Male and Female: One Humanity

              Male and Female: One Humanity?
Genesis 2.15-25 October 25, 1987
This is an R-rated message, because it is R-rated religion. It is about great sex. Sex pervades the Soaps, romantic novels, the great classics, Plato, Aristophanes, Socrates and the Bible. Why? Because it is the major plot in most of our lives. Some presidential candidates are charged with womanizing, others have dropped out because they have been caught in the act. A senior minister in a prominent Dallas church is married with two children, yet has been meeting another woman regularly; something discovered only after his wife had been strangled in her garage. Some of the TV evangelists who have most fervently called for conversion to a new life indicate that there is something of the old life in the way they have been conducting themselves. The sexuality of human beings is the stuff the morning newspapers use to welcome a new day.
We know that consciously, unconsciously, or subliminally the lure of the sexual determines how we spend our money. The erotic impulse is tantalized in the sale of automobiles, books, movies, clothes, perfumes, and vacations. It is the reason for marriage, and divorce; the motivation to have children and to create a home. It is often behind the reasons for which women and men commit crimes. What people will not do for love. Friendships, business dealings, and other experiences of social intercourse have more to do with attractions that relate to sexuality than any other. As you can see, the way I am using the word sex is not confined to the activities of the bedroom, but
reach into all areas of, life.
There it is: Eros driving within the musician, artist, scientist, man and woman. It is present wherever there is a passionate reaching outside of oneself to another, to something else. Sexuality is what we sublimate, suppress, repress, about which we are inhibited, or uninhibited. Yet we seem to be in a time of confusion about sex, what it means to be a female or male human being. Our language about our sexual activity betrays Sex roles do not identify us as easily as they once did. As the tormented Rev. Furber discovers in Omensetter's Luck written by William Gass: "you may call our soul our best, but this, our body, is our love..... How simply is our fondness for it guaranteed; we can't live outside of it, not as we are, not as we wish."
That's the way God made us. The ancient story we have heard read might have some great secret to share as we continue to look at the saga of humankind. Is there any help that we can get from this ancient story found in Genesis 2?
I. This is the second creation story.
A. It is not about humanity in general which we found in chapter 1. There
we were told in a much more sophisticated and poetic way the story of creation with humanity created in the image of God: male and female God created them. We have a new name for God in this first passage in chapter 2. Yahweh Elohim. This is the God who calls Israel into existence and to the covenant.
B. In chapter 1 we went from chaos to cosmos; now from desert to sown.
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From the not Tonight Dear article in Newsweek to the dramatic rescue of Jessica McClure 18 month
old fell down an 8' well pipe
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