Genesis 3:1-24

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "

"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"

He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"

The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."

Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
"Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring [a] and hers; he will crush [b] your head, and you will strike his heel."

To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."

To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of itall the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your browyou will eat your fooduntil you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;for dust you areand to dust you will return."

Adam [c] named his wife Eve, [d] because she would become the mother of all the living.

The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side [e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

Prayer of Illumination
Name above names,
Oh Ancient of Days
As we read from this your word
Help us not to be so caught up in our past
That we lose sight of your future.
Help us not to look so far ahead
That we fail to respond to you here before us.
And when we feel trapped by the reality of today,
Urge us towards Christ, your living word
Who was, is and always will be at work in
and among us.

In today’s well-known text from Genesis, Adam and Eve unexpectedly find themselves in trouble. Skimming Calvin’s 40 pages of commentary on this text, I noticed he spent a lot of time building an argument that Satan was in control of the snake that tempted Adam and Eve.

On a certain level, we have an expectation that it was Satan at work in the snake. There are a lot of expectations that we do bring to this story.

But in the story there is no mention of Satan or the Devil. Satan’s hidden role is a later expectation that was added.

If Satan isn’t the root of this temptation, then who is? Who can we blame for the eating of the apple?

But wait. There is no apple either in the text.

We often pray for new insight into old texts. But so often we bring so much to the text that simply isn’t there. So often, too, we expect so much more from the text than is there.

Four pages into the 40 pages of Calvin’s commentary on this chapter of Genesis, I started to daydream.

I imagined a police lineup. Adam and Eve are there, fig leaves and all, with the serpent curled up on a chair. A cartoon Devil, wearing a red cape and holding a pitchfork, is standing there with an innocent look and shrugged shoulders. Then the Devil turns into actor Kevin Spacey who utters this great quote from the movie “The Usual Suspects”:

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

Even unnamed there is an otherness to the power of evil that at times seems more than the sum of its individual parts. This quote is a good reminder that even when we choose not to personify evil in the guise of a devil, evil still lurks, and we should take evil seriously.

But if we can’t blame Satan, then who can we blame for what befell Adam and Eve?

What about Adam? He came first. He should have known better. But then he was doing what his wife told him.

What about God? That might get us a little farther. But what kind of creator would plant this tree so temptingly at the center of the garden?

Sure, God told them not to eat from the tree. But it’s like putting a “Do Not Pull” sign on a fire alarm. Eventually someone’s going to pull it.

Should we hold the Creator responsible? There are days that God is a tempting choice.

But what about Eve? Sure the serpent seems to talk her into it. And Adam is by her side. And not only does he fail to stop her, he eats right after her.

So can we hang this on Eve? Truth be told, many folks have, and some still do. Many have looked to this text to justify the subordination of women.

Take this quote for example:
“For thought the devil tempted Eve to sin, yet Eve seduced Adam. And as the son of Eve would not have brought death to our soul and body unless the sin had afterwards passed on to Adam, to which he was tempted by Eve, not by the devil, therefore she is more bitter than death.” (1)

This same book, making recent infamy in the “da Vinci Code,” is just a bloody example of proof texting at its worst. The witch’s hammer helped place the blame on Eve and her daughters.

Did Eve fall or was she pushed?

So much death and abuse have taken place by those looking to this text as a justification for treating women as being somewhat less than created in the image of God.

God’s intent for creation isn’t about subordination of men or women. Both are created in God’s image. Both are given blessings and responsibilities. Cutting this text loose from its patriarchal heritage helps cut loose the real gospel of this text.
Playing the blame game with stories like this not only misses the gospel of the scripture but can lead to dangerous conclusions.

There isn’t an explanation as to why God places the tree at the center of the garden. Nor is there a satisfactory answer to questions of why creation rebels from the freedom and responsibilities set before it.

The story does remind us, however, to take evil and sin seriously.
Just as looking to the creation story for scientific certainty leaves us lacking satisfactory answers, looking for a final answer to the problem of sin and evil in the world also leaves us unsatisfied.

The freedoms and responsibilities given in the first two chapters of Genesis are broken and abused. Adam and Eve are ejected from the Garden. They are all too aware they are dust, and to dust they will return.

We can connect with their brokenness.

Yet the final word doesn’t belong to our broken and dusty bodies. We are created by God in the image of God.

The same God who sang the world into existence, created all this with the word and called it Good speaks here, too. Even after the bites that imbibed the promises of death, the Creator continues to care for the created. Adam and Eve must leave the garden, but they leave clothed by God. They leave with the care of God.
Even in brokenness, God works to create wholeness. Even in dust, God breathes new life. And out of hopelessness and chaos, God bring hope.

Life is not without consequences. Some choices cannot be remade; some questions cannot be answered. And some knowledge cannot be unlearned.
But out of brokenness, God has, is and will weave a new wholeness in creation. As people shaped by the word and called to follow the way, we read this story, reminded that what was, what is and what shall be are all held by the redeeming work in Christ.

Here in Genesis we see the God who set the star shining in the sky is the one who shone among us. And is the one who even in our darkness brings all things into the light again.

The creating power of God is also in the redeeming grace of Christ and the renewing spirit among us.

We who are dust creatures, like Adam and Eve, find ourselves living west of the Garden. We still have freedom and responsibilities and choices and consequences.
Does our faith leave us naked and ashamed or clothed with the promise of God’s redeeming grace? We have no promises that all the divine answers will satisfy our human questions. Yet God’s vision for all of creation cannot be separated from the redeeming hope and the renewing spirit.

Therefore, even in our brokenness we are called to lives of hopeful creative renewal. We are called to live the best we can in the promises of God today. Not in an attempt to build the kingdom ourselves or to gain all knowledge and all answers, but in grateful obedience to God’s grace.

We who are created are called to live not on our terms, but on God’s terms. God’s call is not coercive, nor is life without consequences, even unexpected ones.
Yet the one who creates is also the one who casts out. But the one who judges is the one who also redeems.

And to that very same one who even now is redeeming lives as broken as ours, be all glory and honor, now and forever more. Amen.