Today we have a very different creation story than the one told the past two days. Today we are focused exclusively on the creation of humans (Genesis 2:4-9, 15-27). Biblical scholars think that this section was written much earlier than the narrative presented over the past two days (Genesis 1:1 – 2:4). Taken together, the Story of Creation is only complete with the separate creation of Woman and the appearance of the first human couple.
Here God is depicted as creating Man before the rest of his creatures, which are made for Man’s sake. It is not realistic, but this is not history, and it is certainly not science. The meaning is to show the priority of Man in the order of things on this earth.
In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no vegetation of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground, but a stream would rise from the earth and water the whole face of the ground—then God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being, a living “soul”.
The picture is of God working like a potter molding the human body out of the clay of the earth. In the Hebrew there is a play on the words “adam” (‘man’) coming from “adama” (‘the ground’).
In this version of creation, humanity does not—as in yesterday’s reading—appear at the end of a long process of creation when all the lesser creatures were brought into being first but comes into existence at the very beginning, before anything else, even before the plants necessary for his survival.
Only then did God plant a garden in the east, in Eden. In this garden, God put the Man and every kind of plant that was pleasant to look at. God also provided grain and fruit that were good to eat. As well, there was the “tree of life”, a symbol of the immortality which the Man was intended to enjoy; and the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” which Man ate from at his immortal peril.
“Eden” is thought to be located in southern Mesopotamia (southern Iraq today) but does not actually correspond to any known site. The term comes from a Sumerian word meaning ‘fertile plain’. A similar-sounding word in Hebrew means ‘delight’, so Eden is understood as a ‘garden of delight’. Through the Greek translation of the Hebrew, we get the word ‘Paradise’, which literally means a ‘pleasure park’.
The man’s responsibility was to cultivate the garden and look after it. The man was also told that he was free to eat nearly all and any of the plants in the garden (including, apparently, fruit from the “tree of life”). The overall impression given is that life was easy and exceedingly pleasant.
But there was one special exception. The man was not to eat the fruit from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. Otherwise, he would be doomed to death. Eating the fruit, as we shall see, did not bring about instant death. After eating the fruit, they survived, but death would come as the end of a miserable existence of toil and sorrow. Sin, by separating us from God, can only lead to death.
The Man was master of his world, but with this one exception, it was made clear that God was master of the Man and that this relationship would be acknowledged by the Man’s obedience to this one command of God.
The whole world is God’s gift to us, but we need to remember that we have to enjoy it responsibly and not do it harm. Also, we need always to conform our living to that vision of life that we have received from God through Jesus and his Word. For us, Jesus and his Way is truly a tree of Life: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).
Today’s Gospel story (Mark 7:14-23) comes after Jesus defends himself against the accusations of some Pharisees and Scribes about his not observing the traditions of the elders. Jesus now turns his attention to the people. He enunciates what for him are the main principles: Nothing that goes into the body from outside can make a person ritually or religiously unclean. What makes a person unclean is the filth that comes from inside their mind and is spoken through their mouth or expressed in their actions.
This was a major issue in the earliest days of the Church and was dealt with at the Council of Jerusalem, some 20 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. The story is told in the Acts of the Apostles (Chapter 15).
The first Christians were all Jews who continued to observe Jewish customs. But when non-Jews began to be accepted into the Christian communities, the question came up as to should they also be obliged to follow these laws and customs? It became clear that, from a religious point of view, no food could be called unclean. This helped to break down the barriers between Jew and Gentile. It has been pointed out that, immediately after this discussion, Jesus entered gentile territory, something he did not often do in his own ministry (see tomorrow’s commentary).
Even Jesus’ disciples seemed shocked by Jesus’ teaching, probably reflecting the reactions of some of the early Jewish Christians. Jesus repeats what he says in the light of the Kingdom he was proclaiming: “So, are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters not the heart but the stomach and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus declaring all foods clean.) And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles.”
Real uncleanness is in the ‘heart’, in one’s mind. Real uncleanness comes from within ourselves in the form of: “…sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
As Christians, we do not normally worry about clean and unclean foods on religious grounds, but we can sometimes judge people’s religious commitment by their observance or non-observance of purely external things—a nun not wearing a habit, a person not taking holy water on going into the church, or someone taking Communion in the hand versus by mouth.
We may have gotten rid of the problem of unclean foods, but there are many other ways by which we focus on trivial externals while ignoring the real evils, the places where real love is absent—in ourselves.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!