ribs to go
The Old Testament reading in the lectionary for the Second Sunday before Lent was from Genesis 2, including these verses: The Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man. ” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. Time was, these words seldom got bandied around in sexuality debates. Now they often join the cohort of texts that are regularly trotted out to show how heterosexuality is God's plan, and gay people are somehow (by implication, by open statement) second best. I recently heard a sermon that picked up o