Lent I A
Lectionary Readings:
Genesis
Romans
Matthew
Being here at the monastery, living and praying here and sharing in the life of the community these past two weeks has been a lovely walk down memory lane for me (I've been coming here for about twenty-eight years, since I was thirteen). I remember learning to pray here and to chant, a lot of very good preaching and the loving peaceful spirit I've found here. Joy and gratitude have piled up in me, making it especially fun to prepare this sermon. Now, some might find my way of having fun a bit odd: I love to pour over commentaries, playing Biblical detective. What might these great stories really mean, in their original context and language, when centuries of layers are peeled back?
The Genesis story of the creation of humanity, the serpent, and the infamous forbidden fruit is so very full. So much has been said about it, and there are so many approaches to reading scripture: Literary criticism. Historical views…As a woman, it is especially tempting to talk about the creation of man and woman. I was fortunate to come across an excellent commentary on Genesis by Walter Brueggeman - part of the Interpretation series - which helped me cut to the chase.
This Ash Wednesday, David Bryan invited us to Lent as a time of restoration. The church he served in Long Island, having burned and been intensely damaged, was not beyond saving. It was restored and then some, becoming after the fire and the rebuilding, more suited for the purposes it was intended and more pleasing to those who loved it. So, too, when we surrender to the restoration and rebuilding by our God who creates, loves and sustains us, we are transformed, Lent by Lent, choice by choice.
This story is a significant piece of the furniture to be reckoned with as we allow God to work in us this Lent. I imagine an old armoire which has been in the family for centuries. No one remembers who bought it, it has been around for so long. As time wore on, someone decided that it would be a good idea to paint over the finish, and another, and another, until it was covered with layers of paint. Through the years, each generation threw some things into it - and surely some things were taken out. No one living knows what the original armoire looked like. We aren't really sure what is in it now, or how half of it got there. Yet we have this huge piece of furniture which many of us find difficult - maybe some would even throw it out and start over.
The weight of this story of Adam, Eve, the serpent and the tree is considerable on our shoulders and in our lives. However, if we can peel off the layers of paint - the interpretations that have been added over thousands of years - and come to the bare, beauty of the wood, knots and grain and all, we can search and sort what has been stowed in it, let go of some things, and make for room for the life-giving breath of God in the story. When we're finished, I believe we will be left with something which we are glad to have around, a source of wisdom and a resource for our own lives and journeys.
How to go about this stripping away and sorting? Where do we start?
Walter Brueggeman, an outstanding Biblical Scholar and man of faith, invites us to read this story as sacred memory. To receive it as a way that the people of Israel have remembered -- and pass on -- the story of the unfolding of God's creation. Do not read it as history or myth, he urges. History is too concerned with proof and fact. Myth interpretations, while fascinating, do not get at the intention of those who wove the stories. They were told and kept alive by a people who understood themselves to be called by God, who created them and had a purpose for them and promised to stay with them until that was fulfilled.
Hebrew scripture, Brueggeman says is not interested in deep structures, in analyzing or self-consciously expressing abiding truths, nor in exact truths. It does not trade in eternal realities… We must avoid all the solidity that appeals to myth and all the proof which rests on history. Story offers nothing that is certain, either by historical certification or by universal affirmation. It lives, rather, by the scandal of concreteness, by the freedom of imagination and by the passionate hearing…
So let us passionately hear this story. Let's peel away some of the layers of paint and see what really belongs in this great old armoire. Let's listen as people of faith to what it actually says and see if we can distinguish that from what has been added on through the ages.
To do this, we need to say what this story is NOT about.
It is not about the Fall, despite eons of reading it that way. We were not perfect in the first place. God created the whole earth and heavens, and all that is in them, and called it good. Not perfect, but good. Very good. There was no perfection to fall from.
Nor is it a story of how death came into the world. Sorry, dear Paul. No one dies, and none of us were immortal in the first place. The tree of life-the one that makes one live forever-stands untouched in the middle of the garden. The man and woman did not eat of it. From the beginning, in the Hebrew scriptures, death is part of life. We live. We die. There is an acceptance of that. And when loved ones pass, there is deep and honest mourning. Though sometimes death is used as a punishment, death itself is not. Another layer off.
This story is not about the sin of sexuality. When it has been interpreted that way - as the origin of sin, and that sin is sex - it is like looking at a knob on the armoire and blowing its significance out of proportion. The covering of themselves with fig leaves and being ashamed of nakedness are not about sexuality. Our sexuality is a gift from God - also part of the goodness we were created with from the beginning. As one friend of mine says “ Sexuality isn't something we snapped on after creation.”
We are getting closer to the bare wood, but we're not quite there. We need to remove the layer that would have this be about how evil came in to the world. This stage of history, these stories, pre-date interest in abstract ruminations about evil. Stories of wrongdoing are told, but there is no philosophizing about it yet.
The “tree of knowledge of good and evil” is not about distinguishing between Good and Evil with capitals - not about great understanding of the nature of evil or good. Rather, when this Hebrew phrase is used, it is in situations where it refers to people who are too young and immature, or too old and losing faculties to discern one thing from another, “this and that.” They don't have the ability to tell what will be good or bad for them. They can't decide for themselves what serves them best.
Is the weight, the impact of this story feeling lighter yet? Having peeled all these away, let's look at what is left.
In its powerful prose, this sacred story remembers that God creates humans, male and female, and places them in the garden to tend and till it. All is apparently well until this conversation between Eve and the Serpent. It never occurs to Eve that the serpent might not be telling the whole truth about God and the tree. Up until now, God had not lied to her. Perhaps it had never occurred to her as a possibility. (We don't know whether Adam had).
Enter the serpent - who is NOT the devil (an interpretation to throw out of the armoire). There was no understanding of a devil personified at the time in history when this sacred story originated. The serpent, wily creature that it is, enters and engages Eve in the first theological conversation. Coaxes her off center. Talk with God, encounter with God, becomes talk about God. God is made object, one whose motives are questionable. The serpent undermines what Adam and Eve have experienced of God. The serpent sows a seed of doubt, of mistrust.
“Maybe God is just keeping the best for himself. Maybe that is God's motivation. God just wants to be the only God, and if you eat the fruit you'll be just like God, wise, able to tell the difference between this and that." The serpent calls into question God who had created, provided, guided, and made available to them everything in the garden but one.
Here is another layer to be stripped away. It is not curiosity - not that they wondered what it tasted like - that is the problem. Nor is it appetite or pleasure: God gave them everything in the garden and placed it all within reach: to enjoy, explore, taste, delight in and care for---everything but one. Great freedom and abundant permission were granted. There was only one prohibition.
But the woman listens. And she looks. She sees the beautiful fruit, and desires the wisdom the serpent has promised. She reaches and eats. And she gives some to her mate, who also eats. A good reminder that in Lent we are not dealing only with individual transgressions and wrongdoings…we stray often as communities, too. Mightily.
They eat and their eyes are opened.
Perhaps you remember the articles some years ago about people who had been blind from birth. Surgical breakthroughs promised to give some sight for the first time. Their eyes would be opened. Most everyone thought that this would be a good thing, desirable. After the surgery many of the people who could now see were extremely distraught. Disoriented. Lost. Terrified in a sighted world. Before, they related, navigated, oriented themselves through taste and touch, sound and smell. Afterward they were flooded with images and impressions they had no context for. Many were overwhelmed and unprepared to cope. Some of them began to walk around with their eyes closed; many got extremely depressed and angry with the doctors. Others asked that the surgery be reversed and they be given their old worlds back. They had their sight. Their eyes were opened. But they had no way to interpret what they could now see.
So too with the man and the woman in the garden. Their eyes were opened. They could see things they couldn't see before. No longer simply alive and immersed in living, they were able to step back, to separate themselves from what they were perceived. They began to notice differences, and to make judgments, evaluations. They separated reality into “this” and “that” for the first time. A type of consciousness was born. Self-consciousness was born. Discrimination came into being. Good/bad; inferior/superior; right/wrong; us/them. Discrimination - not discernment, not wisdom - was what they received: discrimination apart from the heart and love and compassion of the one who created them.
Confused, frightened, overwhelmed, they were; and unaware that they had received only part of what the serpent promised. They immediately began reaping the fruits of their choice of mistrust. The goodness and beauty that God declared they called nakedness. Those who God delighted in felt themselves to be shameful. Still in the garden of God's love and provision, they had already wandered into exile before God did anything in response to their choice.
I do not believe that it is God's desire that we remain ignorant and naïve, as utterly dependent as children in every way. God calls us to grow and become conscious, to mature in faith and spirit and discernment. Again and again the scriptures speak of the loving, committed relationship, partnership, which God yearns for with humanity. The prohibition - DO NOT EAT - comes from God's protection of us, God's utter and complete desire that we have what we need, enjoy what is good, and steer clear of what will harm us. I believe God would have had our eyes opened more gently-- in God's way, in God's time, supported by love and wisdom.
They have chosen. They have eaten. They reel with the impact. And God sends them out, out of the garden, away from the tree of life.
Why would God do this? Here I will depart from what the text says and add my own piece to our armoire. I think of my cat, Phoebe: a delightful, boundless in energy little creature - she weighs only seven pounds. She is black, mostly, with brush strokes of orange and one orange foot, adorable, relentlessly curious and entirely unrepentant. Phoebe loves candles. She likes to watch the flame, and invariably sticks her paw in it. I would watch her: Burn her paw; Lick it for awhile; Look at it; Look at the candle... And stick her paw right in to be burned again. Over and over. Dancing flame is too beautiful, too pleasing to the eye to be resisted. Phoebe is two and a half years old and she will still do this with candles if I let her. I have had to take the candles away and put them out of reach.
Perhaps God put the tree of life out of reach because if we ate of it, and became immortal, we would be consigned to living hell; unable to discern “this" from "that,” but convinced that we could; and constantly doing so incorrectly. Causing ourselves and others great pain and fear and hurt, as we do in our human brokenness and sinfulness, for eternity. Grace expels human beings from the garden before more harm can be done.
This story reflects our falling into mistrust of God, and of all the fall out from that. Of the constant “this and that” distinctions we make, unconscious, unable to see that we cannot see like God. We believe what we see with our limited eyes. We forget that “only God has a perspective that can view creation as a whole; humans (even with their new knowledge) will never gain that kind of breadth, for we make our decisions from within creation.
We go on making distinctions that cause great harm. So often we are unable to discern well for ourselves. We use this distorted sense of “this" and "that” to divide, saying this is better than that; this is superior, that is inferior. We do this along racial, economic, ethnic, sexual orientation, religious and countless other lines. We hurt and are hurt by this.
We have not been able to heal this in ourselves.
Enter Christ, God among us. In the Gospel today, he is led to the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan.. Having just heard God's voice declare him beloved and one in whom the Holiest One delights, the Spirit leads him to the wild places to encounter the voice of temptation. Jesus goes. Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, who emptied himself of his divine power - of all power beyond human capacity - and entered life with us. Fully human, fully divine, he had surrendered divine advantage.
Tempted in every way as we are, he encountered the one who would have him mistrust God - rely on something else. He encountered the voice that would have him question what God had said of him, saying IF you are the Son of God... And he was able to choose to resist that temptation. He listened with true discernment, filled with the Spirit of God and led by the Spirit. Jesus, unlike Eve and Adam, heard that the tempter was attempting to mislead him. He refused to let his connection, his oneness with God be disrupted. His choice enabled him to resist temptation and show us the way.
Reflecting on these sacred stories, this time, I realized perhaps for the first time that temptation is an essential part of the process. An opportunity to choose. A chance to rediscover what we mortals are made of: dust, yes, and God's breath. Each temptation is a moment of having the choice between what will be life-giving in our journeys to union with God and what will take us further from the life God intends for us, closer to death.
We do not have the ability to discern, do not have innate wisdom, apart from God. But we were given the capacity for choice. In Deuteronomy 30, among other places, Hebrew Scriptures insist that it is not too hard for us to choose God's way; When we remain close to God, listen for God's voice, and not the voice of temptation, nor deception, nor mistrust. I set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendents may live.
Christ's temptation in the wilderness is part of the Way that we are called to walk. It is ours to receive as blessing and gift: a time of allowing our trust in God to grow. In surrendering to the process of encountering temptation and not succumbing Jesus walked the Way God envisioned for us. Not the way of mistrust and setting out on our own way, but the way of deep willingness, of true discernment, the way of life. And in his walk thereafter among us, teaching, healing, freeing sufferers from their demons, Jesus saw beyond “this" and "that” even as he honored each as special, unique. He shared life with all who would share life with him and healed everyone who asked. He who knew who he was - beloved child of God, a source of delight for his Father in heaven - saw others that way, too. Stripped bare of all the layers life and others had put on them, he blessed those who would let him, reminding them of their Father who loved and cherished them and was calling them home.
This Lent we can be the armoire, grateful for attention. Whatever distortions or lies there are, whoever took part in applying them, we can allow God to strip away layers of our ill-fitting, harmful distinctions: Naked. Shameful. Destined for sin and death. Bad. Less than…we each have our own. We can listen for the voice that calls us Beloved, delightful, my daughter, my son.
This Lent may we allow God to open our eyes to the ways we have painted each other: The labels, the attitudes, judgments and harshness of the half-sightedness we have when we see only one aspect of another person or group. Sometimes this is quite hard.
Right after September 11, I was present at a day for clergy to prepare us in assisting others to cope with the tragedy and terror - the loss - to help people be with a new, overwhelming reality. A powerful video was shown, produced by a group of National Church staff. It showed many images of that day, many we can still remember quite vividly. The video, set to glorious sacred music, helped us to recognize, to remember, that God's grace is always present, even in this devastation.
As images flashed, one of Osama Bin Laden came. Bearing a small smile he had a lovely sparkle in his eye. I was shocked by what I saw in that flash: a beautiful man, one of God's beloved children. I did not want to see it this way. It just came. And I certainly did not want to share that story very much in the midst of those early days. But it stayed with me through all the stories and reactions of hurt and hate.
Can we let God strip the paint away-that much? Can we trust enough-be open to grace-to see more of what is true about each and everyone of us? Can we see with the eyes of God and hear God's names for us: Beloved, Delightful, potentially Wise by Grace? Can we allow God to teach us to make holy distinctions between the value and honor of every living being, and destructive acts which God grieves as we do?
Let us look deeply in the loving mirror of God's delight and care for us as children, beloved partners, potential friends. Let us look and not be deceived. The more knowledge of God's love we receive, the more truth we can bear. The more we choose to trust God to continue his loving restoration of us - and to give up our aspirations and shortcuts - the easier it is to see gently the other things that are true about us. We are sometimes mean-spirited, often loving, yet sometimes hateful. Sometimes we mean well and sometimes we want to hurt each other. In God's time we will see that there is no use in separating reality so carefully into this and that, or humanity into us and them. In the eyes of love there are only God's beloved children, all.
The Rev'd Elizabeth R. Broyles
(c) 2002
