The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
“Form follows function.” It’s a fundamental design principle. Aristotle pointed out the relationship between the two centuries ago. He taught that if you want to discover something’s function, that is, its purpose, you study its design, that is, its form. It will teach you what you need to know in order to figure out what to do with the thing that is before you. The design tells you its purpose. And one aspect of good architecture is that the building is not only impressive and beautiful, but it incorporates an elegance in such a way that the form of the building continues to be useful as well as beautiful. The idea that form follows function in the design of a building was first articulated by an architect in Chicago, Louis Sullivan. He built the Wainwright Building in downtown St. Louis. That was built in 1890 and ’91. At the time of its building, it became the tallest building in America, standing at 10 stories. But it was also done in terracotta, and it was an office building that was aesthetically pleasing, first of all, but also immensely practical for the purpose for which it was built, that is, an office. It was not only beautiful and impressive, it was practical and useful too.
Human beings have been building great wonders for thousands of years. And as impressive as human ingenuity and creativity can be when it comes to great architecture, we see something far more magnificent and wondrous in the Old Testament lesson we read this morning, Genesis chapter 2. In today’s Old Testament reading, it tells us that God’s design was not just good. It was perfect. Sinless, without flaw. Perfectly designed and perfectly made. The psalmist writes of God’s handiwork in creation in Psalm 19:1: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky proclaims His handiwork.” In Psalm 104:24: “O LORD, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all; the earth is full of Your creatures.” God’s design — God designed and spoke into existence a perfect creation, which just isn’t something to be noted and admired. In fact, if you get lost and confused about things, God’s design offers hope in times of despair, direction when we’re lost and confused, assurance when we’re faced with uncertainty. That is, if we study the world around us and what God has done for us and our salvation, we can often come to the right conclusions about the world around us and our place in it: what we should do and not do, what we should be and not be in a given circumstance.
God designed and spoke into existence a perfect creation, which just isn’t theoretical. When God finished creating all that He created, God saw all that He made, and behold, it was very good. There was just one more creature that needed to be made, one whose purpose would remedy the one thing left unfinished. Verse 18 of our reading began this morning: “Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.'” So Eve was created, and behold, everything, everything He made was good, very good. Another way of saying perfect. That was then, in the beginning, and that was there in the Garden of Eden. We now live here and now in a world of sin, thorns, and thistles, where it seems there is less good and more evil every day of the week, and where loneliness and isolation is on the increase and companionship is decreasing. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory on the effects of loneliness and social isolation. According to the advisory, more than half of all Americans report being lonely. In fact, the advisory cites research that the physical and psychological impacts of loneliness and social isolation and disconnection is similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Loneliness, they suggest, may increase your risk of cardiovascular disease, depression, high blood pressure, and other unhealthy trends. Despite the multitude of ways for people to connect with other people, more and more people feel more and more alone than ever before. Even in the church, where we are literally in fellowship with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, it’s not uncommon to find among the membership truly lonely people in the church. The Beatles wrote a song about such people, by the way — “Eleanor Rigby,” you might remember it. “Died in a church and was buried alone with her name, and nobody came. All the lonely people, where do they all come from? All the lonely people, where do they belong?” That’s just some of the lyrics. Loneliness has been a problem since the fall into sin, because it’s not good for a man or a woman to be alone.
Now, it’s true that some of that loneliness and hopelessness is self-inflicted. But then, that’s the nature of most sin, isn’t it? We do it to ourselves. Sometimes a person, for very good reasons, withdraws from the world, from family, from friends, from community, and from the church. And that is distinctly not good. In this morning’s Old Testament reading, we heard that God said it’s not good that a man should be alone. And Luther, by the way, has a little bit of a different take than the normal interpersonal relationship about the issue of marriage and having a companion. He opines, therefore, “good” — the word “good” in this passage denotes the increase of the human race. That is, He gives Eve to Adam primarily for the purpose of procreation, to fulfill what He said in chapter one: “Go forth, be fruitful and multiply.” And in the process, be a helpmate to Adam. Luther’s comment does not rule out good human relationships and companionship that Adam will receive through the creation of a woman. Animals, we were told, were good for man. They gave them something to tend to, something to look after, to have dominion over, but not suitable as the partner God wanted Adam to have. God wanted Adam for a particular kind of companionship. And for Eve, whose name, by the way, means “mother of all the living,” a place in the world. She was designed and created to be the perfect helpmate to Adam. She was, after all, as Adam would sing, “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.” In other words, Adam and Eve are buildings, so to speak, designed by God: Eve for Adam, Adam for Eve, and both for dominion over the world. A suitable and appropriate helper is one who is a mirror image of the one perfectly created already, in which one sees in reverse but recognizes himself or herself in the image of God, the imago Dei. This helpmate is not only created to perpetuate humanity, but also to share in the governing and cultivation of the earth. In this relationship, there’s no inferiority or superiority. There’s only different roles, filled according to God’s design. And each had a part in overseeing creation that God had given and entrusted to them. Each was an image bearer of God. Genesis 1:26 and 27: God said, “Let Us make man in Our own image, in Our own likeness.” “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.” Of all that was created in the universe, these two, only these two — Adam the man, and Eve — were created in the image and likeness of God. They alone shared in the special relationship that was ordained by God. Always, when you hear me use that word “ordained,” always think “set in order.” That is, it’s put into its place in God’s grand design, according to His grand plan. The word “ordained” means to set in place, or more fully, to set in place according to the order or the design. And the design and order of this arrangement is called marriage.
This is not to say that those who don’t marry, for different reasons, are somehow deficient. Not to marry, but to live in a God-pleasing life and relationship, can be a godly choice for some. It was for St. Paul. It was, by the way, for our Lord Jesus Christ as well. But marriage was also intended as the foundation and structure upon which future generations would rise. “A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh,” verse 24 says. In the creation of Eve, God made known His desire. In Genesis 1:28, God commanded Adam and Eve, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply.” The family, you see, is supposed to provide a consistency, an order to life, an order to companionship, an order to how proper authority is to be exercised — not merely in the home, but as a building block for other human beings. And the children of the marriage, they are to be raised in the discipline and admonition, instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). God’s design is also to provide freedom from shame. Verse 25 tells us the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. To be without shame means either Adam and Eve had nothing to hide — no thought, no word, no deed, no desire that would be injurious to the other or offensive to the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim. That was the original design in the Garden of Eden. That is what the Lord God created for Himself and for the man and the woman. And that was supposed to be our reality too. But then something happened to God’s good design. Sin entered the world, to devastating effects. Sin came with shame. Sin and shame came with judgment and death and brokenness, as Adam and Eve realized that their thoughts were impure and their evil, and their actions evil. Genesis 3:7–8: “And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made for themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the LORD walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD among the trees of the garden.” Shame is insidious, debilitating. It can crush our spirit. Shame leads to anxiety and depression, anger, emptiness, and loneliness. The effects of shame can be so intense that it leads to self-destructive behaviors like addiction or even suicide. Think of Judas the betrayer here. But for Jesus Christ, the Word and Sacrament ministry, there would be no escape, no relief, no cure for the shame of sin.
There in the Garden of Eden, and through Adam, sin entered the world, and death through sin (Romans 5:12). Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death spread to all men — to the yet to be born, the newly born, the young, the old, the man, the woman. Death claims all, because sin has come into the world. Sin entered the world, and the family was the first institution to bear the full brunt and weight of this sin. It was the institution first marred by sin. Genesis 4:6–8: “And the LORD God said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.'” And then when Cain and Abel were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Sin destroys. It kills all in its path. It leaves no survivors. God’s original design did not include shame or death, but shame came with sin, and sin and shame have been here ever since.
I suppose I should define the word “shame.” I’m just assuming we all know. Shame is a, quote, “painful emotion caused by an awareness of having done something wrong or foolish.” Now, there’s all kinds of self-help strategies out there for coping with shame. One of the worst, if not the worst, and the more popular strategy with dealing with shame, includes the denial of anything being either innately wrong or right, foolish or wise. We’re instructed today to tell people, especially children, that they behave inappropriately, not wrongly, because the word “wrongly” brings a shame attached to it, and they think shame and shaming is a bad and evil thing. Well, you better tell that to the Bible, because it doesn’t know that language. It doesn’t know it. It just knows that if you’re guilty, you should be in shame. 1 Corinthians 1:27: “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.” He’s shaming those who claim to be wise and knowing, when they in fact don’t. “God chose what is weak in the world to shame” — that is, what is strong. The Bible uses another word that’s a better word for Christians to use: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit” — a broken and contrite, kind of a humility with some shame for doing something wrong — “O heart, O God, You will not despise.”
There in the Garden of Eden, sin entered the world and created shame and loneliness. It broke everything in its path, except the love of God for His creation. The Lord God said to the serpent, “I’ll put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring, and He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” And in John 3:16, the apostle John made sure all knew God made good on His promise: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever should believe in Him should not perish, that it should not die, but have everlasting life.” Jesus Christ is the only one who can remove shame. He covers our shame with His righteousness. We learned that in Revelation 3:18. He endured the shame of the cross so that we didn’t need to endure the effects of shame in God the Father’s eyes. He bids us in Hebrews 12:2 to look to Jesus, the founder and perfector of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. When our shame is covered by Christ’s righteousness, we can live together in true Christian fellowship as members of the bride of Christ, the church. Lonely no more. We can live together in close relationship and companionship, with love, within marriage or other family relationships. And that was the original design. That was the original purpose of Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2: fellowship with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and fellowship with one another in Christ Jesus our Lord. The human ingenuity and creativity that God had given to us are truly marvelous things, yet nothing compares to the goodness of God’s design in creation. It is a design that provides purpose, companionship, fellowship, and provides for the generations to come after us. It provides an antidote in Jesus Christ to the devastating effects of sin and shame and loneliness. God’s design is the best design for living, for in it our sins are forgiven, our shame is covered over in Christ’s righteousness, our lives are redeemed, and fellowship between human beings is restored. Ah, all the lonely people, where do they come from? All the lonely people, where do they belong? I’ll tell you where: in the church, in Christ, with forgiven sins. Amen.
May the peace that passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.