Richard Bollman, S.J.

OCTOBER 4, 27^th SUNDAY B, 2009

Genesis 2:18-24; Hebrews 2:9-11; Mark 10:2-16

We begin the liturgy of the word with Genesis

because Jesus quotes a portion of Genesis

in his conversation with the pharisees

about the meaning of marriage,

and the suitability of divorce.

Jesus points back to Genesis,

to this story of creation you will hear,

where the human dilemma is delineated

as a desire for companionship:

"it is not good for the human being to be alone."

So marriage is defined in this story as the need for intimate companionship.

This is a slightly different emphasis from the first creation story

where the male and the female in God’s image

are charged to be together to continue God’s creation.

This story places a different emphasis on the sexual relationship.

And this week we begin a few Sundays listening

to the Letter to the Hebrews.

where the author considers the importance of Jesus

as a flesh and blood person, capable of suffering,

and able to identify with us in our own struggles.

In this way he could make a difference;

he would be the only priest we would ever need.

HOMILY: "Connecting back to the Soil"

As I said in the introduction, there are two creation stories in Genesis,

roughly chapter one and chapter two,

and the second of them, a part of which we read here,

is very concerned with the earth.

It doesn’t start with darkness and light and the sun and stars,

it starts on the ground here, earth as the beginning of the story.

It points to very material of the earth, its clods of clay

out of which there is created the first living organism

called, in Hebrew, ADAM, which we translate today Human Being;

but in Hebrew it is a pun on the very word for earth, which is: DAMA.

In contemporary English, this would be best translated, then,

that God made, from the clods of the earth, an ‘earthling.’

And you’ll notice that quite a few other earthlings are made from the earth,

which the story teller describes as the wild beasts and the birds of the air,

all made ‘from the soil.’ Earthlings.

And the human being had a deep knowledge of these other beings,

because he gave them names, called them by name,

as if ADAM knew them more intimately than God did.

Like this human being had the capacity to listen to the animals,

to trust an instinctual awareness to name them.

For to know the name of something, to bestow the name,

is to see into their essence.

Now this old story is inspired by faith,

and it expresses this vision, this bedrock truth

how we are all together in a creative milieu,

the creatures of the earth.

And in that context male and female form a deep complimentary bond.

Against that story of what we call Eden,

Jesus frames the question of marriage and divorce.

Man and woman come together in a world

that is already a great web of relationship,

the soil, our earth, and the animals

that we have the capacity to know and name.

It all shows a unity of life, of origins, that we are called to respect.

Marriage is placed in the context of all life.

We walk a common journey.

You can get in touch with this in the love you have for your partner,

and you can also feel it when you walk out into your back yard,

or the nearby picnic groves in our county,

where the birds and deer and an occasional fox make their home.

Right here in this county.

If you’ve ever grown your own tomatoes or zucchini

you notice you are cultivating something you need for food,

and something already a part of you even as it sprouts and ripens.

In the air, the water and the soil, we walk a common journey.

This is why we believe there is a sacred inspiration

in our current concerns to care for the earth.

And when you listen to Genesis and to Jesus,

you could conclude that if marriage is having a hard time these days,

if that commitment is mysterious and hard to discover,

it might be related to the way the whole planet is having a hard time.

That commitment also is becoming more mysterious and demanding.

What God has joined, we should not divide.

This teaching Jesus reserves for the later part of his career,

even as he is preparing his disciples for his death on the cross.

And as we’ve seen, all along he insists that working out our true nature

takes self-discipline, putting aside the obstacles.

You remember how he gets on his disciples’ case

about preferment, about lording it over each other,

about hardness of heart.

Instead, he puts the last first in the kingdom:

the sinner, the child. The poor.

It's a counter-cultural thing, Christian life.

Marriage is counter-cultural, as Christ presents it to us.

That’s the important thing to know about getting married in Christ.

It is really going against the common grain of separation,

of self-will and personal advantage.

And that’s the common theme of saving the planet as well.

A number of parishioners, as you know, have been deliberating

about the environmental movement, its spiritual roots,

encouraging attention to it from a whole new awareness now

of the dangers of separating ourselves off from the natural world.

If anything would come of this ecological concern, the green movement,

it will be a work of self-discipline and loving contemplation of the other,

of the plants and streams and fish.

Today is the feast of St. Francis. October 4, every year.

The Franciscans are at the center right now of a world-wide movement

calling us to look at how we live, what we consume,

how we keep house, how we travel:

especially how it affects the poor of this world.

It invites an attitude of learning and prayer, and taking action.

Followers of Francis would remind us how we are human beings,

the earthlings, born with an innate feel for all other earthlings,

and how we live or die together.

I’ve put copies in the vestibule describing this Franciscan approach,

which includes a website you can explore, a pledge you can make.

You can learn about it with your friends and family.

Indeed. Long may she be healthy.

Long may she be a home for ourselves and our children.