Thursday, February 9, 2023

9 February 2023 - it is (not) good


The LORD God said:
"It is not good for the man to be alone.
I will make a suitable partner for him."

Surprisingly, something was "not good" even before any sin had been committed. After having heard the Lord calling so much of creation good we are surprised to encounter this assessment. Unlike other things in creation the man was not meant to be alone, was incomplete without community. 

The man gave names to all the cattle,
all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals;
but none proved to be the suitable partner for the man.

Man was able in some measure to grow and use his rational nature in relation to the animals. But with all due respect to those who dearly love their pets and treat them as family there is something that animals cannot give to man. He is not able to be fully himself, to truly know himself, or to fully embrace living in God's own image without someone more like himself, equal to him, yet different.

The LORD God then built up into a woman
the rib that he had taken from the man.

Only once woman was created was the image of God fully revealed in man. God himself was not a solitude but a Trinity. There was in him lover, beloved, and love. So too in, then, in the man and the woman made in his image. The situation of Adam alone was "not good" but with both together it leapfrogged past good to "very good".

"This one, at last, is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
this one shall be called 'woman,'
for out of 'her man' this one has been taken."

The man recognized himself in the woman, but not as in a mirror that caused him to focus inward. He discovered in her his own intrinsic orientation outward toward love. She too, no doubt, discovered who she was and was meant to be by interacting with this man for whom she was a perfect match.

That is why a man leaves his father and mother
and clings to his wife,
and the two of them become one flesh.

Marriage is therefore no second class vocation, not something merely permitted because not all are strong enough to become clergy or religious. It is rather the primary and normative vocation for the sake of which the clergy exists, without which there would be no others. This ability of marriages to reveal the image of God to the world is one reason that the Church defends marriage so vociferously. She refuses to compromise because she perceives how great a good marriage is meant to be. The world may desire contractual arrangements of relationships, promises that can be given and then abandoned if circumstances dictate. But the Church sees how such arrangements miss the mark, obscuring not only God's steadfast fidelity, but also the full meaning of self-gift inherent in being made male or female in the image of God.

The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame.

They felt no shame because they were not at risk of exploitation by the gaze of the other. It was only after the fall that creatures would begin to use one another selfishly. Here we see what was always meant to be normal, the man and his wife loving one another fully and completely, regarding the other as other without the need to compromise to satisfy fallen cravings. We can only image how free it would feel to gaze with this gaze, and how affirming it would feel to have this gaze upon us. Even now, however, even when no human can reliably and consistently gaze upon us this way, with complete and uncompromised love, God himself never ceases to look at us in this way. May we discover and become convicted that he does so, for it can give us a sense of self-worth that we will never find on our own or in creatures.

He said to her, "Let the children be fed first.
For it is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs."

What was Jesus doing here?  He seemed to imply that this Greek woman was something less than fully woman, something more like the creatures that could not serve as partner for Adam. He was in some sense affirming the belief of Jews about Gentiles, affirming the negative self-image which the woman had perhaps long since absorbed and held about herself. But he did this not because he himself believed it about her, but rather that so by confronting it she could be free of it.

She replied and said to him,
"Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children's scraps."
Then he said to her, "For saying this, you may go.
The demon has gone out of your daughter."

She believed more in the abundance of the one to whom she came than in any barriers between nationalities, than any limitations inherent in herself. She could recast herself in the light of the generosity of Jesus and find that his love was so superabundant as to satisfy even her. Her faith reached beyond what anyone might say about her and raised her up as an exemplar of faith who could no longer be reckoned as anything less than fully human. 

When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed
and the demon gone.


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