Sunday February 22th, 2026 Worship

I have to admit that I really enjoy watching people try to debate Scripture with pastors. Not because I believe that pastors can know all things on the topic and are never wrong, because this certainly isn’t the case, but because it is interesting to see the ways that people will try to remove Scripture from its context in order to make a point. This is often the case with the writings of Paul, when people tell me that I should be seen and not heard or that my call is invalid because women can’t be pastors, and the Levitical laws regarding homosexuality. If you want to make your case on that, by all means, go ahead, but then please do not approach me with it while you wear mixed fabric clothes or after you have enjoyed eating shellfish or pork! The topic makes me a little bit sassy…oops.
In many ways, I think that misunderstanding what God is saying to us is a part of human nature, and part of why we are constantly in relationship with God, asking for God to continue teaching and guiding us. I mean, just look at how people had a hard time understanding Jesus when he was standing in front of them doing his teaching! Some might say that this came about when Eve ate the fruit she wasn’t supposed to in the Garden of Eden, to which I will remind you that Adam ate too and didn’t seem to protest, so please stop placing all of the blame on Eve, but I want to look at what is happening in this conversation between the serpent and Eve more closely.
Something that I hadn’t really noticed until I sat down to study the Scripture reading this week is the way that Eve, before being told anything else about it by the serpent, is already misremembering what God had told them. First, we are told: “And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die’” (Genesis 2: 16-17). It is important to note that this instruction from God comes to the man, later to be named Adam, before the woman is even created. Which means that the teaching is already being misconstrued as it is passed on. It’s like the very first game of telephone!
So, the woman, having been taught by the man, is now being questioned by the serpent, and the initial question is actually quite interesting because the serpent is testing her understanding of what God said. It doesn’t begin with an immediate contradiction to what she has been taught. “The serpent said to the woman, ‘Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die’” (Genesis 3: 1b-3). Already, with just the first two people, we have now added that you shouldn’t even touch the fruit in the middle of the garden!
If this is just what is happening with two people, one of who received the instruction directly from God, how much more challenging is it for us today thousands of years later, when we have misremembered, mistranslated, and continue to pass on our teachings. Unlike this misunderstanding in the beginning, what is even more frustrating today is the way that people are intentionally misconstruing the words of Scripture to fit the agenda that they have or to prove their own point. We see this all the time in the world, as people try to do mental gymnastics to fit Scripture into our lives in such a way that will require no effort or change from us or that can be used for the condemnation of others. It’s amazing how so many religious leaders, especially, have managed to make it so that God is always in agreement with them; whatever special power they got to allow that, I certainly didn’t get at my ordination!
Unlike the conversation that we are seeing in the story of the Garden today, trying to navigate an understanding our of faith in the world feels bit more like Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. This too is an interesting story to look at because it is this back and forth between the devil and Jesus where the words of God are being used on both sides. The devil is not only tempting Jesus, as we so often call this story today, but is also trying to draw Jesus into proving his identity as the Son of God. If you really are this, then you will do that because God said this. It’s a classic formula that gets drawn into our world today when people trying to force others to demonstrate that they follow the “correct” kind of Christianity. It’s important to note that this is never about God trying to force us to prove our faith in order to be called worthy, but outside people and forces who are trying to make us doubt that we really are the Beloved of God. These interactions try to plant the seed of doubt that we could ever be worthy enough in the eyes of God, unless we do x,y, or z, despite what God has already promised us since the beginning, and often it is about trying to coerce us to follow their understanding of Christianity or about proving how they are more righteous than us. Despite the words of God being at the center, God has largely been removed from the equation, replaced instead by human ego.
In our world today, it may not always follow this formula, but we do see it all the time when people add to, subtract from, or otherwise pull Scripture out of its context in order to prove their point. I just saw an entire argument on the internet about the halftime show from the Superbowl, in which people said that if the Bible was written in English, then the halftime show should also be in English, to which many responded that the Bible wasn’t originally written in English. It continued to circle around as people were trying to debate whether a translation counted as being written in that language, but either way, it loses sight of the fact that the Bible has been translated into hundreds of languages, all of which are interpretations of the original Scripture since none can fully capture the meaning that was in the original languages. This argument got nowhere, as it devolved into people just more firmly trying to say their point, but I think it really highlights how some of these discussions about what God says still get brought into our world today. It’s something that has been a challenge since the beginning, but, is again, why we gather to study Scripture together and discuss what is being said. It’s why we pray for God’s continual guidance as we understand not just what God was saying back then, but what God is still saying to us now.
How we understand what God is saying to us does in fact have an impact on how we interact with the world around us. To go back to the story of the woman in Genesis, it changes how she interacts with the trees and fruit around her if she thinks she can’t eat of the fruit, or if she can’t eat it or even touch it, and from there, you could imagine how it would change if she understood it to be that she couldn’t even look at it. This discussion about fruit can seem rather trivial, but, in fact, has a big impact on how these two humans live in their surroundings, and the same can be said about the things we continue to wrestle with today.
Since God spoke to humans in the beginning, there have been questions about what it all means for us. And, while it can be easy to say that we then shouldn’t ask questions about what God is saying, after all, look at serpent and the devil, I think that misses the point. I don’t think that God says we can’t wrestle with what is said and try to make sense of it in our own lives, but I think we are called to question the motive behind our asking of these questions to ourselves or others. Is it done to try to prove we are correct or to find a loophole to allow us to keep living in a way that allows us to cause harm to those around us and push the blame onto others, or, are we asking these questions because we want to more faithfully follow in the way God is teaching? We can see, since the beginning, that we haven’t been able to get it perfect, but hopefully that frees us in our faith, to ask God to help and guide us, as we take the next step forward in our faith, trusting in the promises of God’s grace and mercy when we stumble too. After all, we are not God, and often we need that reminder too, as we seek to live humbly and act faithfully. Because, no matter what others may try to convince us of, we will always be called Beloved of God, no entrance exam required.