OF ADAM’S RIB AND EVE’S BRIDAL MARCH

Reflections on the Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (Genesis 2:18-24; Hebrews 2:9-11; Mark 10:2-16)

At the end of each of the first five days of the creation week, God ‘saw that what he created was good’ (Genesis 1:3,10,12,18,21).  On the sixth day, after he created the animals and the humans, “he saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (1:25,31). What was the first ‘not good thing’ that God found in his creation? It was not murder, disobedience, or idolatry but loneliness. As the first reading affirms, The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone”. Solitude is a voluntary choice that could be ‘good’ or even enjoyable. Loneliness, however, is to feel unloved, unappreciated, or unwanted. It is suffering a terrifying void, which God deemed ‘not good’ for those he created in his ‘image and likeness’. Solitude is good, loneliness is not. Jesus actively sought moments of solitude (on hilltops, deserts and lakeshores) to realise that he was never alone but always one with his Father.

So, when God discovers that loneliness is not good for humans, he decides to “make a suitable partner for him” and goes on to perform the world’s first surgery. He “casts a deep sleep” on Adam, “takes out one of his ribs”, “closes up its place with flesh”, and “creates Eve with Adam’s rib”. Why the rib though? Presbyterian pastor and biblist Matthew Henry has an interesting take on the subject. He writes, “Eve was not taken out of Adam's head to top him, neither out of his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be loved by him”. The rib signifies equality, intimacy, and love between the world’s first human partners. There is no hierarchy in a relationship. We may have specific roles but they are equally valuable and important.

The other is not a mere commodity for us to use, abuse, or get rid of when he/she does not please us anymore. On the contrary, entering into communion is to open ourselves, in fidelity and mutual respect, to the mystery of the other in a gratuitous act of self-giving. From the very beginning (Genesis), we are oriented towards the other. We are incomplete without the other. Creation is not just a one-time event of the past but a continuous and permanent process. Adam and Eve are created and recreated in their mutual union. We are continually and permanently re-created when we respond to our creator’s call to quit our individualism, loneliness, withdrawal, self-sufficiency, and isolation to enter into meaningful relationships with the other.

In the togetherness of the vocation of marriage, and the celibacy of religious or priestly vocation, God continues to re-create us in our pilgrimage from ‘me/I/my’ to ‘us/we/ours’. For Adam, this journey is initiated by God Himself when he brings Eve to him, in what could well be described as the world’s first Father-daughter bridal walk down the aisle. As God brought Eve to Adam, the bride-groom breaks into a love poem, "This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”. The concluding lines remind us of the vocation to leave behind one’s world to enter a new world of union. “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two become one flesh”. We are called to leave behind all that is me/I/my (rib, father, mother, etc.,) to create a new world of ‘us/we/ours’.

This is the guiding principle of Jesus’ teaching on divorce in the Gospel. When the Pharisees ask Jesus, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?”, they are not inventing a completely original line of enquiry. The question of union and separation was already relevant in the time of Moses as it was for the contemporaries of Jesus. There were three contrasting views on the issue in Jesus’ time. 1. The school of Shammai held that only adultery or sexual immorality could justify divorce; 2. The school of Hillel ruled that a man can divorce his wife for the silliest reason (including burning his meal); 3. Rabbi Akiva, for whom a man may divorce his wife even if he found another woman more beautiful than her.  

The innovation of Jesus’ teaching on marriage and the question of divorce is the shift of focus he achieves in his response. For him, it is not just about a divorce paper or choosing sides in a legalistic debate. Jesus traces the purpose and spirit of marriage to Genesis. Marriage is a journey from loneliness to union undertaken with mutual respect, fidelity, and complete self-giving. A perfect marriage is never about two perfect people but the journey of two imperfect people who refuse to give up on their communion and dare to give up their ribs. St. Augustine, in his treatise De bono coniugali (Of the Good of Marriage), listed three goods (bona) of marriage that distinguish the marital covenant from any other type of relationship between two persons: permanence (the conjugal union of a man and woman for life), fidelity (exclusive and mutual togetherness), and openness to offspring (procreation and education of children).

Marriage is a re-creative invitation to journey from loneliness to communion. This journey is never easy. We are bound to experience setbacks and progress, joy and hurt, desires and dreams, togetherness and misunderstandings. A perfect marriage is never about two perfect people but two imperfect people who refuse to give up on each other. Neither is this journey the same for everyone. There are those trapped in loveless marriages, oppressive partnerships, and abusive relationships. They don’t deserve our judgements but accompaniment. Neither God nor the Church requires us to subject ourselves to oppressive situations of abuse and threat. May the sacraments of marriage and celibacy liberate us from the prison of loneliness and enable us to open ourselves to the creative unfolding of the unfathomable mystery of the other in fielity, mutual respect, and self-gift.