3 Pentecost /Proper 5/Ordinary 10 Year B June 10, 2018
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Hutson
Genesis 3: 8-15 + 2 Cor. 4:13-5:1 + Mark 3: 20-35
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Sermons, like babies, are born in their own good time. It is almost impossible to force them into being. They are the result of the coming together of the Scripture text appointed for the day, the context of what’s happening in the world and what’s happening in the life of the congregation, the work of the preacher as she reads, and researches, and explores, and her willingness to wait for the movement of the Holy Spirit for the sermon to come together.
Sometimes, for this pastor, this happens as early as Wednesday, but that’s very rare. More frequently, it happens on Thursday or Friday. And often, much to this preacher’s dismay, it happens on Saturday.
I first read and sit with the texts on the Thursday that is ten days away from the day I will preach it. The lessons are like old friends I’ve not really listened to in awhile and we need to catch up. On Sunday afternoons, a week out, I begin to listen to them more intently as they offer more of themselves.
This week, this piece of the story in Genesis from the Garden of Eden was a curious companion. Despite having grown up with them, I’m not a fan of snakes, and yet, it seems that the snake is a major player in this story and not one I can discount. There were other curiosities that seemed to stand between the day of the week and any good start on the sermon.
I actually dreamed about preaching this sermon on Friday night. Only my office and this sanctuary were actually situated inside a prison. I couldn’t get to my office for my sermon manuscript or for my vestments because all of the many doors between the sanctuary and my office (in the dream) were locked and I couldn’t find the right key. So I had to wear jeans to worship and I had to tell you all that we were going to break into groups of 3 or 4 and discuss the texts as the sermon.
I really should watch what I eat before I go to bed some days.
But as I sat to write on Saturday morning, it felt important to me to tell you about that dream because I believe the Spirit was trying to get my attention. I think she was trying to talk to me about the things we keep locked up and the ways we imprison ourselves in life. And the ways we allow others to imprison us as well. And what Jesus has to say about that.
And so, back to that pesky snake in the grass.
The Creation story as we find it in Genesis is true, although it may or may not be historical. That is to say, it is true in that it teaches us about God, about life on this earth together, whether or not it happened in literally the way Genesis says it did. Because if we take the story literally then we have all sorts of problems. There are actually two Creation stories in Genesis, one in the first chapter and one in the second chapter. And they are different. In one story creation takes six days and in the other it takes only one. In one woman is created along with the man, but in the other woman is created later. So, if historical accuracy is really not what’s important in creation stories, what is?
In our reading today, the man and woman hear the sound of God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze. We know this time…between daylight and darkness. The Hebrew word used here for breeze is ruach. The same word used for spirit as we talked about on Pentecost. Breath of God. Wind of heaven. The man and woman hide themselves from God and God calls out for the man “Where are you?” We often receive this as threatening: WHERE ARE YOU? But what if it’s asked in love or concern: Where are you? Nothing in the text indicates that it is a threatening question.
Then the blame game begins. The man quickly tells God why he was hiding…he was naked and afraid. Then he blames the woman who notes that the serpent tricked her into eating the forbidden fruit (did you know that’s where we get that saying?)
I learned, growing up, that this story was about sin and an apple and the fall, but…we’ve heard nothing of that today, because it’s not in the story. Not even the apple, which is just an interesting detail. Making this a story of sin and a vengeful God is a construct of a time when Biblical scholars were more interested in scaring people into church and into submission.
What we absolutely do see in this story are the ways that the man and the woman separate themselves from God and from one another. They hide from God and then place the blame for their own mistakes and missteps and misdeeds onto the only other creatures around. Which gets them banished from the garden and sent out into the world to tend and work in it.
As I sat with this story this week, I wondered about God’s banishment of the man and woman. Did God respond in this way because they’d eaten the fruit of the tree? Or because they tried to hide it? Or because they blamed one another? Or all of the above? Because, let’s face it, this was a cascade of bad decisions, which is often what happens when people are afraid. Fearful people make terrible decisions.
Would the story have been different, say, if when God was strolling in the garden at the time of the evening breeze the man and woman had just walked along too and said something like ‘you know what? We totally messed up and ate that fruit.’ The woman might have said ‘I took it right off of the tree when I should have just walked away from the serpent and I ate it and I gave some to him’ and then the man might have also acknowledged his own culpability and then maybe we’d all still be living in a world that is whole and true and intended for our good pleasure.
Although I doubt it. I’ll bet somewhere along the way we would have found the capacity to blame one another for our own mistakes. We would have hidden behind the trees because of the nakedness of our sins.
Dear Ones, we are created for mutuality and common life. The inability of the man and woman in the garden to live into that was a separation from God as much as eating the forbidden fruit was. But this is not something we want to hear. We don’t ever want to be wrong and so we refuse to accept our own sinfulness and blame others. We hide in the hedges with our racism and our fear of the other and hope that God will just walk on by. We live in a country where Us First or America First threatens to trump the Gospel message of “who are you and how can we love and serve one another and Creation?”
And when God finds us cowering in the bushes, when God encounters us in the prisons we have made for ourselves, we blame someone else.
The Genesis accounts of creation do share this in common: that the earth and the creation was intended for our well being and that we were intended for its safe flourishing. And that we were intended to live in it together. Oh, how we have fallen short.
Living in mutuality is living in the upside down world of the Gospel. The world where we are called to consider the other first. It unlocks us and frees us from the prison of perfectionism, of insufficiency, and of strength and invites us all to a world where mutuality and vulnerability and wide welcome are the order of the day. I believe this was the point Jesus was making in the Gospel reading today. Who is my mother? Who is my family? He asks…and then he provides the answer…..”And looking around at everyone there, Jesus said “This is my Family! Anyone who does the will of God, that person is my sister, my brother, my mother.”
Beloved community, there is so much pain the world. So much fear. We are all hiding in prisons we have made, hoping they will keep the other out and our own brokenness hidden. I entreat you in each day to reach out to those you meet with love and grace and mercy. I beg you to offer that same love and grace and mercy to yourself. Because that’s why God is looking for us to offer us the same…..as we’re hiding away within ourselves….God is walking with God’s wide ruach….Spirit….evening breeze and saying: “Beloved child of mine….where are you?”
Thanks be to God and let the Church say…Amen.