Sermon For Ordinary Time 4 – Genesis 3

Genesis 3

One of my favorite parts of the Hobbit is the road in the Mirkwood. The dwarves are told what to do, not to leave the path, and yet as they travel, reject and forget Gandalf’s words and stray from the path, lured by forest dwellers, fated to die in darkness and confusion. In a word, Tolkien’s imagery is apt for the fate of humanity in Genesis 3, where a choice is made that leads the human race into the clawing morass of sin. Yet, despite all that, God’s gracious promise is maintained despite humanity’s endangering it by grasping for God’s power.

Into the serenity of the Garden, where humanity had been placed with all they could need, enters malevolent evil. In chapter 2:16-17 we are told that they can eat of any tree but that of the K of G&E. And the man and woman had thus far obeyed the command of God and avoided that tree, believing what they had been told. Then, the story turns with the entrance of the serpent. The serpent is recognized as crafty, and in Jewish and Christian tradition this specific serpent has been associated with the satan, meaning adversary, that pops up throughout the OT. The text here definitely points to a being of great evil, and one that stands in some way outside the world known to Adam and Eve. The word translated “crafty” is a play on words with the word for “nakedness” in Hebrew, indicating that human innocence would be shattered by the actions of this creature. This evil and craftiness is apparent from the beginning, when he asks, “Did God say, ‘you shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” He introduces doubt by asking an inaccurate question, and shifts the emphasis from trust and the goodness of the gift of the many trees, to suspicion and a perception of God being withholding.

The woman responds by pushing back, but the damage has been done: even she adds a prohibition that was not there before, saying they were forbidden from touching it as well. The emphasis is now on what is being kept from humanity, not what has been given, and the serpent presses his advantage by dropping the charade and denying what God has said: “You will not die, 5 for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 

She eats, and then turns and hands it to Adam, who also eats. Note that unlike Milton’s Paradise Lost, Adam is not absent, but right there, listening and following along. They fall, and they fall together, and then shame enters into the human psyche. This gives us so many insights into the nature of this cosmos God has created. The first is that there is something unique about these creatures, these humans, and it is that they have freedom of will, agency, and are thus able to choose good (to obey God) or evil (to not). Second, evil is not intrinsic to the cosmos, nor is it created by God, but it is the result of those creatures with agency who choose to reject the gift of God.

God then comes to the garden, and then in an anthropomorphic description inquires in order that the humans could confess, and we see the corruption that has been wrought from that diseased fruit. Adam blames God and the woman, she blames the serpent, and no one takes responsibility. And don’t we do the same? Don’t we minimize our own failures? Don’t we justify our actions? We explain to try and mitigate how bad we have really acted. We gaslight one another. We fail, and then fail again as we reject the possibility that we are the true perpetrators of our crimes. This is the nature of shame, which as Brene Brown argues is a “fear of disconnection.” Both A&E clothe themselves to conceal from each other, and then they hide to conceal themselves from God. Shame makes them want to hide, because it is the one thing we don’t want anyone to see.

What was the crime, exactly? What’s so wrong about wanting the knowledge to distinguish good and evil? The answer is the nature of this knowledge. From looking at the usage of this elsewhere, it is the kind of wisdom that is used by an adult who no longer needs a parent’s guidance. It is the kind of knowledge that can make judgments autonomously. It is the knowledge of those who desire not to be God’s representatives and mediators, but gods themselves. They chose to reject faith & trust in favor of power, a power that finite creatures with limited knowledge are not capable of using well.

And the result is the curses that follow. The serpent, and more to the point, who and what the serpent represents, will find that as his seed persists in trying to draw humanity into darkness, will one day be crushed by the seed of the woman. His seed is humanity that rejects God, but it will be he, individually, that will have his head crushed. Nascent in a curse on humanity, God still maintains his promise, that of humanity’s flourishing. They may be going into exile now, they may increase in suffering during this mortal life, but a child will be given to defeat the enemy. God’s gracious promise is maintained despite humanity’s endangering it by grasping for God’s power, and this pattern will persist throughout Genesis, the OT, until Christ fulfills it definitively as the 2nd Adam, and we are being led to a New Creation, even better than Eden itself.

As for humanity, they are both given “pains,” mirrored curses that are linked to their vocations. For the woman, it is not childbirth that is the pain, but according to a closer word study is rather the ongoing raising of children in this world that is painful, as she struggles to dominate her husband. For man, it is his vocation to till and keep, which he will now experience as painful, toil with little gain, resulting eventually in a return to our source, the ground, even as he sins in dominating his wife. In other words, the one flesh is divided again, man and woman turned against one another, experiencing ongoing pain as they struggle against the earth and bring children into their painful existence. And their division becomes the broader division of all humanity, turned on one another, people and nations seeking to dominate down through the ages.

But, they aren’t dead yet. They have the promise of a seed that will serve God, the Second Adam coming from the Second Eve to crush the serpent’s head. They are exiled, unable to eat of the tree of life and so vulnerable to their natural fate, death, but that itself is also a blessing of sorts, as a sinful humanity that could live forever would be the worst kind of humanity. God’s promise, however, is not toppled by them. God’s love is not spent with human transgression, but rather we see his love expressed, as “The proof of love is the unwillingness to abandon the object of love even when love fails to achieve its desired end.” Adam and Eve, the mother of all the living, were not abandoned by God. How much more can we count on God, that we will not be abandoned, that we can heal from shame, that we can live? While guilt can be good, the recognition that we have done something wrong and thus must make it right, shame tells us that we are wrong, and unworthy of love. But God in Christ, who became the Second Adam, frees us from the tyranny of shame over our sin, winning for humanity hope in his victory over both sin and death. When we see the strife in the world and in our own relationships, we can trust in the God whose promise stands forever. When we fail to live in holiness and are tempted to wallow in shame, we can remember that God has promised one day a new creation where our efforts will not be cursed. When we need strength because the suffering we experience in our lives is real, the hurt is pointed, and we are tempted to despair, we can rest in the confidence that God’s gracious promise is maintained despite humanity’s endangering it by grasping for God’s power, and no failure or sin of ours can endanger what is ours in Jesus Christ, our mediator and advocate, Amen.