Temptation: That Crafty Persuasion Gen 2

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Temptation: That Crafty Persuasion

Lent 2A      3/8/2020 

            When my firstborn son was, I don’t know, 3? 4? 5?  He was talking well, anyway, and thinking things.  He came to me in the kitchen, and asked politely if he could have an ice cream sandwich - he’d eaten a good lunch, he would take it on the porch and not make a mess. (All this explanation should have been a clue….) I was so pleased with his politeness and thoughtfulness, that I said “Yes,”  thanked him for asking so nicely, and gave him an ice cream sandwich.  He went outside to the porch and ate it. When he was done, he returned  to the kitchen beaming, and explained - “I tricked you, Mommy!  Daddy gave me one, too!!!” 

I was angry, dismayed -  and strangely wanted to crack up laughing at how he was telling on himself.  Being a pastor and theologian, my brain goes odd places - I immediately knew that he had just eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  He was now his own creature, with the flush of having done something unique, and proud of his ability to think.  I knew that his dad and I would have to start being more aware now. 

My text today, as was read a few moments ago, is part of the saga of the early chapters of Genesis.  “In the Beginning” is the Hebrew name of the book, based on its first word.  I like the name “Beginnings.”  It’s a foundational book, explaining how things came to be as they are; or better, a way of putting forward the understanding of things through a trust and assurance of God’s involvement with it all.  How people and God and all creation are involved together.  How humanity is a commingling of the stardust of earth and the life-giving breath of the Divine.  How we find ourselves struggling with good and evil, mortality, feeling apart from God and longing to regain a wholeness that we intuit is there, and how difficult it is to eke a living on earth. 

All cultures have origin stories that give their people a basic orientation to how things are and try to answer the “why.”  I went on a quest to read lots of creation stories some years back, so I could hear our stories with a new ear, get past the literalism most of us were raised on, and get to the truths that are being communicated from way back. 

Genesis has 2 tellings of how God made things and how they are for us humans.  Each uses a distinct name for God.  Since we don’t read Hebrew (if we did the different names for God would be obvious), the English translation tries to show this by using various forms of God & Lord with capital first letters, and the all-capital LORD; sometimes combined as Lord God.    tIt’s not arbitrary - they are trying to show us the different traditions.  It’s interesting to know that as we read.  Those of you reading the Bible through right now, note the word and the spelling of  Lord and God as you read. 

The first telling of creation and God is the version with the wonderful refrain, “God saw that it was good,” and “the evening and the morning were the first/ second etc day,”  It’s actually quite an interesting study on biology - starting with water, land emerging, plants emerging, then sea life emerging, then animal life.  On what the story calls the 6th day, humanity is created in the image of God, male and female, no detail.  That is called good, too.  On the 7th day, God rests - the origin of Sabbath.  

The 2nd telling starts with the bare earth and the heavens, and God creates the human out of earthy stuff, dust, humus - and the life-giving Spirit or breath. Then in a few words God makes a garden for the human and makes lots of animals to try and make a companion to the human. Most Bible readers call this human Adam, and assume it's male.Not so! At this point the creature is a generic Human made from humus or Earthling made from Earth. It’s a play on words, and tells us what we are in our name.   Dust - enlivened by divine breath, Spirit. The translators made some assumptions here, in using the Hebrew word Adam as a name - a better name, in my humble opinion, might be “Dusty.”   That would translate the pun that identifies us.   Its interesting to note that in this story, God says that it’s NOT GOOD for Dusty to be solo.  If the various animals aren’t close enough companions, God takes a piece of Dusty & makes another dust creature.  In this way, the story tells us that the community aspect of humanity is important, that we need one another, and that sexuality and gender are a good part of the way things are.  That’s the situation we find ourselves in living in the world, and according to our faith, it's on purpose. 

This next part of the story has seen through a lens of cultural stereotypes by generations, and is a mis-interpretation that has led to much denigration of women.  In fact, the mis-interpretation does the same thing as the characters in the story - it throws blame.  People have read all sorts of things into the story that simply are not there - and used this story to justify putting down women, calling us the Devil’s gateway, wondering if we had souls, and blocking the use of our gifts in church.  In effect, they’ve acted out just what the human Adam and Eve do in the story - blame the other, try and justify and explain away misogyny, and avoid responsibility for it. In that mis-interpreting way, women are still held as temptresses, especially in a sexual way; even court cases this past year have blamed the woman for a man’s misbehavior.  

This is the text we read today is known in theology as “THE FALL.”

If you were reading a story where there are multiple doors and the character is given permission to open them all except one, what ALWAYS happens?  Yes, the character wonders why, wonders what could possibly be in that door, and eventually opens it.  In our text,  I can’t help but say, “What’s with that one tree?” and get curious.  That’s how humans are. The story calls it the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; and the story tells us it’s inevitable that we will learn this…..and that it will also make us grieve.  This is who we humans are, and this is the situation we find ourselves in, in life.  We know good and we know evil, and we are grieved by it; we can’t fix it, we try to get out from under it with blaming and justifying and avoiding because it's hard to admit.   The wholeness we seem to intuit and long for is only available through God, through Jesus, that human who was able to live in unity of spirit and matter, flesh and spirit, God and humanness. 

Like my son, all of us come to the point of knowing good and evil - & at a young age.  It looks promising, that getting what we want...and getting away with it.  And our sense of loss of innocence, our sense of guilt, our trying to wriggle away from it, follows on its heels. 

People who don’t feel this loss and wrongness of evil are sociopaths. 

Human history is full of both those who strive to do well, who have compassion and care about others than themselves, who seek peaceful ways of living together, who seek kindness, who seek the good for all - these Scripture calls the fruit of the Spirit.  Human history is also full of those who take what they want with violence, only seek good for their own tribe, glory in brutality and conquering, using all kinds of justifications and blaming.  If we can’t see these two things fighting within ourselves, we can at least see it in history.  Humans have eaten of the tree of good and evil.  And the lure and attraction of the evil are large - it feeds our desires, and tries to answer our feelings of insecurity. 

The faith stories of Scripture go on to tell us that God has always sought to provide a way of restoration of the relationship between us and God, between us and others, between us and all creation.  Showing us who God is through creation is a way; giving The Law was another; coming in flesh in Jesus was yet another.  The Jesus who we worship shows that perfect awareness of Spirit and flesh, living totally with God while being human.  The possibilities of the Kingdom of God attracted many followers among those humans around him - and also created hatred and fear in those who thought they were happy doing things their own way.  So Jesus was killed, rejected by the Empire which he criticized.  And God vindicated him by raising him in a new creation, what the Scripture calls a Second Adam, the start of a new thing that we are all invited to enter and enjoy.

I like to read a guy named Frederick Buechner, and among the wise things he says is that the Gospel is bad news before it is good news.  The bad news is that we know good and evil, and that evil is difficult to withstand.  In fact, it's really hard to look at ourselves and admit how much we do is self-motivated, how much we do because of our basic brokenness, no matter how much we desire and long for the good.  Yet without that admission, without that looking into the mirror and seeing our knowledge of good AND evil , we can’t get to where the gospel becomes, in fact, good news - that we can be made right with God through following Jesus, saying yes to Jesus’ invitation to repent and step into the kingdom of God, to take the path of following Jesus as our path, and learning from him.

These stories tell us what we are like, and show us that we have all eaten of that tree of good and evil, then show us that God has made a way for that longing for healing and wholeness are freely available.  The invitation is to look at ourselves honestly, with God’s help; and to turn in the direction of following Jesus, with God’s help.  May God’s Spirit strengthen us and enlighten us.  AMEN.