listen to it. And although it might make you smile, the writer was trying to think about something important. “When was it, that our ability to be good and kind to each other got messed up? How could that be possible if we were meant to be capable of such great things?” Questions that when we look at the world around us today, we know they are not twee at all.
Let us now listen and consider what the writer was trying to get their head around.
Read Genesis 3.1-18
We heard three loving relationships.
The one with the created world,
The one with each other,
And the one with God.
And in the story, the writer considers how all three got waylaid and messed up. It isn’t a declaration of how things were. It can’t be- because we have 2 creation stories in the bible and this part 2 of the second one. No, it’s the writer thinking philosophically and trying to find a possible answer. “Maybe, if it had all started like this... then maybe this happened to muck things up, and that’s why we have battles and lack of produce and hard work.” And so on.
They were trying to understand how things had come to be so mucked up. And in fact the whole of the purpose of the rest of the bible from Moses all the way to Jesus and his followers afterwards, is the story of how those 3 loving relationships were going to be fixed.
Jesus dying and rising on the cross fixes the relationship with God and gives us the means to consider how we can be part of fixing the other 2 important forms of relationship too.
I want to take the image of the cross to describe this. We know that it’s formed of 2 beams of wood. One points up and down, and we could say that represents the loving relationship with God.
The other beam is laid horizontal, upon which with our big brother’s arms were stretched beyond their limit. And in so doing, formed with the shape of the tenderness of a hug, Jesus’ life example is encapsulated for us. And we know his example restored and remade as many of those bonds and connections people had with each other, as were possible to describe. Yes, even the ones where he caused people anger.
Lastly, the cross needed to be placed into the ground. It would have been planted, if you like, with wooden wedges hammered into place. And so a connection to that final loving relationship, the one between people and the created world is represented for us too.
Jesus fixed the loving relationship between ourselves and God.
Jesus shows how to fix the loving relationship between each other.
Jesus’ mark upon the face of the earth, shows us how precious that last loving relationship between ourselves and the created world is too.
Have any of you read the book The Little Prince? It’s a wonderfully complex tale, pitched almost as a children’s book, but actually it’s a deep reader in the philosophy of life, a parable. In it the little prince meets a wild fox, and they have something of a conversation. Inside that conversation is something we might like to consider in order for us to to help God continue to fix the loving relationships we have between each other, too.
The little prince was put out because he had asked the fox to play with him because he was lonely. And the fox replied that he couldn’t because he was not tame. So the little prince said,
“What does that mean-' tame'? "
" It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. " It means to establish ties."
"' To establish ties' ? "
"Just that," said the fox.
" To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . .
"I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower . . . I think that she has tamed me ..."
Who have you been tamed by, and who has had a part in taming you? What ties have been established to make that person unique in all the world compared to the 1000s of people around?
Think upon that, and think upon the importance of those relationships, and our connection to the ground, and our connection to the world above.
I’m going to finish with a short snippet that I found on the internet. As I say it, let’s turn the words into a prayer that we can hold in our heart, every single time we feel challenged by the bumps and breaks that we will inevitably experience in our 3 loving relationships.
I asked Jesus "How much do you love me?" Jesus replied, "this much" and stretched His arms out on the cross & died. I love you this much.
