"Living Through It"
When we blow it, God is still there
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Text: Genesis 3:16-24
The great Adlai Stevenson, who was known for his humour and ability to coin a phrase, once said, “Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that at times he has to eat them.” Stevenson was talking in the context of politics about how easy it is for politicians to find themselves eating the words they have said at times. As I thought of that quote, I thought it might just apply to a former Old Testament professor of mine - a rather gritty and dour Scot, who nevertheless had a great sense of humour. He once said to us as a class, “There are times when you will encounter very difficult texts in the Bible, and you may want to avoid them.” Then, there was a pause and he looked over his glasses, and he said, “But you do so at your peril!”
Well, I couldn't help but think of his words rattling around my brain this week as I read the text from the Book of Genesis. Thinking of how this would be the first text of the official Church New Year - the Epiphany - and that this would be the opening salvo of the Word of God, I cringed and grimaced. I thought, “If only, O Lord, I could just avoid this text!” But we would be only the poorer if we did, for in it there is much that is inspirational and of guidance. The story is a simple one. It is the problem of evil; it is the problem of suffering. It speaks of the pain of a woman giving birth and suffering the pangs of that birth. It is about women having to listen and be obedient to their husbands. It is about husbands not listening to their wives. It is about farmers going out into the fields and growing only thistles and thorns. It is about people working hard and their labours coming to almost nothing, despite the sweat of their brows. It is about the brokenness of creation and the problems of human beings living in the world. It is the story of a problem that leads ultimately to our death and our destruction: “The dust shall return to the dust whence they came.” Not exactly a cheery passage, is it?
Yet, to understand its importance, you have to understand what precedes it. You see, the Book of Genesis tells the story of the creation of Adam and Eve. They arrive in the Garden of Eden, and it is bountiful, gracious and good. It is a place where you have ample food, where your labour isn't necessary, everything in creation is provided for you. You simply have to pick the fruit and move on. It is a place of harmony; it is a place where creation is gracious, where it gives of itself for people; it is a place of freedom, where relationships are good - it is a glorious place to be. There was one restriction placed on Adam and Eve when they were in Eden: They were not to eat from one tree in the garden. You see, they were given freedom but they weren't given complete independence. These terms are not synonymous in the Bible. Adam and Eve had complete freedom as long as they understood that they were dependent on the God who had made the garden, who created everything and made it good. But if they ate from this tree - the Tree of Good and Evil - then they would be aspiring to be God. In other words, God had only one message: Have everything that you want in the garden, but do not try and be me.
Adam and Eve, as we know the story, ate from the Tree of Good and Evil. They declared their independence from God and lost their freedom. The story goes that they were banished from Eden and forced to go East of Eden, just like Steinbeck's great novel. As a result of, there is guilt, sorrow, destruction and disharmony. They live in a place that no longer has the beauty, bounty, serenity and harmony of Eden. East of Eden is a dangerous place - a place of hurt; a place of pain.
This text from the Book of Genesis is a story of what happens after Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden of Eden. It describes what life is like East of Eden. Unfortunately, too many people take this passage too literally and they find problems and inconsistencies with it. This is an ancient passage. The narrative is designed to make a theological point: When human beings think that they are God, when they are disobedient to the will of God, they lose their freedom. They move into the disharmony and brokenness of the world. This passage contains a profound message about the state of human sin.
Like many of you, I am deeply, deeply distressed at the state of the world. Who of us cannot be horrified by the events in Gaza? Regardless of which side you are on, people are being killed and lives are being lost. An area that should be at peace is once again at war. Regardless of who is right, who is the first mover or who is the respondent, the fact of the matter is that the destruction of human life is a sign of human beings living East of Eden. When we look at the destruction of the world around of us, of the cosmos, of the earth, when we see the barren lands that should be fertile, the lands that should be cold becoming hot, animals becoming extinct, and people becoming ill because of toxic air and water, we realize the destruction that is brought about - it is life lived East of Eden. When we see the destruction of relationships, the animosity between people who should love one another, homes that are divided, societies broken along racial lines, societies of chaos, such as in the Congo and Zimbabwe - this is life lived East of Eden. When we look at people having to suffer the whims of economic destruction because of the immorality and the lack of ethics on the part of a few, we realize, do we not, the power of greed and what it does to people living East of Eden.
It is so easy, is it not, to point to areas of the world, problems and the subjugation of peoples and the earth - anyone can do that. But it is another thing to give an antidote, to point in a different way, to talk about a solution. Epiphany speaks of that solution. It speaks about God's redemptive work in the midst of humanity, of a way home, of a way back to Eden. Really, in a sense, the passage that gives us most hope in all of this is Genesis 4:1, because in giving birth to a son, Cain, Eve makes the first statement of faith anywhere in the Old Testament, the first verbal statement of faith. She says, “I have given birth to a man with the Lord's help.” Despite the fact that she is living East of Eden, in this terrible state of sin, depravity and disharmony, still she recognizes that even in the midst of this, God is at work and his redemptive purposes are being carried out. I often think, if only Eve had said something similar in the Garden of Eden before she left, how much less misery there would have been! Still, she made the confession of faith after she was out of Eden.
In some ways, she is all the greater for it. The fact is, my friends, that despite sin, brokenness, and the cosmological problems of that sin, God is still at work healing and redeeming. Many people experience life East of Eden. Who of us has not struggled with ourselves and with being human? Who of us has not been challenged by the ravages of illness or the problems of moral temptation? Who of us has not been smitten by the problems of the world around us or broken relationships? We have all experienced the alienation of Eden. When we do, it is a powerful thing. Sometimes, our response is to blame God for the fact that we are living East of Eden, to look to God for the source of that which is evil in the world, and to point to God as the author of our problems and our demise. Many people do that. Is this what the Biblical story is about? No! The Biblical story is about God's attempt to bring humanity back to Eden if only it would recognize him and let God be God. The story of the Wise Men coming to the manger is a story of people who came from the east, representing human wisdom, representing people outside of the Jewish covenant, recognizing God among us.
In many ways, I am struck by the fact that Mary gave birth to a child in what must have been a painful way, as childbirth is, but unlike Eve, she gave birth to a new Adam - a way back for humanity. A way for God to say, “If you will follow my Son, if you will be led by my Son, if you will see in my Son the truth, then you have the road back to Eden.” The new Adam! At times, I ponder what the Church's ministry is in a broken, vile and difficult world. I must confess that there are some mornings when I get up to write or preach a sermon and I am so burdened by what is going on in the world that I think, “What is our worship worth? What is the Word of God worth in a broken world?” And then, something like this passage dawns on me. What the world needs is the Word of God to remind us again of the way back to Eden, and it is God's way. The mistake of Adam and Eve was that they did not acknowledge God; they were not obedient to God, and did not listen to him. Despite that, God still comes and searches for us.
I was reading not long ago an inspirational story of a very famous Welshman, Griffith Jones. Anyone from Wales would know of the great Griffith Jones. In many ways, he was the founder of the modern Welsh people. He was someone my great-grandfather admired immensely and referred to on numerous occasions, my mother told me - my mother being Welsh. Griffith Jones was someone who grew up in 18th-century Wales at a time when the Welsh were languishing as a people. They were living in paganism, ignorance and darkness. While England went through a revolution adopted a faith, Wales was living in poverty and ignorance. Griffith Jones had the call of God. He was a Congregationalist minister, who eventually became an Anglican minister and took an Anglican parish, but no one knows why he did this. For 45 years, he stayed in this one parish and he was committed to one thing, and one thing only: He didn't want his people living in the darkness of East of Eden. The only way he felt they could come out of it was by teaching them to read and to write, not in English, because he felt that the ordinary person in the street did not use that, but in the lingua franca, the language of the people. He wanted them to learn Welsh.
Jones set up tiny schools, thousands of them. Over a quarter of a million people learned to read as a result of this. Wales went through a huge revival that went hand-in-hand with the people reading the Word of God. As they read the Word of God, they saw the freedom that God gives if you will cleave to him and the hope that their nation had. Most scholars argue that Griffith Jones was the precursor to the many other great leaders of the revival in Wales that came 100 years later. Had he not had a passion for his people to lift them up out of their darkness and their wallowing in the morass of East of Eden, Wales would never have become the modern society that it is today. I think the Christian message is to say to people, “That is the power of the Word of God!” It is the power of the Word of God to say to a broken world, “Here, look, there is One who created us, who wants something better for us, and who has given himself for us!”
There is something more. Despite the sin, Eve not only came to recognize God's strength, but also made a statement of faith. She said, “With the Lord's help this has happened.” This is the great Yahwistic Kerygma, the great statement of faith at the beginning of the Bible. Even though Eve gave birth to Cain, hardly a person you would call a mother's pride, she still recognized that God had done something great through her. Whatever this person of Eve may or may not have been historically, the fact of the matter is that Eve gave birth and recognized God as the source of that creative power. This was her ultimate statement of faith.
I keep asking myself, “If the leaders of the land understood that the people they lead are a gift from God, would they not treat them differently? If the people responsible for the state of the earth and the environment would understand the creative power of God and that Eden was created by the Almighty, would they not treat creation differently? If they looked at the people next to them in their closest relationships, treated them with respect and awe and understood that they are gifts from God, would they not treat those people differently?” I would hope that they would. The coming of the Christ Child into our midst at this time of the year reminds us to bow in all our facets of life, in all the brokenness of human existence. To get on our knees before the Lord Almighty and to recognize him first. This is surely at the core of social justice and the improvement of the human condition. This is at the core of the restoration of the broken earth. First, get on your knees before Almighty God.
In the 11th century, King Henry III of Bavaria was a famous king. But he got tired of running his country. He wanted to do something different, so he decided to lead a life of contemplation and prayer. He went to a local monastery and told the prior, “I would like to come and spend the rest of my days as a contemplative, a man of prayer, and give up my monarchy.”
The prior replied, “You do realize this is a difficult thing for a king to do, because first of all, you have to be obedient to me and through me, to be obedient to God. Are you willing to do that?”
The king said, “Yes, so I don't have to bother with my nation, I renounce all that power and I will do whatever you tell me to do as the voice of God.”
So the prior said, “Well, in that case, this is what I want you to do. Go back to the kingdom. I want you to be the king again, but this time, I want you to do it better and I want you to be committed to your people. I want you to put them first. That is what I am ordering you to do.”
The king was astonished. He had to be obedient. He had said he would, and now he had to go back and be the king that he was supposed to be all along.
Obedience means being what we were supposed to be all along. The only way that we can be that, and the only way back, is to follow God back to Eden. God has sent his Son and said, “Come with me, all you who are East of Eden, and I will bring you home.” Amen.