“Our Human Vocation: Yours, Mine, and Ours”

• Scriptural Reference: Genesis 1 and 2
• April 6, 2008

There was this little lady at Muldraugh Baptist Church in Muldraugh, Kentucky, the first church I served as pastor, who attended church “every time the doors opened,” as the saying goes. That wasn’t exactly true, of course, because many times I went to my study during the week, opened the doors and she didn’t show up which says something about believing the literal accuracy of sayings. Anyway, Hazel was the head of the “Women’s Missionary Society,” and was extremely serious about her discipleship. She approached me after a Bible study one Wednesday night after most everyone else had gone through the sanctuary doors into the summer evening. She looked over her shoulder to make sure no one could hear us and asked, “Brother Drexel, I don’t mean to sound irrespectful but – ahem – did Adam and Eve have navels?”

I laughed because I’d heard the joke before. It had been in Hebrew class and a skinny guy whom I perceived as an ancient language geek had just come in an plopped down at his desk across the aisle from me. Dr. J. J. Owens was writing Hebrew verb forms on the blackboard (yes, writing on a blackboard – using chalk), and before Dr. Owens could turn around and begin leading us in reciting the various declensions of that particular verb, the language geek leaned across at me, poked me on the shoulder and said, “Hey, Rayford! Did Adam and Eve have navels?” He chuckled through a crooked smirk then, as he cast a furtive look toward Dr. Owens’ back, raised his hand to his mouth in a conspiratorial gesture and said, “Try THAT on your church members and watch the mission society ladies squirm.” Lo and behold, here was one of those mission society ladies raising that issue herself and saying that to ME.

But Hazel wasn’t laughing. This was no joke to her. It bothered her. Did the first couple, created directly by God, not have that left-over scar from the rest of humanity’s umbilical days? “And,” she said, “where did Cane and Able find their wives?”

She’d been attending classes at the community college to get her nursing degree and had been studying genetics. She had learned what no one disputes about the genetic consequences of in-breeding. If Adam and Eve were the first two humans, and there were no others, then Cane and Able would have had to marry their sisters. Genetic viability in that case would have been an eventual impossibility. She didn’t put it in exactly these words, but that’s what she was thinking – and she was no liberal.

If Genesis is literal, scientific writing, then we have some deep problems, not the least of which would be repeats of the Scopes Monkey Trial. The bigger problem would be that we’d miss the whole point of the creation stories. Genesis isn’t concerned with counting the days it took for God to create. Genesis seeks, rather, to tell us who we are, whose we are, and how we ought to live our lives if we want to experience abundance.

I said to her, “you know Hazel, people say you’re here at the church every time the door opens.”

She smiled a little sheepishly. “Well, that only means that I love the Lord.”

“And that you’re dedicated,” I added.

“Well . . .”

“Hazel,” I said, “When people say you’re here every time the door opens, they know and everyone who hears someone say that knows that you’re not here literally every time the door opens. But when they hear that, they know that you’re committed and they can count on you for leadership and support when it comes to church matters.”

Genesis functions in much the same way. If the writers of the Genesis story had led off with a lecture, systematically outlining their theology of the human condition, they would have used pages and pages of manuscript, amounting to a very boring presentation which would have lost most of their audience, except for an elite group of intellectuals adept at writing bylaws. Instead, they told a story which engages the imagination of most anyone who’d hear it and sets the stage for a play in which we’re all actors.

I decided to tell Hazel about what I’d learned concerning the Hebrew word “Adam.” In my Hebrew dictionary, the Brown-Driver-Briggs Gesenius, the English translation for the Hebrew word “Adam” is “man, mankind.” That would allow for a translation like this for Genesis 1:26: “Let us make mankind in our image;” and for Genesis 2:20, it would be equally correct to translate it, “But for mankind, no suitable helper was found.” In fact, when most translations of the Bible in Genesis 1:26 use the English word “man,” it’s the very same Hebrew word translated as “Adam” in 2:20, and all through the third chapter of Genesis. Why did our translators change the English word if the Hebrew word remains the same?

Well, that’s why we have scholars. Those dedicated servants of sacred literature know that there’s a huge difference between the kind of writing of the first chapter of Genesis and the second and third chapters. You can see it the minute you read it, in fact. The first chapter tells an orderly, linear account. It starts with nothing but God. Then God speaks and things start building. They build in an orderly manner. Creation develops according to God’s direction and at the right time in the process, God creates creatures called human beings. Then God rests.

Look at the second and third chapters, though, and if you’re a strict literalist, you’ll have to do gyrations to harmonize the second chapter with the first. In the second chapter, God creates a man first, plants a garden, places the man in it, then brings all manner of vegetation and animals into being, parades them before the man and lets the man name them all. Then, at the end of the process, God says in effect, “Hey something’s missing from this picture here and I know what it is. We need a woman.” Then we have the rib incident.

I don’t have any problem with the differences between these two creation accounts. The first account simply tells us that God did it in an orderly manner and created humans as a part of the process. The second account, on the other hand, tracks more like a story. There’s a plot here, and the man is part of the plot. In stories with plots, you don’t have general characters. You have protagonists with names, and in the Genesis story there’s one particular protagonist, a man with a name, like any protagonist in any good story would have a name. In J. R. R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings, for example, you don’t have just a general sort of king coming into his own, you have Aragorn, and Aragorn has a history, a lineage, and a character. I liked Aragorn when I read The Lord of the Rings and I identified with him. I wanted him to succeed. I wanted him to marry Arwyn, the Elf Princess. I wanted all that to happen because in some ways, Aragorn stands in for me. I want to have adventure in my life, conquer evil, marry the girl of my dreams, and succeed hugely in my life’s work. Aragorn captures my attention (and a whole lot of other people along with me) because in a real sense, his story is my story, and I identify with him.

Likewise, the author of the second chapter of Genesis and following wants us to identify with Adam. He wants us to read the story and enter into it. You enter into stories much better when you have a concrete character to follow, rather than an abstract concept, like “mankind.” Then, as you enter into the story, you realize -- surprise! -- that the story has entered into you. You realize that it isn’t talking just about Adam; it’s talking about you. You’re Adam. And when you realize that the authors of this story purposefully chose this character’s name as Adam, meaning “mankind,” then you surmise that this was their purpose in telling the story in the first place: they’re telling YOUR story, and MY story, and the story of the ENTIRE human race.

In other words, the word “Adam” stands as a representative word. What Adam does in the Genesis stories represents what all people do – they ignore God’s commands and place their own interests above God’s interests even though they have the potential for much better results.

Now, to tell you the truth, Adam doesn’t really do much in chapter one. The text simply tells us that the male and female got created and were subsequently given instructions to be fruitful and multiply. They aren’t given any specifics about how to be fruitful or how to multiply, though they obviously used their imaginations. There aren’t even any limits set on the fruitfulness or the multiplication. Chapter one simply describes a process in which Creation builds until God creates human beings. Setting limitations on or describing the content of fruitfulness and multiplication doesn’t seem to be the point of Chapter One.

Chapter One’s significance lies at its culmination. The whole chapter tells us something significant about God, namely that God is the Creator who brought all there is into being. When the chapter concludes by telling us that God created human beings in God’s image, this also tells us something significant about people. God created the Cosmos, brought order out of chaos, breathed life into inanimate matter, assessed the Creation, celebrated its goodness, and set aside a day to rest from labor, a day spent under a benediction. If humans bear God’s image, then humans are most God-like when they, too, use their creative abilities, bring order out of chaos, use their powers of assessment, spend time in celebration, setting aside times for re-creation in an attitude of celebration and blessing.

If we only had Genesis One by itself, though, we would risk falling into a very unhealthy trap. By itself, Genesis One can be construed to instruct humans to dominate creation. It would seem to suggest, and generations of believers in God, both Jewish and Christian over the course of human history have taken it to mean, that the Creation was placed here to serve humans. Humans were meant to subdue it, that is, force all creation to serve the needs of homo sapiens. “Be fruitful and multiply,” God instructed the humans, so the proliferation of humanity is God’s will. If other life forms begin to die out because of habitat loss, or pollution, or overuse, then humans shouldn’t worry about that. God ordained it so.

This points out the age-old problem of taking scripture out of context. Taken out of context, just about any scripture passage can be used to justify just about any prejudice or personal perspective, including some that subsequent generations of believers have repudiated, slavery being one of the most graphic examples. In this particular case, we don’t have Genesis one by itself. We have, following immediately on the last verses of Chapter One, the opening to Chapter Two.

In chapter two, abstract “mankind” becomes a concrete character. He has the familiar name, Adam, and unlike chapter one, Adam enters the picture at the beginning of the process of creation. At this point, God grants Adam the privilege of naming the animals. Not only is this a huge privilege, it’s also a powerful role. Naming has more to do with discerning character than simply finding a label to place on something. In ancient cultures, the name of a person reflected something essential about the circumstances under which the person was born. Read through the Old Testament stories and see how much significance was placed by a name. “Isaac” meant laughter, and referred to the way Sarah laughed when she heard the absurd news that she, at 80 years of age, was going to conceive and give birth. That laugh reflected both incredulity and hope and when they named their son “laughter” they imprinted on his very consciousness the fact that his life emerged miraculously, defying every conventional expectation. When God invited Adam to name the animals, God included Adam in the creative act of discernment and in so doing, not only illustrated to Adam what kind of activities would elevate him to his highest purpose, but also entrusted Adam with a great deal of power.

It was, however, not unlimited power. Notice that in Genesis Two, God places Adam in the garden with the instructions to care for and tend to the garden. This power which God gives Adam, this strength to discern and name, paints a vivid picture of Adam caring for the creation in cooperation with God. Yes, human beings, created in God’s image, have a power superior to the rest of the living beings on the earth, but that power entails a discipline and restraint of which the other species on the planet are not capable and for which they are not responsible. God pointed out the abundance of the garden to Adam, but also pointed out some trees from which the humans were not supposed to eat. Unlike other life forms on the planet, like elephants who are known to eat their favorite vegetation until the plants are wiped out, human beings have the rational capacity to assess the effect their exercise of power has on the planet and practice restraint accordingly. Human beings can observe, assess, and appropriately respond to changing circumstances in ways other animal forms cannot. Appropriately responding means being responsible – response-able, so to speak.

Now, I’ve sat in my study more than a few times speculating with church members as to what kind of fruit was on that fateful tree. I’ve sat with them many times wondering what kind of tree grew the knowledge of good and evil. Every school child knows that good and evil don’t literally grow on trees, so clearly this biblical story flies on the wings of metaphor. Read through the text and you’ll never find an apple mentioned. We know, though, that the point isn’t the kind of fruit eaten, rather that the humans disobeyed God, whatever it was they consumed. The fact of the matter is – to borrow a phrase from Paul Duke – we all have fruit on our faces. We’ve all bitten the apple. The point of the story lies in the fact that humans didn’t practice the restraint that God wove into their instructions for caring and tending to the garden. Humans chose to be irresponsible with their power.

Being responsible for the garden and tending and caring with appropriate restraint guided by discernment points toward stewardship. God created Adam as a steward of God’s creation. In other words, God called Adam to be a co-creative steward of the beautiful garden God had planted “in the east.” Adam was to pursue this stewardship not alone, though, but in community. That’s where Eve comes in. God created Eve to share with Adam the responsibilities and privileges God uniquely gave to humans.

Human beings, then, find their authentic vocation when they orient their lives around caring for and tending to God’s creation. This kind of outlook can place us at odds with how our society views people. All too frequently, for example, reports about the economies of the so-called developed world refer to citizens of those countries as “consumers” as if that were the quintessential human activity. Unrestrained consumerism, however, opposes active stewardship. It’s true, of course, that no living creature can live without some consumption. We must eat to live, cut down trees to build houses, sheer sheep to make sweaters, and burn fuel to get heat. All these activities, however, can be conducted with an eye toward sustainability. In other words, we have the capacity to discern how we can be stewards of the resources creation offers us. We have the ability to restrain our consumption so that it doesn’t become destructive. Eve’s failure, aided and abetted by Adam, was to succumb to the snake’s clever marketing campaign to cast off all restraint. When they cast off their restraint, forgetting their call to be stewards with the power to say “no” to certain forms of consumption, they also cast aside their authentic vocation.

Adam’s story is our story. It is my story.

I think authentic vocation lies at the center of the Creation stories and when we read the story of Adam, we discover the essential core of who each of us is and what we ought to do with our gifts and abilities. The story of Adam explains why we all feel like there’s something we ought to be doing as opposed to something else: God wove co-creative stewardship of Creation into the very core of our humanity.