Sermon, Sun 16 Sept: 'In Paradise'

This morning we began a journey into Genesis
[with an occasional dip into Exodus].
We'll be exploring some of the foundational stories of the faith, and meeting some key figures from now up until mid-Advent.
What can we learn from these stories?
What can we learn about our own faith by looking through the eyes of those who have walked the faith journey before us?

READINGS: Genesis 3:1-7; Genesis 3:8-24; Ezekiel 28:13-18

SERMON
Let’s pray: may the words of my mouth and the thoughts of all our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

The writer, Frank McCourt – he of ‘Angela’s Ashes’ fame –
wrote another book telling stories from his time as an English teacher
in a state school on Staten Island, in New York.
Like many teachers, he would set homework.
And, like many teachers, McCourt would be met with a note the following day,
apparently written by a parent, giving a reason why the homework hadn’t been done:
The good, old-fashioned excuse note, in shuggly writing,
suggesting that the parent probably hadn’t written the thing at all.
Over time, McCourt began to save the notes.
Why?
Simply: he was impressed with just how well written they were,
and with the level of imagination and creativity involved in composing them –
in fact, they were better pieces of work than anything that the students would
tend to write in the classroom itself.
Here are a few examples – and they go well beyond the usual
‘the dog ate my homework’ of my childhood:

"The stove caught fire and the wallpaper went up and the fire department 
kept us out of the house all night."

"Arnold doesn't have his work today because he was getting off the train yesterday and the 
door closed on his school bag and the train took it away. 
He yelled to the conductor who said very vulgar things as the train drove away.  
Something should be done."

"A man died in the bathtub upstairs and it overflowed and messed up 
all Roberta's homework on the table."

"Her big brother got mad at her and threw her essay out the window and it flew away all over 
Staten Island which is not a good thing because people will read it and get the wrong 
impression unless they read the ending which explains everything."

McCourt wondered at the effort and the ingenuity of the many different
excuse notes he’d receive –
often thinking that the actual homework itself probably could have been completed
in less time than it took to write the actual excuse note.
However, given the quality of work he’d seen in these notes, one day in class,
he decided to take a different tack in teaching method:
he challenged his students to write an actual excuse note, and they had a choice.
This note was not be for themselves, but for a rather well known pair.
On the board, McCourt wrote up the options:
‘An excuse note for Adam’
or
‘An excuse note for Eve’
The usually boisterous class grew quiet, as the students settled down to their unusual task.
McCourt describes the scene:
"The heads went down.  
Pens raced across paper.  
They could do this with one hand tied behind their backs.... 
The bell rang, and for the first time in my three and a half years of teaching, 
I saw high school students so immersed they 
had to be urged out of the room by friends hungry for lunch."
That assignment prompted the most imaginative and expressive writing
he had ever seen from his students. 
Apparently, they came up with some brilliant excuses for Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve – or, as I think of them in the context of our story from
Genesis this morning: ‘A’ and ‘E’ –
‘Another Excuse’ or:
‘Accident and Emergency’, if you like,
because, by getting distracted from listening to God’s voice, they certainly end up
as casualties of their own bad choices.

This story was originally told, and shared around campfires,
as a way of explaining things such as:
why snakes – seen in other cultures such as Egypt as creatures of wisdom to be revered –
slither on their bellies
and why they should be crushed underfoot:
snakes aren’t wise, they’re dangerous.
There are other matters too, that are covered within the story:
what’s the reason for the all the grind and hard work of farming -
why is it so much easier to harvest stones and thistles at times, than it is to harvest crops?
Or, why do sheep seem to have a built-in death wish?
Or/ Why is childbirth such a painful process?
The story helps its listeners understand just why life, at times, can be all struggle and toil:
choices have consequences.

In the story, God has caused the universe, the world,
all manner of living things,
to come into being.
And, at the end of the second of the Creation stories, we see humans:
a man, a woman – Adam and Eve.
They dwell within a beautiful garden,
at one, in harmony, with all the creatures who also live there.
It is quite simply, a wonderful paradise.
They have a close connection with God –
they are companions, and God speaks with them.
They are companions for each other:
God recognising that it is not good for humans to be alone.
They explore this paradise –
God showing and sharing with them so many wonders –
‘Let me show you the waterfall...'
'Come and see this purple-headed mountain range...'
Check out these – what did you name them again, Adam? Flamingos, yes, yes, that’s right - 
check out this enormous flock of flamingos on the sand bank over there!'
'Isn’t this all good?’
They have been given so, so much.
A glorious, living, jewel of a place to enjoy –
a demonstration of God’s overflowing generosity

In among all the treasures for them to delight in, places to see, things to do,
there’s just one thing they’re asked not to do:
God shows them two trees –
the tree of life,
and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
‘Don’t eat the fruit from that second one – that tree brings death, not life,’ says God.

But, there’s another voice in the garden –
a voice that begins to insinuate itself into the thinking of the humans.
And there, at the foot of that one forbidden tree,
Eve and the snake have a conversation,
with Adam standing there watching and listening.
And as they listen to the voice of the snake,
God’s voice... is tuned out.
‘Eat it.’
‘We can’t.’
‘Go on, ...you’ll be fine.’
And there, with all the wonders of Paradise available to them –
the only thing they can now see is the one thing that’s forbidden.
‘Why can’t we?’
‘Why is God keeping this thing from us?’
...‘If we ate it... we could be like God.’
A choice is made to the sound of a crunchy bite.
Another choice is made – another bite.
And life as they’ve known it is changed forever.
Guilt.
Shame.
From being completely open and unafraid –
imagine that: never having been afraid –
they move to fear and the need to conceal.
They begin the great cover up –
first with fig leaves,
then with excuses.

God comes searching for them:
they hide,
no longer comfortable in his presence.
God finds them:
tries to get them to be truly themselves once more – to tell him the story of what happened.
But, instead, there are deflections.
They struggle to be real with God.

Over many centuries, the story of what happened in the Garden
has been grist to the mill for many a theologian and biblical scholar.
In the 2nd century, Tertullian used it to explain why women were bad news –
why women couldn’t be trusted to make decisions, or have power of any kind.
After all, it was Eve who ate the fruit and caused separation from God.
Tertullian claimed that ‘women were the Devil’s gateway’ –
a bad lot, needing controlled.
His philosophy set in train century upon century of policies and attitudes,
built around the restriction and control of women:
we still deal with the consequences of some of his teaching even today.
In the 5th century, the theologian, Augustine,
knit together the story of what happened in the Garden with sexual desire...
And set in train Western society’s hang up’s around the body and desire,
again for centuries to come.
It’s from Augustine that we get the term ‘Original Sin’ –
the first sin, from which  sin came into the world.
But just what was the sin?
Was it about Adam not controlling his woman?
Was it all about sexual awakening?
Because, I wonder...
is this story actually about something else?

In the gospels, we often hear Jesus talking about ‘life in all its fullness.’
That life comes about through following in faith – listening to the voice of God;
being open, being real.
That is how we were designed to be, so much so,
that God could walk alongside those first humans and talk with them in a Garden –
and they were unafraid:
they felt no compulsion to hide anything from God.
So, here’s another way of interpreting the story:
Is the story of the fall actually a story about inauthenticity –
of not being real?
Of covering up,
not being open,
not being transparent,
of hiding yourself from God.
And when you start to do that,
guilt kicks in;
things begin to play on your mind:
you stop trusting God;
you begin to fear what God might do...
and when that happens, you make excuses.

God, already knowing what they’d done – for God knows all things –
gives them the opportunity to tell him what happened, to confess.
And
they
just
can’t.
Instead of ‘the dog ate my homework’,
we have ‘the snake made me do it,’
and then ‘the woman made me do it.’
Perhaps the sin in the Garden was not being able to be real, and
not owning up to their choices.
Because Adam and Eve refuse to take any responsibility
for the choice that each of them made –
neither was forced into eating the fruit:
the snake didn’t have Eve in a vice-like grip,
nor did Eve compel Adam forcibly.
They simply chose to listen to an alternative viewpoint, and made their decision.
And there’s this great ‘what if’ that I wonder about...
What if, instead of trying to cover up,
instead of hiding behind fig leaves and excuses,
the two of them had come clean?
Had simply, sorrowfully, said:
‘Okay, we did this. 
We know you didn’t want us to.
And yet, we still did it.
We shouldn’t have.
We took our focus off you – stopped listening to your voice.
We made a choice, and it was wrong.
And now, nothing will ever really be the same.
We are so very sorry.’
And, what if, God, hearing them bare their souls and sorrow, in infinite mercy
said ‘forgiven.’ 
Had said, ‘you are loved.’
Had said, ‘let us always be real: let there be nothing but the naked truth between us.’
Had said, ‘hey, let’s go look at this fabulous waterfall – when the light shines through 
the water’s mist, you can see all sorts of beautiful colours dancing together.’
And so, with all things out in the open,
with lesson learned, the relationship iss restored – fixed –
for nothing iss coming between them anymore.
What if... hmm?
But the choice they made had so clouded their mind,
that they had lost the sense of the mind of God –
and so, experience a new sensation: they were afraid.
And with the fear, had come the forgetting:
they forgot about God’s infinite capacity for forgiveness and mercy.

To conceal, or to be real?
I think that is a lesson we can take from this story of eating fruit in the Garden of Eden.
All God has ever wanted from us,
as his creatures,
as those created in his image,
is to be real.
God loves us,
wants to be in a relationship with us;
wants to be involved in our lives,
and us with him;
to walk companionably through the world
sharing its delights,
to heal hurts and reconcile relationships;
and, to share God’s message about fullness of life –
of being real with others and real with God.
In any relationship, it is healthy, and good to clear the air, and to own up to our choices.
And, it’s why, as God’s community, in relationship with him, that each week in worship,
we have a time of confession in our prayers:
a time to uncover and hand over the junk, and so stand before God unashamed once more.

In the Garden, there were two trees:
the tree of of life,
and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – this second, a tree that would bring death.
A choice was made by those first humans.
And, in response, God made the choice that death would not be the end –
and sent us Jesus,
who reminded us what an authentic life looked like;
who, in his death upon a different tree, reversed that first human choice for all eternity –
bringing us new life, resurrection, and restoration to fullness of life.
It is the greatest gift:
to break out of the cycle of death and separation from God
and to choose to be real,
to choose life –
to open ourselves fully to God:
unafraid, unashamed....
For, in trusting in God’s overflowing love and mercy, we need never make excuses.
Amen.