Gleanings

The book of Genesis says that when Adam and Eve ate the fruit they were told not to eat, their eyes were opened. They saw everything in a new light and in a new way. They saw things they had not been able to see before. They understood things that once were beyond their understanding. Their eyes were opened.

As we prepare to conclude this series of messages on the early chapters of Genesis, I hope your eyes have been opened as well. I hope you are seeing these stories in a new light and are beginning to understand and appreciate them in new ways.

You don’t have to agree with every interpretation I’ve presented to you. Indeed, some of these interpretations have been contradictory, just as some of the stories in Genesis are themselves contradictory.

Thinking the stories through and playing the contradictions against each other are part of the joy of biblical interpretation. Too many of us are stuck in the fundamentalist mindset. We think that there is only one correct way to interpret any passage of scripture, and of course it’s the way I interpret it, and even the slightest deviation from my version is not only wrong wrong wrong but it’s probably inspired by Satan.

These three and a half chapters of Genesis have been the subject of constant interpretation for the last two to three millennia. Rabbis have delighted in debating the meaning of these stories. They’ve delighted in debating the grammar itself – what the individual words and sentences mean in their original language and how to best convey that meaning in the language and thought patterns of their day.

When you sit down to eat later today, will you debate today’s scripture reading and my interpretation of it over the dinner table? Not likely. One of the most interesting books I’ve read recently is The Grammar of God by Aviya Kushner. She grew up in a small Jewish community in rural New York state. Hebrew was her first language. She recalls many meals when family members discussed the week’s scripture readings in detail and argued, sometimes heatedly, over grammar and meaning.

As a young adult, she was shocked when she read her first English translation of scripture. The translators seemed so sure of themselves, and yet so often, she thought, they were clueless about the nuances of a passage’s meaning.

This endless debate is what the rabbis meant by “reading Torah.” It’s not just reading. It’s close interpretation. It’s interpreting, and debating and exploring the mysteries of the text, trying all the while to move closer to what God has to say to us through it, and always realizing that multiple readings of the text often yield several ranges of meaning, sometimes readings that are complementary, and sometimes readings that are contradictory.

When we attempt to assign any biblical passage one single meaning for all time, we are simply not being faithful to the text or to the God who gave it to us. As Jacob wrestled with the angel at the River Jabbok, we have to wrestle with each text to see what new insights God might bring to us through it.

I hope you’ve been wrestling with these texts. I know I have. And I will continue to wrestle with them, because I’m sure there are many insights within them that haven’t yet been revealed to me.

What follows are some insights that have been revealed to me – mostly through the scholarship and careful reading of others.

I call these gleanings. Biblically, gleanings are the what’s left in a farmer’s field after the harvest. Poor people who have no land are allowed to forage for these leftovers. Some of the gleanings I have collected are big insights. Some are just leftovers. I number them only to make it clear when I’m moving from one to another.

1. As the first book of the Bible for both Jews and Christians, Genesis has a unique stature in our understanding of scripture. It shapes our understanding of everything that follows.

2. Genesis was written to people of another language and another culture and another time, and it does not always ask the same questions about the world that we do. Some of its concerns are not our concerns, and some of our concerns are not its concerns.

Much of our theology is speculative filling in of the blanks in places that may have been left blank for good reason. Our certainly about how we fill in those blanks may betray the intent of the text, so we should always “mind the gaps” but not foolishly cover them up.

3. The first chapter of Genesis declares, as did English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” (God’s Grandeur)

4. Genesis affirms without hesitation that God is the creator of all that is, and that only God is creator. As Christians, we believe that all parties of the Trinity participate in creation – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In the Genesis story, the Father is represented by Elohim and Yahweh Elohim. The Son is not visible, but the Apostle Paul reminds us that “all things were created by him … and through him and for him” (Colossians 1.15-16 CEB). The Holy Spirit is right there at the start, hovering over the chaotic Deep, anticipating what comes next.

5. We tend to get hung up on some mostly imaginary conflict between faith and science. We are distracted from the meaning of Genesis by endless debates over origins – six days versus billions of years, evolution versus special creation, and so on.

Genesis is more about the purpose of creation than the process of creation. It describes creation in the terms of its time, just as we try to describe our world in the terms of our time. We should not be surprised that they are different.

We can safely ignore all talk about how if there is one tiny error in Genesis or anywhere else in the Bible, the whole thing cannot be trusted. That’s poppycock, whether it comes from the mouths of fundamentalists or atheists, neither of whom have much understanding of the Bible and both of whom seem determined to undermine its meaning by focusing on trivia rather than the core message.

6. A key theme of Genesis is freedom. God creates in pure freedom. God does not have to create anything, but God chooses to create, out of love for what is being created. God creates in freedom and love, and God gives creation freedom as well, hoping that the love will be returned.

For example, God gives plants and trees the freedom to develop on their own. They become God’s subcontractors in creation. God also gives animals a certain amount of freedom, and even more to humans, who are created in the very image of God, as God’s representative in creation.

7. God has a purpose and a will for creation, but God will not force that will upon God’s creatures. We always respond to God in freedom. God tries to guide us to God’s purpose, which is our good, but God will not compel us to comply. If we go astray, God acts to redeem us, but God will never coerce us to return to the right way.

8. Genesis offers two very different creation stories. The first one is a magnificent hymn of creation. In the second story, God literally gets down in the dirt to make animals and humans. Placed side by side, these two creation accounts show two aspects of our experience of God – God as transcendent and God as immanent, God on high far away and God up close and personal.

Both aspects of our experience of God are good and necessary. They remind us that God is not a one-dimensional person but someone who watches over us from afar even while walking with us hand in hand.

9. All humans, male and female, are made in the image of God. Our origin in God makes all humans of special worth and significance. All humans are created equal. All races and ethnic groups and nationalities and other divisions are secondary to our primary identity as representatives of God.

10. God has granted humans dominion over all other living things. We are commissioned to “fill the earth and subdue it.” That doesn’t mean pillage it. It means cultivate it, nurture it to completion.

In Hebrew, the word “dominion” has connotations of shepherding. We are shepherds of the earth and its creatures. Stewardship is another good image. As stewards of God’s creation, made in God’s image, we act on God’s behalf, and our actions should reflect God’s will for all, not our selfish will for ourselves.

11. We are intended to “serve and protect” our world. Environmental activist Wendell Berry has written a book titled What Are People For? In it he says: “The ecological teaching of the Bible is simply inescapable: God made the world because God wanted it made. God thinks the world is good, and God loves it. It is God’s world; God has never relinquished title to it. And God has never revoked the conditions … that oblige us to take excellent care of it.” (Wendell Berry, What Are People For?)

12. When God created the universe, God declared that it was all good – that is, suited for its purpose. And when God created humans, God pronounced the whole thing very good. Later, though, God concluded that it is not good for the human to be alone. Indeed, to faithfully mirror the nature of God in whose image we are made, we must live as a diverse community of males and females and many languages and cultures.

That’s one of the lessons of the story of the Tower at Babel, a story we did not look at. When humans think too much alike, when everyone speaks the same language, so to speak, we tend to fall into sin.

13. God’s free love sets us free to become the persons God wants us to be. We are meant to be free to live authentically human lives in a world that is optimized for the flourishing of everyone.

14. We are all meant to live in freedom. And all clearly means all. God gave humans dominion over the rest of creation, but not over one another.

Many bigots try to use Genesis to support various forms of domination and subjugation, chiefly the subjugation of women and people of color. All these campaigns are based on specious uses of scripture, especially several verses in these early chapters of Genesis.

Don’t fall for these Bible abusers and their toxic notions of God’s intent for humanity. God made all humans in God’s own image, male and female, no color or ethnic group excluded. Those who say otherwise are liars.

15. One very clear implication of all this is that our world is totally messed up. But then, you knew that, didn’t you?

All of our social orders are based on some form of domination by the privileged over those who are declared to be undeserving because of some bogus criterion such as sex or race or eye color, frizziness of whatever.

Born into such systems, we do not question the validity of their claims over us until we read Genesis with new eyes, or until we read the gospel of Jesus Christ. And then we realize that God’s magnificent plan for creation has gone awry, and the consequences for humans, for animals, for our environment and for very our future are potentially ghastly.

California is burning. It won’t be the last conflagration, or the last killing drought, or – as we have seen here in in the Midwest, in Missouri and Nebraska and Iowa, the last spring flood that won’t drain way. The way we have destroyed our environment is only a symptom of the larger disease.

16. We call that disease “sin.” Sin is fundamentally alienation – alienation first and primarily from God, but also alienation from other humans, from the rest of creation, and, finally, alienation from our very selves.

We think we can do it ourselves. We think we know best. We are fundamentally wrong. We cannot trust ourselves. We need to trust God.

God seeks our trust. We seek security. Because we do not trust God, we look for security in all the wrong places, starting with our own hearts, which cannot be trusted until they have been turned to God. In the end, we are all like Adam and Eve, trying to hide from God with loincloths made from fig leaves. We can’t hide from God any more than we can hide from ourselves.

Finally, 17. God will not punish us. God is not in the punishment business. But God may allow the consequences of our sin to unfold. And the consequences of our sin are too scary to consider.

We dare not think that it is too late for us. Yet we have clearly failed to fulfill the mandate of our creation. God gave us a purpose for being, and we have done a poor job of living up to that purpose.

Some religious leaders who have their heads in the sand point to the rainbow as a sign that God will never again destroy all creatures with a flood. But a Genesis-style worldwide flood is not one of the chief dangers we face because of global climate change. Coastal and local flooding are. We may well see a rainbow in the sky as the Missouri River and its tributaries wipe out a significant portion of the Midwest.

This may not be God’s will. But it is a possible consequence of human sin. Pray for the salvation of God’s good creation, so magnificently described in the opening chapters of Genesis. Pray that God’s intent for creation will be realized, as promised in the book of Revelation, the enigmatic book at the other end of our Bible. Pray that the promises of both Genesis and Revelation will be fulfilled.

Pray that God’s intent for creation will not be subverted by our sin. Pray for salvation and redemption. And act on those prayers until we find our freedom and future restored by the grace of God.

Amen.

“Gleanings” is a message in the series “Genesis: In the beginning…” preached Nov. 10. 27, 2019, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, Edgerton, Kansas, by the Rev. James Hopwood; the text is Job 38.

Thanks, Bill!

I am remiss in thanking faith and ethics blogger Bill Tammeus – first, for writing a jacket blurb for my book, Keeping Christmas; second, for doing a nice blog post on the book.

You’ll find what he wrote on his blog at: http://billtammeus.typepad.com

Scroll down to October 23, 2019: “Some necessary prep work for Christmas.”

Yeah, that’s how far behind I am in thanking him.

Thanks, Bill!

P.S. — Bill and I once worked together at The Kansas City Star.

That seems like a different lifetime now. But it was good then.

Come Out!

It’s OK to cry.

It’s OK to cry when a loved one dies. It’s OK to cry months or years later when a sudden memory stabs you with pain. It’s OK to cry on anniversaries or other special dates when that beloved person feels so close and yet so far away.

It’s OK to cry because even Jesus cried at the death of his friend Lazarus.

We don’t know much about their friendship. We know only that Lazarus is not one of Jesus’ Twelve closest disciples, and yet he is one of Jesus’ closest friends. Theirs is a special friendship, and when Lazarus dies, Jesus is visibly shaken.

When arrives in Bethany, he meets the two sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha. They berate him for not arriving sooner. They say: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

This is both a statement of faith and a complaint. It is a statement of faith that Jesus could have done something to prevent Lazarus from dying, and a complaint that he did not arrive in time to do it.

He did delay two days in coming to them, after he was told that Lazarus was ill. But when he arrived in Bethany, Lazarus had been dead four days, so probably there was no way he could have gotten there in time.

All the sisters know for sure is that if he had been there, he could have done something. So that’s what they tell him.

Not, “Lord, how good of you to come.”

Not, “Lord, it’s good to see you.”

Not, “Lord, I am comforted by your presence.”

But rather, “Lord, if you had been here, our brother would not have died.”

When Jesus sees the depth of their grief, he is overcome by emotion.

Translators fumble trying to describe his reaction. They say he is “disturbed in spirit” or “deeply moved” or even provoked to something approaching anger. What the Greek text seems to be saying is that an involuntary groan is wrenched from his body, and he trembles with emotion.

You’ve seen and heard that groan from people who are grieving. Probably you have felt it yourself. I have. That is how deeply Jesus feels for his friends.

As he is led to the tomb, he is so overcome that he bursts into tears.

The King James Version gives us a two-word sentence, “Jesus wept.” That has been described as one of the most vivid sentences in all English literature, and yet it utterly fails to capture the full sense of what’s going on. Jesus does not merely weep. He is convulsed by tears.

Bystanders are heard to exclaim, “See how much he loved him!”

Why is he so shaken? He knows what’s going to happen next. He knows he is going to call Lazarus out of that tomb. He knows that in only a few minutes his friend will be alive again. And yet he is overcome by grief. He is overcome by emotion at the cold reality of death.

If the Son of God can cry at the tomb of a friend, it’s OK for us to cry at the death of a loved one or the memory of a loved one.

It’s OK because we are mourning a great loss. We are mourning the loss of a valuable relationship. We are mourning the loss of our hopes and dreams for that person. We are mourning our own loneliness.

It is altogether fitting and right that we should weep. Yet, as the Apostle Paul tells us, we do not grieve as those who lack hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). We do not grieve from utter despair. We know that our parting is only temporary. As much as we will miss them in the interim, we know that we will see our loved one again.

The exciting news that Jesus has for Mary and Martha – and for us – is that he offers even more hope than that.

Jesus tells Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

He is both the resurrection and the life. He is both the future and the present – and in him both future and present are one.

He makes this promise: “Those who believe in me will live, even though they die, and those who live and believe in me will never die.”

In saying this, he tells us several things.

First, he affirms our hope in the resurrection. We who believe in Jesus, even though we die physically, will not die spiritually. We will live again, and we will live eternally.

Heaven, the New Jerusalem, eternal life, resurrection life – these are all words we use to describe this powerful and sustaining hope that we have in Jesus. But it is not the only hope that Jesus gives us.

This new life is not simply life that goes on forever. It is not just a matter of quantity. Just as importantly, it is a matter of quality.

“Those who believe in me will live,” Jesus says. They won’t just exist. They won’t just plow ahead one day at a time, lurching from one crisis to the next, but really live.

Elsewhere, Jesus calls it abundant life. (John 10.10) It is life that is good not because of our circumstances, which may or may not be good at any given moment. It’s life that is good because of Jesus’ presence with us.

Those who believe in me live in me, Jesus says. Jesus is the source of all life, and when we place our trust in him, we are directly connected to him who is the source of life.

As the great commentator William Barclay says, when we believe in Jesus we enter into not only a new relationship with God but also a new relationship with life itself.

Our life is not determined by our immediate circumstance. It is not determined by our pain or our losses. It is not even determined by our death. It is determined solely by God’s grace and our trust in Jesus that flows from God’s grace.

It’s a living promise from the living Jesus who rules not only in our hearts but also at the right hand of the Father Almighty.

It’s a promise from the Jesus who delayed going to Bethany because he knew that Bethany was only two miles from Jerusalem, and that is where his last journey soon would end.

It’s a promise from the Jesus who went to the cross to show his love for all of us.

It’s a promise from the Jesus who allowed himself to be tortured to death for our sakes.

It’s a promise from the Jesus whose body lay in the cold rock tomb for two nights.

It’s a promise from the Jesus who was resurrected to new life.

This living Jesus is the one who promises that we, too, will be resurrected, and that we, too, can live the abundant, utterly free life that he lived.

A life in which it’s OK to cry even when we know that grief won’t have last word.

A life in which we can change direction when we’ve gone the wrong way.

A life in which we can overcome past mistakes.

A life in which we can be free of guilt and shame.

A life in which we can have hope for the future, as well as hope for the present.

All because of Jesus, who stood at the tomb of his friend and said, “Lazarus, come out!”

He stands at the tomb of our lives and says to us, “Come out!”

Come out to a life that is not bound by your past.

Come out to a life that is not bound by your death.

Come out to a life that is bound only by the unmeasurable depths and heights and widths and lengths of God’s great love for you.

Come out to eternal life.

Come out abundant life.

You who are dead, be raised to new life! Come out!

“Come out!” is a message preached Nov. 3, 2019, All Saints Sunday, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, Edgerton, Kansas, by the Rev. James Hopwood; based on John 11.

Murder

Tossed out of their garden paradise, Adam and Eve now live east of Eden. John Steinbeck wrote a novel by that title. East of Eden is a multi-generational saga that is mostly unsavory. So is the rest of the primeval human story in Genesis. So, to be honest, is the rest of human history since then. Names and faces change over the centuries, but human nature doesn’t change much.

In the spring of 1991, Rodney King was driving drunk when he was pulled over by Los Angeles police. Four officers beat him savagely. A year later, riots erupted when the officers were acquitted of wrongdoing. King pleaded for calm, saying, “Can’t we all just get along?”

Well, no, we can’t. That’s the problem, and it’s not confined to the streets of Los Angeles. It’s a universal human problem, since the dawn of recorded time.

The Bible traces it back to the disobedience of Adam and Eve. When they disobeyed God in the garden, Adam and Eve became estranged from God, from God’s good creation, from each other, from their very selves. Their estrangement shows itself in many ways, but perhaps no more clearly than in the story of their two sons, Cain and Abel.

Cain is the eldest. He becomes a farmer. Abel, the youngest, is a shepherd. They make an offering to the Lord one day. This is long before rules for offerings were codified for Israel in the teaching of Moses. Still, it seems to be true that all ancient peoples had some sort of system of sacrifice to their gods, as if that were somehow written into human DNA.

Cain offers the fruit of the soil. Abel brings fat from the firstborn of his flock. For some reason, God has regard for Abel and his offering but not for Cain and his offering.

It’s hard to say why God accepts one offering but not the other. It’s not as if God favors shepherds over farmers, or deems animal sacrifices inherently superior to sacrifices of grain or produce.

Maybe it has to do with birth order. It is a common theme in the Old Testament that though society blesses the older sibling, God tends to favor the younger one. Count the times the younger one wins: Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Joseph over all his older brothers, David over all his brothers – and let’s not forget Rachel and her sister Leah.

However it might be explained, Cain sees God’s choice as arbitrary. And he can’t handle it. He is enraged.

“Why are you so angry?” God asks. Then God provides a sort of explanation. “If you do well, won’t you be accepted? And if you don’t do well, sin is lurking at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

It sounds like something Yoda might say in some “Star Wars” movie. Whatever does it mean? Did God really say, “If you do well, won’t you be accepted?” Whatever happened to unconditional love?

It seems that God sees something wrong in Cain’s attitude. The New Testament letter to the Hebrews says it has to do with faith. Abel is the first of the ancients to be commended for having faith, Hebrews says. By faith Abel offers a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain’s. Abel is righteous – that is, in right relationship with God – while Cain is not righteous. Cain’s heart is not in the right place. (Hebrews 11.4)

As you’ll recall, trust was the issue that alienated Adam and Eve from God in the first place. We can’t know what brought Cain to the point where he does not trust God. He can still talk to God, face to face, but he does not trust God. And God knows it. “Sin is lurking at your door,” God tells Cain. “You must master it.”

This is the first mention of the word “sin” in the Bible. Not even before, when Adam and Eve sampled the forbidden fruit, was the word “sin” used. It’s not a casual, one-time affair. Sin is a lingering attitude. It’s the opposite of trust, the opposite of faith. More than an attitude, it’s a state of being. It’s a state of being that is so natural to us that we cannot conceive of life without it.

We are immersed in sin the way fish are immersed in water. We are so surrounded by sin, it is so much a part of our existence, that we are not even aware of its presence. Like water, sin seeps into everything, becomes a part of everything, tries to take over everything, and becomes a living presence in our world.

Indeed, as the Apostle Paul says, “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh,” though we do have enough of them. Rather, our struggle is against those things that embody sin in our world. Paul calls them rulers and authorities, cosmic powers, spiritual forces of evil in the highest places. (Ephesians 6:12-13) These are institutions, traditions, tribes and gangs, political parties, economic and political systems and yes, even (and maybe especially) religions.

Sin is embodied in many culturally isms that we swim in unknowingly – sexism, racism, nationalism, ageism, classism, and imperialism, to name only a few. In whatever form it finds itself, sin is filled with desire. That desire is to perpetuate itself, expand itself, make itself even more powerful. It lurks outside your door. It’s there, even if you can’t see it. It’s waiting for a moment to pounce, grab you by the throat and rip the good out of you. “You must master it,” God tells Cain. That’s not what Cain wants to hear.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Cain says to Abel. And when they are in a remote place, Cain kills his brother. Soon God comes by. You wonder why God didn’t come by earlier. God asks Cain, “Where is your brother?” Cain replies, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Just as God asked Adam, “What have you done?” now God asks Cain, “What have you done?” It’s less a question than a cry of despair.

“Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground,” God says. Earlier God cursed the ground because of Adam’s sin. Now God curses the ground that Cain has nurtured so that it will never again yield to his care or produce any abundance for him. Cain must become a fugitive and wanderer.

Now it’s Cain who cries out in despair. “This is more than I can bear! I’ll be wanted man wherever I go. I’ll live in fear of being murdered in revenge for what I’ve done.” No, God says. I’ll put a mark on you so that everyone knows that whoever kills Cain will suffer payback seven times.

So Cain leaves the Lord’s presence and settles further east of Eden in the land of Nod. There he meets a woman who is never named. Her sudden appearance in the story is never explained either, no more than the presence of those who might want to kill Cain is explained. There obviously are more people in this world than we have been told about. But our narrator shows no interest in satisfying our curiosity about where they came from or how they came to be.

Cain founds a city and names it after his son, Enoch. Time passes. Cain’s great-great-great grandson is named Lamech. Lamech has two wives. He boasts to them: “Listen! I have killed a man for wounding me and a young man for striking me. If Cain is avenged seven times, I will be avenged seventy-seven times.”

This is how low those made in the image of God have sunk. And it keeps getting worse. Finally, in chapter six of Genesis we read: “The Lord saw that humanity had become thoroughly evil on the earth and that every idea their minds thought up was always completely evil. The Lord regretted making human beings on the earth, and he was heartbroken.” (Genesis 6:5-6 CEB)

That summary is a bit of an exaggeration. In this family tree of scoundrels, there are a few notable exceptions. One is Enoch, not the Enoch who was son of Cain but another Enoch who is directly descended from Adam. “Enoch walked with God,” we’re told (Genesis 5.22). Enoch’s son Methuselah lives 969 years, the longest lifespan recorded in all the Bible’s genealogies. The Bible widely regards longevity as a sign of God’s favor, so Methuselah also must walk with God. So does his grandson, Noah, the hero of the great flood story.

They stand out because they live in right relationship with God, and so many others do not. What has gone wrong with humanity? Why does evil continue and even intensify?

The explanation we’ve all heard is labeled “original sin.” That term has about as many interpretations as there are interpreters, and few of the interpretations are remotely satisfactory. The idea is that we all inherit a sinful nature from Adam and Eve. How sin is passed down to us is hard to explain. Some say that sin is transmitted through sexual reproduction. Others say it’s transmitted through social structures handed from one generation to the next.

However we get it, it’s impossible for us not to get it. If we are human, we live in sin. It is a fundamental corruption of our nature. You’ll often hear the term “total depravity,” meaning that every aspect of our nature is marred. Try as we might, we cannot save ourselves. Only God can save us.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, does not speculate on how sin is transmitted. He says simply: “Adam sinned; his posterity suffers; and that, in consequence of his sin.” (“The Doctrine of Original Sin,” Part II; IX, 243) Note that it is not a punishment for Adam’s sin, but a consequence of it. We suffer because others sinned, and we perpetuate the sin in our own lives so that others suffer as a consequence of our sin.

Having inherited it, we spread it around and pass it on. It’s a vicious circle only God can break. The Christian message is that God breaks the cycle in Jesus Christ. Sin is an infection, Wesley says. It can be cured. The cure is the love of God shown to us in Jesus, who is both human and divine.

How does Jesus escape being caught in the trap of sin? The Virgin Birth is one answer. Conceived by the Holy Spirit rather than by sexual union, Jesus is born without the taint of sin. Does that mean that men are the carrier of sin? Some think so. Roman Catholics say it’s necessary that the Virgin Mary also was conceived without sexual union; hence, the doctrine of Immaculate Conception, the notion that Mary also was conceived without sex.

We won’t follow those rabbit trails of thought. They would lead us considerably astray from our simple inquiry into the origin of sin. Here’s the gist of it: Whether they realized it or not, Adam and Eve had a choice between following divine wisdom and seeking wisdom from the wrong source. They chose poorly, and their choice affects our choices today.

Here’s how it’s explained by such existential theologians as Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr. The origin of sin, they say, lies with the fragility of human life. Our limits as creatures leave us feeling insecure and anxious. In our anxiety, we make poor choices. We could find true security trusting in God, but instead we depend on our own resources. Instead of trusting God, we try to be like God.

In the letter that bears his name, James the brother of Jesus offers as good an explanation of sin that you’ll ever hear.

Wisdom from God is gentle, peace-loving and full of mercy, James says. But human wisdom leads to bitter envy and selfish ambition, and from there to disorder and wickedness of every kind. (James 3.13-18)

James says: “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from the desires that are at war within you? You long for something that you don’t have, so you commit murder. You are jealous for something you can’t get, so you struggle and fight.” (James 4.1-2)

You don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it, and you don’t dare ask God for it because “you ask with evil intentions, to waste it on your own cravings.” (James 4.3)

And doesn’t that go back to God’s cryptic message to Cain? “If you do well, won’t you be accepted? And if you don’t do well, sin is lurking at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

You can’t master it by yourself. You must rely on God for the strength. Cain wouldn’t. Most people won’t. Won’t you be among those who do?

“Murder” is a message in the series “Genesis: In the beginning…” preached Oct. 27, 2019, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, Edgerton, Kansas, by the Rev. James Hopwood; Psalm 32:1-7, Genesis 4:1-17.

Fallout

In the Garden of Eden, the fruit of one tree was forbidden, and Adam and Eve ate it in defiance of God’s command. In popular imagination, they ate an apple. Since ancient times, though, many interpreters have thought it must have been a fig, because once they saw shame in their nakedness, they made loincloths for themselves out of fig leaves.

A little irony there, right? They clothe themselves with leaves from the tree whose fruit has opened their eyes to their need for clothing.

Well, it doesn’t matter what kind of fruit it was. What matters is that they were forbidden to eat it, and they ate it anyway. This moment is usually described as “the Fall,” with a capital “F,” meaning the single act that caused all of humanity to fall from a state of God’s grace into a state of sin, or rebellion against God.

I prefer to think of it as “the stumble.” It was a mistake, yes – a fundamental failure to trust. But I think “the Fall” comes not when they initially fail to trust God but when they seal the deal by trying to cover it up.

They have been naked and unashamed. They have lived in Paradise in a state of innocence. Then they encounter a talking snake who subtly casts doubt on God’s trustworthiness and convinces them that they should seek wisdom not from God but from a source forbidden by God.

Our narrator explains what happens with characteristic directness. “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.”

They sought the knowledge of good and evil, and in one moment, they got it. It must have been like trying to drink water from a firehose, as the saying goes. The experience is overwhelming and shattering. They know immediately that everything in their world has changed radically.

Once innocent lovers, they now see each other differently. They can’t be sure yet what it is, but something is wrong. They have to cover themselves. They have to hide from each other. Once one, they no longer feel close. They feel separate and alone. An immense gulf has opened between them.

It gets worse. They hear God walking in the garden in the coolness of the evening. They hide. They don’t want God to see them in their degraded state.

I wonder what sound God makes walking in the garden. Is it like a soft and gentle breeze? Or is it like a booming, powerful stamping? Some translators think what they hear is not the sound of God walking, but the sound of God’s voice while God is walking. What is God saying while walking? Could it be that God is humming – perhaps humming the tune of creation? Whatever noise God makes, they once would have welcomed it. Now they dread it and hide.

God calls out. “Where are you?” It’s not that God doesn’t know. God knows. But God must ask.

At least the man answers honestly. “I heard you coming, and I hid because I’m afraid because I’m naked.” Actually, he’s no longer naked because he’s now wearing a loincloth made of fig leaves. But he feels naked. He feels vulnerable.

He feels guilty, too. He’s done wrong, and he knows it. This sudden knowledge of good and evil weighs on him. The sudden awareness that he has not done good but instead has done evil burdens him heavily.

He feels shame, too – for the first time ever. He is no longer comfortable in his own skin. He does not like the person he has become. Not only has he done wrong. He is wrong. It’s an awful feeling, and both he and the woman must be crushed by it. They are not who they were only moments before, and they hate what they have become.

Ever done something like that? Ever had a choice between right and wrong and you consciously chose the wrong, and now you feel terrible about it, and you feel even more terrible knowing that’s there’s nothing you can do to change what you’ve done?

You can’t go back to the moment and make a different choice. You get no do-overs, no mulligans, no second chances to get it right the first time. You had your moment, and you blew it.

Ever done something like that? Of course, you have. That’s the human condition. We’ve all been there. We’ve all done it. What’s worse, we’ve not been there only once. We’ve been there many times. We keep doing it over and over.

I have a choice – and I do the wrong thing. I have a choice – and I do the wrong thing. What’s the matter with me? That’s part of what this story explains, and explains in dramatic fashion that can be so much more clear and transparent than all the dogmatic statements we could make to explain it. Try as we might to do the right thing, each of us and all of us keep doing the wrong thing.

The Apostle Paul was familiar with this phenomenon. He says, “I don’t do the good that I want to do, but I do the evil that I don’t want to do.” (Romans 7:19, CEB) “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24, NRSV)

It’s not me who does these evil things, Paul concludes. It’s sin living within me. (Romans 7.17) Though our story never calls it sin, that’s the weight that Adam and Eve now feel. They’re not who they were just moments before. They’re different now, and they hate the difference. And they hate being found out. They hate feeling naked before their beloved God whom they have betrayed.

God asks, “Who told you that you were naked?” Again, God knows. Nobody told them. They figured it out on their own. But God must ask, to hold them accountable. “Have you eaten from the tree I told you not to eat from?”

It’s time for true confession. But that’s not what they do. Instead, they play the blame game. It’s the first time they’ve done it. It must sound pretty clever to them. We do it all the time, of course. We do it almost automatically, without even thinking what we’re doing.

Adam first: “The woman you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.”

Good job, Adam. Blame her. You may have been standing there the whole time, saying not one word while Eve was tricked by the snake, but it’s all her fault. When she first brought the fruit to her lips, you could have said something, but you didn’t. You could have reached out and stopped her, but you didn’t.

No, it’s all her fault – “and, if you member, God, you’re the one who gave her to me, so it’s not like you’re totally innocent here either. You should have warned me that she’d get me into trouble. I’m just a blameless bystander. Blame her, not me.”

You can be sure that God does not buy it, but God follows along for the moment. God asks Eve, “What have you done?” And she again passes the buck. “The snake tricked me, and I ate.”

You might imagine at this point the snake shrugging sheepishly. “Who, me? True, I egged her on, but she didn’t have to do it, did she? She could have chosen differently. She could have chosen the right rather than the wrong. But she didn’t. Not my fault.”

God appears to think differently. God pronounces a curse on the snake. “Upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.”

That’s apparently meant as an explanation of why snakes slither on their bellies rather than walk or crawl. Then comes an explanation of why humans and snakes don’t get along so well. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”

As scary as they can be, we have a lingering fascination with snakes. Because it can shed its skin and emerge renewed, the serpent has long been a symbol of transformation and rebirth. Snakes have such ability; humans do not. We must find rebirth by other means, through the grace of God.

Some interpreters see here a reference to a future time when God’s Messiah will crush Satan under his feet. But there is no talk in this narrative about Satan or a fallen angel. This is a common garden snake God is dealing with, and apparently dealing with harshly.

Now God turns to the woman. There is no mention of a curse here. Rather, God announces consequences. It’s as if God is saying, now that you know the difference between good and bad, you are going to experience more of the bad than you would have before.

“I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing,” God says. “In pain you shall bring forth children.” About such pain I cannot personally testify, but I have been told by many women that it is the worst pain they have ever endured, and it’s redeemed only by the birth of a beloved child.

Three’s an old joke about why men don’t bear children. If they did, there would be only one child in each family, because no man would ever go through that pain more than once. From ancient days to today, childbirth is dangerous, and many women die trying to bring new life into the world.

The next consequence that God announces is one of the most misinterpreted and misunderstood texts in the Bible. God tells the woman: “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” Indeed, the first thing the man does after this scene is give the woman a name. He calls her Eve. By naming her, he claims authority over her.

But male dominance is not God’s will. God gave humans dominion over the animals, not over each other. Patriarchy is not part of the design of the universe. Nor is any other kind of subjugation. All forms of hegemony are a consequence of sin. As Jesus said, that’s the way of the world, but it’s not my way; it’s not God’s way.” (Matthew 20.25-28) Like the pain of childbirth, it’s not a good thing. It’s an evil to be endured, opposed and destroyed.

Just as God uttered no curse on the woman, God utters no curse on the man. Instead, God curses the ground because of what the man has done. “In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bear for you. By the sweat of your brow you shall eat until you return to the ground from which I made you, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Literally, I’m told, the Hebrew here refers not actually to the sweat of your brow but to sweat so heavy it drips off your nose.

Note, please, that work itself is not a curse from God. Rather, the difficulty and near futility of some work is what God announces as a consequence for sin. The man and the woman worked in the garden before the Fall, and their burden was light. Work becomes a heavy burden only after the Fall, as a consequence of sin.

God’s good creation suffers as well. It truly is the innocent bystander here. Yet it is cursed to be less productive than it could be until finally the curse of sin is destroyed. All creation waits with eager longing for this day, Paul says in his letter to the Romans. Creation has been subjected to futility all these years, and it groans as if in labor until the day it will be set free from bondage. (Romans 8.19-24)

Sometimes we call this story the fall of humanity from grace. And yet, for all that they have disobeyed and now will suffer the consequences of their disobedience, God has not abandoned them. They are still covered by God’s grace. Two signs are obvious.

First, God dispenses with those flimsy loincloths made of leaves. God makes garments of skin for them. Does this mean that an animal had to die for their sin? Perhaps. Surely it won’t be the last time.

Second, God drives them out of the Garden of Eden. It remains a protected paradise, and they don’t belong in it anymore. In the center of the garden, not far from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, is another tree. This is the Tree of Life. If they were to eat from this tree, they might become immortal.

God will not allow that. God does not want them to live forever in their degraded state. So it’s another sign of grace that God keeps them away from that tree.

The tree appears again in the book of Revelation, when God brings heaven down to earth. It grows in the center of the New Jerusalem, and every month it produces 12 kinds of fruit for the healing of the nations. (Revelation 22:2)

The tree also appears in the gospels, in a distressing disguise. Symbolically, the Tree of Life is the cross on which Jesus dies. On the cross, Jesus dies for all the sins of all people for all time. Jesus’ death brings us new life. Jesus’ death reverses the effect of the Fall. Jesus’ death frees creation from the futility of sin and destroys death itself.

As for that Garden in Eden, if it once was a real place geographically, nobody has ever been able to pinpoint that place. Genesis itself provides maddeningly imprecise directions for finding it. Presumably, it’s long gone, covered by the sands of history.

But it’s still there, isn’t it? It’s still there as a longing for wholeness, a longing for the good life that once was that we have never quite tasted, the life where God reigns, and you can go for walks with God in the cool of the evening, and all is shalom, all is peace, all is right with the world. It’s a life that Jesus can restore to us all – and will.

Amen.

“Fallout” is a message in the series “Genesis: In the beginning…” preached Oct. 20, 2019, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, Edgerton, Kansas, by the Rev. James Hopwood; Psalm 89:1,8-15, Genesis 3:6-24.