Lent 1A
At some point in my
childhood – probably around the 4th grade when I received a Bible
from my church, I decided I was going to read the entire Bible. I made it
through the first several chapters of Genesis, entranced by the amazing
stories. A beautiful garden, murder, a
flood – wow! This is great stuff, I’m glad I decided to do this. And then I got
to chapter 10: “These are the descendants of Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham, and
Japheth. These three had sons after the flood. The sons of Japheth – Gomer,
Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Mesheck, and Tiras. . .”[1]
I kept reading a bit longer; but I certainly didn’t finish the book of Genesis
– let alone the whole book of Genesis. But, a few years later, I’d get it into
my head once more that it would be a good idea to read the whole Bible and again,
I’d set out with Genesis, stopping at about the same place as the first try. I repeated this exercise several more times
in my childhood. In a religion class in
college, I actually did have to read
the whole thing; but by then I learned the art of skipping the boring
stuff. In any event, the point of this
is that I’ve read the first 10 or so chapters of Genesis a LOT and I’ve spent a
lot of my life thinking about those stories.
So it seems to me that
by now I should have no new insights.
Seriously – same garden, same serpent, same woman, same man, same
God. And then, this week, it hit me
anew. God tells the man, do not eat from
“the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. . . for in the day that you eat of
it you shall die.”[2] But, the serpent says to the woman (and, to
be fair, the man is standing right next to her so he heard it too) – the
serpent says to the woman, if you eat the fruit of this tree – the one in the
middle of the garden – “You will not die. . .” No, the REAL reason God doesn’t
want you to eat that tree’s fruit is because “your eyes will be opened, and you
will be like God, knowing good and evil.”[3] Now there are any number of funny things
going on in this story. First, a talking
snake. Come on. Is this a joke? And
then, the man and the woman, they don’t die - at least not in the way we might
expect when God says “in the day that you eat of [this tree] you shall
die.” So, here’s what caught me this
week. The snake was right. Death – no; knowledge of good and evil –
yes.
One of the interesting
things about the stories in these early chapters of Genesis is that they were
written not to tell a people how things would or should be from now on. Instead
they were written to tell people why things are the way they already are. For example, the Hebrew people might have
wondered, “Why are there so many kinds of animals in our world?” and a story
arose that explained that it was because when God was looking for a companion
for the human, he made countless animals – none of whom turned out to be
suitable. “Why are there rainbows in the
sky?” they may have wondered and a story arose that explained it was a promise
from God that the earth would never be flooded again. Don’t get me wrong, of course, these stories
have many more layers of complexity and much deeper implications for life and
relationship with God than just explaining why things are as they are; but, at
least on one level, they were a kind of ancient precursor to Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories which explained such
things as how the camel got his hump.
And then, one question leads to the next until you have a long litany of
“why” questions. That’s what I think is happening with the stories in Genesis –
a whole bunch of why questions and a peoples’ attempt to provide explanations. And, today’s reading is an answer to one of
the BIG why’s. Why do bad things happen? More precisely, why do people do bad things.
And this reading on the
first Sunday in Lent makes sense as we immerse ourselves in a season that asks us
to pay attention to the ways in which we turn away from God and to focus on the
path that brings us back to Christ. God
tells the first man and the first woman, do not do this bad thing. And the man and the woman do the bad thing
despite the warning. And when they do
it, they come up with an excuse – “the serpent made us do it.” And here’s where this reading, provides us
with an opening. Like the man and woman,
our eyes have been opened. We can and
do see the good and the evil in the
world around us. If we are willing to be
honest, we can also see the good and the evil in our own lives. And yet even when we see the evil in our
lives, we explain it away, providing excuses for our behavior, our lack of
behavior or our indifference. When, for example, a task at the church or in our
community needs a volunteer, we say, “I’ve done my time, it’s time for the
younger generation to take their turn” or, “when I retire and have more time,
I’ll help out” or “I’m too busy” or “someone else will do it” or . . . When we
buy things that we know are made by underpaid or mistreated workers we offer
excuses: “yes, I can’t afford higher prices” or “yes, but the store is on my
way home from work.” When our neighbors live in fear of ICE agents knocking on
their door or raiding their place of work, we offer excuses: “why didn’t they
try to become citizens? After all they’ve been here for more than a decade?” or
“I don’t know how to help.”
The Hebrew people knew
the difference between good and evil.
You and I know the difference between good and evil. The Hebrew people blamed a serpent. You and I blame a variety of serpents. The
serpent says “your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good
and evil.”[4]
And God says, “in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”[5]
The serpent was right. Our eyes have
been opened and we do see and discern good from evil. And God was right, because with eyes wide
open, as Paul writes in the letter to the Romans, “death spread to all” because
“death came through sin.”[6]
As we journey through
these days of Lent, we are invited to renounce again the evils we renounced in
our baptism: Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel
against God; the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the
creatures of God; and all sinful desires that draw us from the love of God.[7] We are invited to turn away from all of this
and turn once again to Jesus Christ, to put our whole trust in his grace and
love, and to follow and obey him as our Lord.[8] We are invited to see, name and turn from all
the excuses we make and to turn to all the love God has to offer. We are invited to prepare ourselves once
again for the Renewal of our Baptismal promises at The Great Vigil of Easter
when we will stand around the font to be reminded that the waters of our
baptism are the very waters over which “the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning
of creation.” They are the same waters through which God “led the children of
Israel out of their bondage in Egypt into the land of promise.” They are the very same waters in which God’s
“Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy Spirit as
the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death and resurrection, from
the bondage of sin into everlasting life.”
They are the same waters through which, at our baptism, “we are buried
with Christ in his death” and by which “we share in his resurrection” and
through which “we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.” And they are the same waters
in which we “are cleansed from sin and born again” and “continue for ever in
the risen life of Jesus Christ our Savior.” [9]
For just as the disobedience
of the first man and woman “led to condemnation for all, so [Jesus’] act of
righteousness leads to justification and life for all.”[10]
This Lenten journey is a journey for life.
It is also a journey to life, renewed life in Christ.
[1]
Genesis 10:1-2a (“The Good News Bible,” Today’s
English Version - because that’s what I owned when I was a child).
[2]
Genesis 3:17 (this and all subsequent Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version).
[3]
Genesis 3:4-5.
[4]
Genesis 3:5.
[5]
Genesis 2:17b.
[6]
Romans 5:12b.
[7]
BCP, 302.
[8]
BCP, 302-3.
[9]
BCP, 306-7.
[10]
Romans 5:18.
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