Sermon for the First Wednesday of Great Lent

By Dr Gregory Wiebe

Dear brothers and sisters, let us take to heart the King and Prophet Solomon’s wisdom, which we heard earlier:

If you receive my words, and treasure my commands within you,
so that you incline your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding;
yes, if you cry out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding,
if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures;
then you will understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.

So, let us incline our ears to wisdom. What have we heard? That

God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;”
So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Let us now apply our hearts to understanding and cry out for discernment. And let us do so earnestly—we are in great need of discernment to understand the hidden treasures in these words, and to understand the fear of God. And why? Because we might be more inclined in the present moment to fear our families, friends, coworkers, and peers when we say these words than to fear God. Who would not feel dread anxiety to stand before the people of this city and country and declare that male and female He created them? Need I go on at length to explain that God’s holy church doesn’t see eye to eye with the world on this matter at this time? There are many who consider the claim that humanity is made male and female to be, at best, simply wrong; and at worst, nothing less than hate speech. There are those, whose house leads down to death, who would desire nothing more than summon the full force of temporal law to silence the proclamation of this deep mystery of human nature.

Yet I desire at this point neither to engage in a diatribe, nor stoke fears of a coming persecution, or anything of the sort. The persecution of the church is inevitable. Our Lord said that if they hated him they will hate us as well. But he also said fear not the one that can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. So why cry like fearful children against those who would set themselves against us, who leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness? As Solomon has taught us, discretion will preserve you; understanding will keep you, to deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perverse things. Let us not be outraged, but rather let us seek discretion and understanding.

Now, the hour is late, we have tired ourselves with a long service, and these scriptures are such an impossibly deep trove of treasures that I trust you’ll forgive me if my few comments leave too many questions unanswered. To begin, scriptures say that God says let us make man in our image, and then says that God proceeds to do so, making them male and female. But we know that God is absolutely without a body, having no extension in space and time. Whereas the maleness and femaleness of humanity is a bodily aspect of human nature. Hence, this is followed by God’s blessing, and a command to be fruitful and multiply, to bear children. Whatever the image of God is, it does not consist in what is male or female, but rather in that which is human. Human nature is a duality with regards to the body, but a unity in being the image of God. In the coming days we will read about the loss of this image of God in humanity; and indeed Lent is in a nutshell the drama of creation, fall, and redemption. So when we say the Son of God became man in Christ to restore to humanity the image of God, we are not saying he became male as opposed to female, but rather that he became a human being, taking on the unity of the whole human nature without sin for our salvation.

So, what should we make of male and female He created them? Well, Genesis immediately directs this establishment of male and female toward a command to be fruitful and multiply. And yet, we might very well ask why this is the first time in the story the subject is raised! For God had already blessed the great sea creatures, and every living thing that swarmed in the waters, and every winged bird, instructing them to be fruitful and multiply on the fifth day. I’m no scientist, but I’m an educated man and it occurs to me that maleness and femaleness might already be useful at that point. In fact, the capacity to reproduce was already introduced with the vegetation on the third day, which was created to bear seed and to bear fruit with seed in it, each according to their kind.

In our holy tradition we tend to think of human nature as a summary of all creation—humanity has existence in common with rocks, life and reproduction in common with plants, sentience and movement in common with the animals, and understanding or rationality in common with the angels. We should think of it this way. In creation, God calls new life into being, and then inscribes within that creation the capacity for creatures themselves to participate in creating anew, each according to their kind. As God made the trees, so God made trees able to create more trees; as God made fish and birds and cattle, so God made these things able to reproduce and cause new creatures to come into existence, new fish and birds and cattle. As creation is formed and vivified, so man is formed from dust, vivified with the breath of the spirit, and made capable of bringing new humans into existence. It is truly wondrous as a Christian parent to consider how contingent, random, arbitrary are the circumstances under which new humans are brought into this world, who are nevertheless loved from eternity by God.

So male and female he created them; humans are living icons of all creation, a summary of how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit pattern creation to be re-creative after their own very act of creation. Be fruitful and multiply! As long as we keep getting married and having babies, we should be good, right? Except that we have already acknowledged that the image of God that humanity once bore, bears now in Christ, and will bear in full completion in the resurrection—that image of God is not said of the bodily aspect of human nature, or its reproductive capacity. We do not fulfil our divine commandments to be fruitful, have dominion, and eat from the earth, simply by trying to accomplish these things as the mute beasts do, in a bodily and carnal way. Our problems with human sexuality are in fact the same problems we have with food, which is the very problem of the fall. God has provided for our bodily needs so that our bodies might be well ordered and gathered in support of our greater spiritual task of union with Him.

And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food.

This is not just about the stuff we eat with our mouths; this is about receiving all of creation as God has given it, as the only creatures composed of body and spirit; and thus uniquely positioned to incorporate all of creation into our service of God.

And yet, while we are given all we need, we can’t help but think we’d like a little more, thank you! We see the world as a place to be conquered, dominated, and profited from; we see it as an object fit for our consumption, as an array of possibilities to fulfill our various desires. And so we pluck the forbidden fruit, exploit our earthly home, and seek to satisfy whatever sexual lusts pop into our heads. In our sinfulness we partake even in that which is set aside and prohibited, and thereby subject creation to serve our desires, curiosities, fears, anxieties, and passions.

But it is the upright who will dwell in the land; and the blameless who will remain in it. Seek discernment and understanding! Dominion is fulfilled in uprightness; blamelessness is fruitful. We have lost our way and need a guide. Let us be guided by the traditions and teachings of the church. Fear the Lord! Remember Christ’s words:

Have you not read, that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, for this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they two shall be one flesh?

Look to Christ’s example: by his attendance at the wedding of Cana he blessed the marital union of man and woman, performing his first miracle by turning water into wine. But in this very miracle he points not to the fulfilment of humanity in marriage, but the fulfilment of marriage in holy communion! For the wine is an image of the blood he would shed to purchase his church.

Male and female He created them. This is not some arbitrary distinction but integral to the creative and re-creative patterns of creation; and it is not just a summary of the fruitfulness of living creation in it’s bodily aspect, but the capacity of humanity to collect all of creation in a sacramental union with its creator. I recall reading a scholar who claimed that early Christians did not reflect on the maleness of Jesus; that it was only with the advent of feminism that we could ask whether it matters that the God-man is male. But listen! Incline your ear to wisdom! Male and female He created them, human nature is made a duality in the flesh for the sake of Christ and his mother, Mary, with whom we sacramentally identify as the church, the bride of Christ.

What Genesis offers, then, are spiritual images of humanity’s true place in the creation. The true food of paradise is holy communion, the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ manifest in the offering of bread and wine, the wedding feast of the kingdom. True dominion is the kingdom of God, the heavenly city, gathered in worship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, giving food to the hungry and shelter to the poor. True fruitfulness and multiplication are not the children we have in our families but the children of God nourished in the church. For this reason we can bear spiritual children whether we are young or old, male or female, married or single (and too often we forget that it is the insight of our holy tradition that it is preferable to remain single if possible!). For maleness and femaleness of humanity are a spiritual image that find their completion in Christ and his bride, the church.

In this Lenten season above all, let us

be delivered from the way of evil, from those who speak perverse things,
from those who leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness;

Brothers and sisters I do not wish to oversimplify the great mystery of human sexuality; nor to ignore the real challenges that are posed to men and women of every age, nor be dismissive of the deep confusions that plague our own. I simply wish to say that the riddle of human sexuality, the mystery that God made man in his image, male and female he made them, is a riddle that can only be solved in the fear of God, in the wisdom that comes from the union we seek with Christ as his bride, the holy catholic and apostolic church. In a proud, lustful, gluttonous, and confused world, the only way to pursue this truthfully is a Lenten journey of serving and forgiving others, restraining our desires, fasting, and coming to church to hear and embody the wisdom it shares about the bridegroom and his bride.

If you receive my words, and treasure my commands within you,
so that you incline your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding;
yes, if you cry out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding,
if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures;
then you will understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.

Amen.