So how about those readings?   Perhaps you feel the tension between ancient writing and the 21st century and the weight of heavy baggage of church tradition in between?   I’m guessing that many people here this morning felt poked by these readings if not downright agitated.   We live in an era when our understandings of creation and marriage are being dramatically stretched by the fluidity of science and cultural expression in ways that were unimaginable at the time these texts were written.  So what do we do with them?     

And I don’t mean what do some people do with them.  I mean, what do we do with them?  Should we dismiss them as naïve stories, fitting for church school children or non-intellectuals  but not for this post-modern, progressive congregation?  Should we just hunker down and try to endure them, hoping that these readings won’t come around again in the lectionary cycle for another three years?  Do we just go somewhere else in our heads – making a mental list of things to do after church today?  I want the answer to be no.  It seems dangerous to cede scripture to those who claim to have the only right interpretation.  In the public arena, there seems to be a common agreement or assumption that there are “real Christians” who “believe” in scripture and other people who don’t.  Maybe you assume that too.  Hardly a day goes by that I don’t notice that assumption at work on television or in the newspaper.  I think that the assumption (that there are “real Christians” who “believe” in scripture and other people who don’t) works to silence or confuse those of us who have some kind of religious practice which includes regular scripture reading (or singing!) but who don’t want to be identified with those to our religious right.

Just about ten days ago, my wife Joy and I were guests of our bishops at a breakfast to meet Canon Kenneth Kearon, the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, and we heard him argue that extending Christian marriage to same-sex couples somehow changes the basic theology of marriage.  Of course, I don’t agree with that at all, but I found myself dumbfounded when he cited the creation stories as the basis for his argument.  I really was so surprised to hear it in that context, that I was uncharacteristically speechless!

But I’m not speechless any more.  So here are some things I want to say about the scripture reading from Genesis that is before us this morning.  The Genesis passage is actually the second creation story in Genesis.  There are two versions of creation – each with its own order and language and style, which came from two different traditions and got merged into one text.  Neither one of the versions is about marriage!  This version is older – from the 9th century BCE.  It depicts God as a potter, forming a human out of clay and breathing life into the clay form.  The word adam, the Hebrew word for human being, and adamah, the Hebrew word for clay or dirt, are almost identical words.  Ironically, in contrast to the other creation story where the refrain is God saw that it was good, as this story goes, God found that it was not good.  God found that it was not good for the human being to be alone, so God the potter formed the birds and the animals out of clay and breathed life into them.  But God found that none of the birds or animals could be a partner to the human.   So God the potter took flesh and bone from the human being to make a partner.  In the Hebrew, it’s not until the partner was made that the human became “male” in contrast to the other who was “female”:  ish and ishah in Hebrew.

 It’s important for me to note that the idea that woman is made from the rib of the first human in this story does not subordinate her to the man any more than the idea that the human being was made from dirt subordinates the human being to the dirt!  In this story, humans become differentiated for companionship, for partnership, for support, because God saw that it was not good for a human being to be alone.  The joyful response of the human creation is “At last! This is what I’ve been missing – bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”  In other words, this is good.  In this version of the creation story, it is the human being, rather than God, who declares goodness.  It is good. That’s why, the story goes, a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife – because human companionship is good.

This was the passage of scripture that Jesus cited when some religious authorities put him to the test with regard to his views on divorce.  The story from Mark’s Gospel that there were rivals of Jesus (who might have been a Pharisee himself) trying to entrap Jesus – perhaps trying to figure out a way to dismiss him altogether.  “Tell us, Jesus,” they said, “is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”  The high-stakes issue here was that Kings of Israel were never permitted to divorce and remarry.  But King Herod had done just that (and John the Baptist had been beheaded for publicly criticizing the king’s marriage to his brother’s wife).  If Jesus said yes, he would have been pandering to a corrupt king.  If he said no, he risked his own head.

What did Jesus do?  Jesus did what he always did.  He answered the question with a question.  It was a question that simultaneously unmasked the entrapment effort and pointed out that the religious authorities were asking the wrong question (as we religious authorities often do).  The religious authorities were asking a version of the question, “how much (or how little) can one do and still be considered faithful?”  Wrong question.  In reminding them of the creation story, I think Jesus was saying to them, “Remember who made you and how you were made.”  You were made by God with Love.  Jesus was saying, “Remember to whom you belong and why you’re here.”  You belong to God and you are here for Love.  You are here to companion others – to be helpmates, partners.  Your hardness of heart is keeping you from remembering that.  Indeed, Jesus was saying, the law permitting divorce was written because of hardness of heart – to create order and protection for people, one from one another.

So this morning I want to teach you something about faithful ways to read scripture. I want to give you some ready vocabulary in case you ever have breakfast with the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion (who is really a lovely man), or anyone else who implies  that there is one right way to read a Bible story.  We can faithfully read scripture in a way that is radical rather than traditional.  Radical, in its primary definition, is “arising from or going to a root or source.  Basic.”  A radical interpretation of scripture looks to the root or the source of the text rather than accepting customs passed down from one generation to another about what the scripture means.  In the passages before us, for instance, a radical or root reading notes that the differentiation of humanity was for the purpose of companionship, of partnership, to stave off loneliness; and that Jesus emphasized the love of God in creation in contrast to hardness of heart.  A traditional reading of the creation passage makes the huge leap that human differentiation was for the purpose of procreation, and that divorce is not permitted, which is just not what these texts say at all.  So radical rather than traditional.

The next distinction I want to make is between descriptive and prescriptive interpretation.  We can read these texts as descriptive of the ways that the writers experienced life, as serving to give an account of something, rather than as prescriptive – making or giving instructions or directions or rules.  We can assert that male and female were created to be partners.  That describes a certain reality.  We can even agree that it is good!  We do not have to read that as a prescription that prohibits other kinds of human partnerships.  Nor do we have to read it as a prescription for mandatory or compulsory heterosexual partnership at all times for all people!  Descriptive rather than prescriptive.

And finally (at least for this sermon anyway), we can understand scripture to be essentially true, rather than literally true.  That is, we can understand scripture to be faithful, genuine, and sincere in its effort to communicate the story of God’s people in the ancient middle east, rather than factual, exact, and unbiased in its presentation.   We can understand scripture to be true for the ancients and true for us, without asserting the inerrancy of its contents.  Essentially true rather than literally true.

As people who are practicing religion (which is what we are doing this morning by virtue of our presence -- even if you’re only here out of curiosity, or you’re only here for the music, or you have no idea what you’re doing here!), we all can and we should claim our authority to interpret scripture.   We have an obligation to speak up when passages like the ones we heard today are used as measuring sticks for faithfulness, or worse, when passages like these get used as clobbering sticks against skeptics of any kind, against gays and lesbians, against people who are living in marriages that are death-dealing rather than life-giving and who need to get divorced.  What I hope you’ll take away this morning is that you have inherited a treasury of powerfully sacred stories and you have a legitimate and faithful claim to interpret scripture in the public discourse about religious freedom and civil rights.  You have inherited a treasury of powerfully sacred text.  Don’t give it away.