Morning Devotion for Epiphany
January 10, 2022
The Invitatory
The Lord has shown forth his glory: Come let us adore him.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.
I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.
Reading: Genesis 2:18-25
Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’ So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,
‘This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
this one shall be called Woman,
for out of Man this one was taken.’
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.
Meditation: Jo Ann B. Jones
I imagine all of us asked one or both parents some variation of this question: Where did I come from? Then follows silence, then some hemming and hawing, clearing of throats to cover our parents’ embarrassment. One parent retreats, leaving the other to explain. That parent mumbles something wishing for that day when all is explained in school. Never did we imagine there to be a much larger scope of where did the whole world, as we know it, come from.
Genesis is poetry in prose, a theological accounting of how things that were seen, known, and imagined came to be. It is also an origin story: a telling of how things came to be the way they are. In the first two chapters of the book we are given two creation stories and two portrayals of God.
In Genesis 1, God is portrayed as speaking from afar, bringing order out of chaos in a well-planned and carefully structured progression of six days of creation. God repeatedly pronounces the results of the six days of creation as “good” and the whole creation in the end as “very good.” God creates humans as a simultaneous community, male and female, both fully in the image of God.
When we turn to the second creation story, the portrait of God is somewhat different. God has a decidedly more intimate and truly “hands on” relationship with creation, forming the human (Adam) from the land or clay (adamah). God gives life-giving breath to the newly formed lump of clay, breathing into the dirt-creature’s nostrils “the breath of life.” Here God is present, caring, attentive, thoughtful, actively nurturing. Assessing his singular creation God sees its need for companionship and addresses it immediately, making a statement about what it is to be human. Humankind individually and collectively need others of our kind — and not of our kind. Generations of biblical scholars have observed that the language God uses for the companion, “helper” in many English translations is easily misread and misunderstood. “Helper” connotes “assistant,” someone less skilled than the person she is helping. However in Genesis and later biblical texts that help is very often divine. What seems to be conveyed here is that this helper corresponds in some way to the Adam. That relationship is intended to be one of parity.
Each creature that is subsequently created is assessed and found to be lacking in that parity. This creation exercise is presented as an experiment. God finds what the ancestral human needs within it. Putting the earthling to sleep, God transforms the being. The transformation God performs might be considered akin to cellular mitosis; one is divided into two. God removes a “side” not a “rib” from the human creature. This understanding is expressed in the lyric; This one this time is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh… for from man this one was taken. (“from,” not “out of”)
The Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
