Genesis 2:4b-7, 15-17; 3:1-8
September 13, 2020
Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS
In All Things
by St. Francis of Assisi
It was easy to love God in all that
was beautiful.
The lessons of deeper knowledge, though, instructed me
to embrace God in all
things. [1]
I’ve been chewing on this poem all week. So short, but so much there to savor.
St. Francis of Assisi knew quite a lot about finding God in the easy and beautiful parts of life. He was born to a wealthy merchant family and lived the first part of his life privileged and with ease. But even as a child, there were signs that he was also intimately aware of human struggles.
There’s a story about how, as a boy, Francis was selling cloth at the market with his father and, after a day’s work, ran to find a man who had been begging for money earlier in the day. The young Francis emptied his pockets, giving away all the money he had taken in that day. He was mocked by his friends and punished by his father who didn’t understand why he would do such a thing.
Francis eventually chose to live in poverty and was cut off from his family and friends. He intentionally walked into the pain of the human experience because he believed he might more fully experience the presence of God in ALL things...not just in the beautiful and easy parts of life.
I appreciate so much how St. Francis devoted his life to nurturing a relationship with God. Though his own life changed so dramatically over the years, God was a constant force of love throughout it all. It seems that it didn’t matter to Francis if things were going splendidly or his life was on the rocks….God was there through it all, reaching out to Francis in love, and Francis was humbly aware of God’s love and willing to receive it.
This Sunday we are beginning our journey through a new year in the Narrative Lectionary cycle. We will be traveling through vast portions of the First Testament this fall, exploring God’s promises to humanity...and our purpose and calling as we respond to God’s grace in our lives.
We begin, of course, at the very beginning. Genesis. Not just an awesome band from the 80s, you know. Genesis as in generations, generativity. Our ancestors - created by God and creating with God. Our origins. Our beginning as humanity.
A deep dive into Genesis always requires a lot of unpacking because there’s so very much baggage that we’ve picked up along the way with these texts. And so, as we begin with one of the creation stories, a briefr word about what I believe this story is and is not.
Is this story a scientific account of how humans came to be on this planet? No, it is not. Just as we wouldn’t pick up a book of poetry to find a recipe for dinner tonight, we shouldn’t come to this book when we need facts about biology.
Instead, the creation stories in Genesis were written by our human ancestors as they tried to understand big questions like why are we here? Where did we come from? What’s our place in this world? Big questions. Important questions. And so, though this isn’t a science textbook, it DOES contain vitally important truths about things that really matter. And so we give thanks for the wisdom in these pages AND the continued generativity of truth that we experience when we dive into these sacred texts together.
Reading these texts in community is important because most of us, if left to our own devices, will continue to simply read them as they were originally taught to us. And most of us learned things about Adam and Eve that simply aren’t in the text at all. For example, people often call this story “the Fall” and say it’s about “Original Sin.” But Biblical scholar Frank M. Yamada points out that the language of sin doesn’t appear in the text. [2] And the concept of original sin wasn’t invented until centuries later!
Also absent in the text: the Devil. Not there. You can go back and check. There’s a snake and the Hebrew word to describe the snake is cunning, which might have had a very positive connotation. Wise and knowing. Fun fact, courtesy of Biblical scholar Beth L. Tanner: the same Hebrew word is used in the Book of Proverbs and translated as”sensible” or “prudent.” [3]
It turns out the snake is pretty smart, after all. The snake tells the humans, “Go ahead and eat this fruit. You won’t die. You’ll grow in knowledge.”
And it turns out, the snake is right. After the eat the fruit, they don’t actually die like God said they would. They simply have their eyes opened and learn more. This story reminds us that although we often think of learning as a positive thing, it can also carry with it lots of pain. Many lessons are hard-won. Many of us have been talking a lot lately about all the things we are learning in 2020. Most of us have had to learn how to do lots of new things and live in entirely new ways. And this has not always been fun or easy. At times we want to say, “Okay! Enough learning. We’re good. Just let us stop learning for a bit!” Perhaps there are things you’ve even learned in 2020 that you rather wish you hadn’t. Ignorance can be bliss, and all that.
Frank Yamada reminds us, though, that this story helps us to remember something important. He says, “Genesis 2--3 suggests that knowledge, a necessity for human life, is something that is acquired painfully. Ignorance may be bliss, but it is certainly not the mark of human maturity. When humans understand what it means to be fully human--that is, when they have complete knowledge--the realities of life come into full relief in all of their complexity and difficulty. Knowledge is both enlightening and painful.” [2]
It’s puzzling that God tells the humans they will die if they eat the fruit...God seems to be wrong, lying, or unreliable. How do we explain that? Was God just trying really hard to get them to avoid the pain they were about to experience? What’s going on there?
We don’t typically think about God being wrong, lying, or unreliable.
Except….you know, sometimes maybe we do feel like God is like that. Surely you’ve been mad at God before, right? When things fall apart? When you don’t understand what’s happening or why? When you desperately wish everything could be different? When you’re DONE LEARNING and ready to just STOP GROWING for a while?
I think it’s only natural - only human - to squint our eyes and wonder about God’s reliability from time to time. Perhaps our faith ancestors wanted to get the story straight by naming right here in the beginning of the Bible how utterly normal it is to look at God sideways from time to time.
That most foundational of all relationships - the relationship between God and us - isn’t always smooth-sailing, you know. God may have created humans and called us all “good” but there are plenty of stories in the Bible where God gets frustrated with us, disappointed in us, sighs and shakes her head at our actions. We may call God our source and ground of being, but our sacred texts are full to the brim of humans questioning God, yelling at God, even cursing God. Even here in the very beginning of our Bible, we can see the relationship between the Creator and the Created is going to be bumpy. It’s not all roses.
Bumpy….but not fragile.
Because the thing that comes shining through in this story is that we - that is God and humans - are in it together for the long haul. We may not always understand each other. We may cause deep signs of dissatisfaction from time to time. But we are a we. Together. Us. Creator and created. Family. We can never be torn apart.
Even in this story, when the humans disappoint God, when it doesn't go the way God had planned. Does God throw up his hands and say, “That’s it. You were a terrible mistake. I’m done with you.”? No, God does not say that. God does get pretty mad at the snake and does some cursing there.
But, like a loving parent, God gives the humans a lecture and then packs them up and lovingly weaves new clothes for them to wear. The humans have outgrown the garden and are onto the next phase in their journey. And God goes with them, perhaps pacing the floor at night and wondering what kind of mischief they’ll get into next.
I don’t mean to make light of this argument between the humans and God. God is clearly displeased that the humans chose to do exactly what they were told not to do. And we can hear our faith ancestors grappling with all those big “why” questions when they put words into God’s mouth. “Why is it so hard to be human? Why do we have to work so hard? Why are so many parts of being human, like giving birth, difficult and dangerous? Why does it sometimes seem like even the earth is against us, when crops are hard to grow?”
The people who shared this story centuries ago seemed to believe the answers to these questions lie in the basic truths of what it means to be a human. To be human is to struggle sometimes. To be human is to mess up sometimes (okay, often, if we’re being honest). To be human is to have lots of questions about why it all has to be this way. To be human is to have companions for the journey - other humans plus animals and the natural world. To be human is to be curious. To be human is to have the desire to explore. To be human is to always be growing and maturing and developing. To be human is to know - really KNOW - that sometimes growing and maturing and developing is INCREDIBLY hard work.
To be human is to always, always, always be accompanied by God. The One who loves us fully even when we’re at our most people-y. When we whine and complain. When we cry and yell. When we do exactly what we were told not to do. When we stamp our feet and refuse to make things easy on ourselves.
I can imagine a version of St. Francis’s poem written from God’s perspective instead of ours:
It was easy to love humans in all that
was beautiful.
The lessons of deeper knowledge, though, instructed me
to embrace humans in all
things.
I believe that God continues to embrace us in all things. In the beauty and the frustration.
This story of our genesis reminds us that we humans are not alone. We live in God’s world. Who has created and is creating. Who loves us fully. Who journeys with us through every single season of life. Who watches us grow and change and mature. Who cheers us on when the work of being human is so very hard. Who wants the best for us, always. Who accompanies us always and everywhere.
As it was in the beginning. Is now and ever shall be. Love - complicated, wondrous, overflowing love without end. Amen and amen.
NOTES:
[1] found in Love Poems from God by Daniel Ladinsky
[2] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=35
[3] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1462
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