Greetings, Earthling!

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Our text for today is an excerpt from a much longer narrative, of course; and in order to gain any understanding of it, we need to look at the whole picture.

It starts with the creation of the earth and the heavens. Then God formed a creature “from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” That is the English translation, but the term “man” here is misleading. At this point in the story, in the original language, there is no gender assigned to the creature. The word for ground or dust, from which the creature was formed, is adamah. From this dirt is formed the adam—spelled Adam, but it’s not a proper name. Adam from adamah.

So rather than man, the creature is literally the one made from the dirt. I’ve heard theologians call this adam “dust creature” or, the one I prefer, “earthling.” It wasn’t until God took a rib from the creature to make another creature that gender came into the picture.Then, instead of adam, we get the gendered words of ish for man and ishah for woman.

Why the mini-lesson on ancient Hebrew? Because this text is so problematic, we need to be clear on what is and isn’t there. Theologians have called this passage from Genesis a proverbial Pandora’s Box of theological interpretation.[1] It is one of the most over-interpreted passages of the whole Bible, influencing our ways of thinking about the world for centuries—millennia, even. Pretty hefty weight for one story to carry, especially one that is considered by most mainline scholars to be myth.

The story falls into the genre called “etiology,” which is a story about the beginning of things that helps to explain important questions about certain realities in life. This story explains some of the questions people of the era pondered: If life is so precious, why is childbirth so painful? Why do we have to work so hard to till the ground? And perhaps most important of all: Why are snakes so creepy? It is a story intended to help explain the way things already are, and instead it has been used to declare why things must be. So let’s clear out a few misperceptions.

It wasn’t an apple. We only know it was a fruit. The serpent wasn’t a snake. It only slithered on its belly as punishment, so presumably it had legs at the beginning, making it more likely a lizard than a snake. The serpent wasn’t Satan. The concept of a personified evil or devil is a much later development, with the help of Persian influence, and did not exist at the time this story was written. The story is not an explanation for the origin of evil. The Old Testament writers were not concerned with such questions. Plus, there is no talk of sin or “the fall.” And the original hearers of this story would not have presumed that the woman and man were innocent or perfect before eating the fruit.[2] So the use of this story as a theology of “original sin” is severely flawed.

Then there are all the unanswered questions: God said they would die if they ate the fruit, and they didn’t die. Did God lie? Why would knowledge be forbidden, anyway? Shouldn’t we applaud the humans for wanting knowledge? And didn’t God know that telling children not to do a particular thing is guaranteed to make them want to do it?

To add to the problem, the story has been used for eons to support the subjugation of women, to cast women as tempters and seductresses, and to blame women for all of the evil and suffering of the world. In recent years, some feminists have responded by claiming Eve as a hero who dared to risk everything for wisdom. Unfortunately, some of these same women also portray Adam as a wimp who did not think for himself, took what was given him without question, and then blamed the woman. This perspective has done little to resolve the conflict; it has only shifted the blaming from one sex to the other.

So what are we to make of this story? Once we strip it of the layers of misperception and misogyny we have placed upon it, what is left? Let’s look at what happens when they eat of the forbidden fruit.

The first result of their action was shame. They had been naked and unashamed, but one bite, and they had to hide. Shame is not our pure, natural state. Toddlers are not ashamed of running around naked. They don’t know they’re not supposed to. They don’t know the dimples in their thighs will later be cause for embarrassment. They don’t know that one day others will judge them by their appearance. Their natural state has no shame.

Now, I am not suggesting nudity as a spiritual practice. But I am recommending naked truth . . . honesty . . . and vulnerability. If we are to be free, we will have to take off the coat of respectability we insist on wearing. We have to remove the sweater of self-reliance we show to the world. We have to take off the gloves of perfectionism that keep us from touching what is real. Being honest about who we are—and are not—is so much better than being admired for who we pretend to be. Tears are not shameful. Fears are not disgraceful. There is no time limit on loneliness and no expiration date on grief.

Or maybe your shame is not about being human; maybe your shame is about being a particular human. You. Sure, you say, along with everyone else, “No matter who you are, you are welcome here,” but in your head you still hear the voice that says, “Go away! Nobody invited you!” You sing, with everyone else, “Jesus loves me, this I know,” but you still hear “Abomination!” echo through your soul. You pray, with everyone else, “Thy will be done,” but you cannot see that God’s will is for joy.

We do not have to hide in shame from God. And believe it or not, we do not have to hide from one another. Oh, sure, we are New Englanders and Congregationalists, neither of whom are prone to extravagant displays of self-revelation! (Which is a nice way of saying ‘We don’t talk about that sort of thing around here.’) But that does not mean we have to live in silent shame. We can learn to un-eat that poisonous fruit.

The other part of being naked is the vulnerability of mortality. According to the story, God warned that they would die if they ate the fruit. Some people say this means that previously humans had been immortal, and now they will have limited lifespans. But perhaps God’s warning wasn’t that they would die, but that they would know that they will die. It was an awareness of their mortality that changed them.

My dog does not know that he will one day die. He is not concerned with when he will die or how he will die because he does not know that he will die. So his little brain can focus on the important things in life, like welcoming me home after my long trip to the mailbox, and the fact that the golden retriever across the street taunts him.

But I know that I will die, and I know that those I love will die. So I am less free to throw my entire self into a welcome home embrace because I know the fear that one day they will not walk through the door. So I am tempted to hold myself back, to reserve a portion of my devotion, to protect a corner of my heart . . . so that there will always be some part of me untouched my pain. But it also means there will always be some part of me untouched by love.

The significance of this story is not that it tells about The Fall –  a fall from grace or a fall into sin. Instead it is a story about a falling-out, a loss of relationship, loss of communion with God.

Now, as then, relationships are fragile. Our disobedience, our willfulness, our pride–in short, our sin–all these lead to estrangement and alienation, from God and one another. Trust is broken and intimacy is destroyed. Take a moment to think of your standard sins—your ten commandments, your general prohibitions. Murder, stealing, coveting, adultery. What these behaviors have in common is they hurt one another. They injure relationship. They sever the bonds that unite us. We were created to be in relationship with God and with others.

Of course, not all of our alienation comes from disobedience. Sometimes we, like Eve, reach for that which we think is “Good for food and . . . a delight to the eyes and . . . is to be desired to make one wise.” Her motives were good . . . but the results were catastrophic. And sometimes ours are, too. We reach for something good, and it ends up costing us. We thought we were making a good choice, and it turned ever-so-wrong.

Now, I’m not saying that because something turned out to be hard, that it was a wrong choice. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it wasn’t right. I’m talking about the choices we make that cause alienation, even though we did the best we could at the time. Maybe we were simply trying to tell the truth. Maybe we were torn between two bad options and either way someone was going to get hurt.

Separation can come about for a variety of reasons, and when it does, it rips our hearts in two because it tears at the very fabric of our lives; it threatens who we were created to be.

And so we hide. Like Adam and Eve, we hide our nakedness, our vulnerability, our shame. We hide our pain from others, or we hide from one another’s pain. We even try to hide from ourselves, hide from our own awareness of our guilt, or our awareness of our deep longing.

And we try to hide from God. We hide behind our justifications and rationalizations. We hide behind dogma and doctrine and unanswerable questions. We hide behind our anger at God for not letting us stay in Eden.

But we did get to take one souvenir with us when we left: the ability to recognize the voice of God calling for us.

This is the heart of the story: the Parent searching for the lost children.
Adam . . . where are you?
Eve . . . where are you?
Do not be ashamed. Do not hide from my love. You are my beloved.

The voice of God is calling. Can you hear it? It is an echo from Eden.
Where are you?
Where are you?