Lent One, Yr A
February 10, 2008
The Rev. G. Hendree Harrison, Jr.
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
On the twin fears of death and public nakedness
If we were to compile a list of the things we are most afraid of, and then we were to boil and simmer that list down to a simple soup, I believe that we would find that we human creatures are afraid of two things most of all.
One, we are scared of death, and two, we are scared of being caught naked in public.
Death and dying are realities that loom as the natural, though scary, end to our precious lives. And who has not had the nightmare dream in which you are suddenly and through no fault or action of your own, found naked in the middle of a crowded public place like Wal-Mart or a shopping mall.
Odd as it may sound, this morning’s Old Testament passage from Genesis deals with both of these fears.
We are in the very beginning of the story of God’s relationship with humanity, the second and third chapters of the first book to be precise.
God has reached into his pail of holy mud and drawn out a clump sufficient to form the first man and the first woman, Adam and Eve, and God has inflated these two clay creatures with his holy breath so that they might breathe and move, and live and love.
God has given the two the Genesis Garden of Eden to live in, “to till and to keep,” and like any good parent, God has set boundaries up for his children to live within.
“Don’t eat from this one tree,” says God. “All the rest are yours to pick from, but this one bears fruit that is not meant for human bellies.”
Like any good parent, God also sets a consequence as punishment for crossing the boundary set out, “On the day that you eat of the one tree you will die.”
Now, I will grant you that this punishment seems a bit severe, especially as it stands to be meted out on just the first offense, but at least it is clearly stated.
You know the next bit of the story.
Like all children of parents, Adam and Eve cross the one boundary they were told to live within, and like most mischievous children they try to hide but are, of course, caught.
I imagine Adam and Eve are like little kids who are just learning to play hide and seek and are not yet any good at hiding.
So, they hide out in the open, and their parents come looking and calling out, pretending not to see the child who is “hiding” right in front of them.
God, who cannot be hidden from, calls out to Adam, “Where are you?” And the most common of all human nightmares is exposed as Adam and Eve’s stark reality. They were found naked in public.
They tried to clothe themselves with leaves from the forest floor, but clothes made of leaves don’t stand up to the activities of garden life, so they really remained naked, which married to their guilty consciences, scared them nearly to death.
So, they tried to hide from God. Their efforts were, of course, fruitless.
Now, what happened next has been the source of a terrible lot of bad biblical scholarship and theological exposition, which I believe has greatly damaged our image of God. What happened next is - the punishment was handed out.
For generations, this whole Genesis passage has been called “The Fall” because it is supposed that the garden scene describes mankind’s “fall” from grace.
God addresses the serpent, the woman, and the man, and He describes what their lives will be like now, and then He shows them the door out of the garden.
And so the picture we have is of a vengeful, punishing God who curses and casts out his disobedient children. That picture of an angry god is a marred and inaccurate portrait of our Creator.
That picture of the scowling, violent god fails to take into account the original punishment that was clearly laid out as the sentence for disobeying and violating the garden law against eating the forbidden fruit.
Do you remember what God said?
He said, “If you eat the fruit you will die.”
But Adam and Eve were not killed. They did not die for their sin.
Indeed, there were consequences for their actions, but death was not, in the end, their punishment.
And no one brings the death sentence up. Adam and Eve certainly and understandably don’t bring it up, and God does not mention it either. He simply draws up more boundaries within which they will live.
These new boundaries sound and look more or less like the boundary lines that we live between today. The precious pain of childbirth and the sweaty toil of hard work are our well- known realities.
So what happened?
Was the sentence meant as hyperbole or exaggerated speech by God all along, or was the death sentence meant quite literally by God and then forgotten or simply ignored?
I don’t think it matters either way. Maybe it’s both. Who knows?
The graceful point is that our God is not a God of death. Our God is not a punishing vengeful god; rather, our God is the God of life, the God of provision and grace.
So, this passage should not be referred to as the scene depicting the fall from Grace. Instead, we should recognize in this garden scene, humankind’s ascent into the embrace of God’s good Grace.
Because at the end of the story, where death was the expectation life became the reality. Where we are accustomed to finding in the story of Adam and Eve the origin of sin (which separates) now, we find the very origin of God’s love which provides and covers over exposure (nakedness).
See, God does not send them out naked.
The last thing God does before the exodus from the garden is reach back into his pail of holy crafts for a sewing kit. And God draws out cloth and needle and thread and sews together garments for Adam and Eve. And as the story quite elegantly goes, “He clothed them.” (Have you ever been fitted for clothes by a professional tailor? It is an exquisite luxury to say the least.)
The image of God that I have in my heart and mind is of God, like a careful tailor, gently and skillfully outfitting the man and the woman with comfortable suits of clothes for the journey ahead.
So, Adam and Eve may have bad dreams in the nights ahead but their nightmares will not find them naked. And thus humans journeyed out of the Garden of Eden.
If that were the end of the story of God and his human creatures, it might be a sentimental ending, but still a sad one of departure and fracture.
However, the story goes on well beyond the third chapter of the book of Genesis. It goes on for book after book eventually leading to the gospels, and indeed to our stories today.
In my imagination (and in reality?) the unwritten postscript to the garden story lurks unseen, but ever present, like the gigantic base of the iceberg below the ocean’s surface.
It goes like this.
Adam and Eve, well-dressed, walked slowly out of the garden down a dusty road headed out into the world to find a new home. After they crossed the threshold of the garden gate and made just a few steps towards the wild world, God slipped in b
Where death was promised God gave life. Where exposure and isolation were feared, God gave clothing and comfortable presence.
Good friends, this garden story is not about the fall. It is about the rising up. This garden story is not about a broken relationship; it is about the beginning of a love affair.
Our God is not the god of death and fear, our God is the God of love and embrace, and that eternal truth is a gospel fact found at the very start, the Genesis indeed of the story of God and God’s beloved children.