Genesis 3:1-21
3 Now the serpent was
more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall
not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman
said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; 3 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.’” 4 But
the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; 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.” 6 So when
the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the
eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its
fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he
ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they
knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made
loincloths for themselves.
8 They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze,
and the man [earth-creature] and his wife hid themselves from the presence of
the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But
the Lord God called to the man [earth-creature], and said to him,
“Where are you?” 10 He said, “I heard the sound of
you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” 11 He
said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which
I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The
woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I
ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.” 14 The Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because
you have done this, cursed are you among all animals
and
among all wild creatures;
upon your belly you shall go, and dust
you shall eat
all
the days of your life.
15 I will put enmity between you and
the woman,
and
between your offspring and hers;
he will strike your head, and you will
strike his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I
will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing;
in
pain you shall bring forth children,
yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”
17 And to the man [earth-creature] he said,
“Because
you have listened to the voice of your wife,
and
have eaten of the tree
about which I commanded you, ‘You
shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground [earth] because of you;
in
toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring
forth for you;
and
you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread
until you return to the ground [earth], for out of it you were taken;
you are dust, and to dust you shall
return.”
20 The man [earth-creature] named his wife Eve, because she was
the mother of all living. 21 And the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and for his
wife, and clothed them.
A
‘cutting’ of tree wisdom (Genny Tunbridge)
Adam and Eve’s fruit is never
named. Jewish scholars argued about its
identity: was it grapes, a fig, or a pomegranate? Some preferred not to
identify it, lest the fruit be blamed for humanity’s downfall. But in Western
Christian tradition it has long been depicted as an apple.
This is thanks to a pun on the Latin
words for apple – mālus – and evil – malus: the fruit of the tree
of knowledge of good and evil became an apple. It is interesting that this does
not seem to have harmed the reputation of the apple in our culture. Apple trees
have had close and positive associations with human civilisation, and seem to
be the very opposite of a symbol of sin or disconnection from nature and from
each other.
But perhaps the burden of sin is
carried by the poor crab apple – the original wild apple, whose name may derive
from its crabbed, twisted branches or its small, sour fruit. A short story,
‘Why crab apples are sour’, playfully imagines the history of these trees since
the Fall: cursed, embittered, ignored in favour of sweeter varieties – but
hopeful:
“‘Anything’s better than
nothing,’ the woman thought. She filled her pockets with fruit and went home to
make crab apple jelly… Her stove was
smoky, her pan dented and her spoon bent, yet as she stirred and skimmed she
was working a universal magic: the ancient art of bringing forth sweet out of
sour, of reclaiming and redeeming, making good out of malus.”[1]
Introduction to the theme (Al Barrett)
We’re in the third of the
four week’s of our ‘Creation season’, and for the next two weeks we’re thinking
about sin. This may be the point where I need to encourage you to keep
reading! We’ve spent two weeks focused mostly on the wonder, complexity and
beauty of the created world, its relationship with its Creator God, and the
place of us human beings within it all. But we’re all too aware that this is
only half the story. The other half of the story is that the world is also a
messy, dangerous place; that death is an inevitable part of reality, for every
living thing; and that we human beings have consistently, and tragically,
failed to live up to God’s calling and commands to ‘tend the earth’ and love
our neighbours, human and non-human alike.
This week’s bible
reading, from the 3rd chapter of Genesis, is a continuation of the
second story (in Genesis chapter 2) that we encountered two weeks ago. It’s a
story on which massive, weighty structures have been built over the centuries –
theological structures (within both Judaism and Christianity), but also beliefs
and practices that have spread much wider in our culture. And a lot of that
stuff, we need to acknowledge, has been unhealthy, often deadly, and just plain
wrong. We’ll tease out some of that in the other reflections. But we need to
start by trying to return to the story itself, as a story. It’s similar,
in many ways, to the ‘Just-So Stories’ of Rudyard Kipling, and the ‘Tinga-Tinga
Tales’ (based on African folk tales) that you can find on CBeebies (‘Why
Giraffe has a long neck’, ‘Why Lion roars’, etc.). It’s a story that you can
imagine elders telling to the younger members of the community in response to
their endless ‘Why?’ questions:
‘Why are snakes
deadly? Why is childbirth so painful? Why are relationships messy? Why is life /
farming / gardening often hard work? Why do we die?’
And the answers to these particular
‘Why?’ questions are told in the form of a story, about a garden, and a tree,
and a man, a woman and a very crafty snake. The story ends up with the man and
woman hiding from God, blaming each other (well, the man blames the woman and
the woman blames the snake) for what’s gone wrong, and being expelled from the
garden, to live the rest of their not-so-perfect-any-more lives in the harsh
world beyond.
What Christians have
often done with this story, over the centuries, is that they’ve focused in on
the little details of the story rather than the big picture that the story is
painting for us. They’ve argued about exactly what the particular ‘first sin’
was, that Adam and Eve committed (was it not being able to resist the tempting
fruit? or wanting to be like God? or doing what the snake told them to do?),
the effects of which (pain, hard work, death, etc) have somehow been passed
down all the generations since. And with tragic irony (considering the story
itself degenerates into a blame game that is quite clearly ridiculous, and that
the whole point of the story is that the way things are isn’t how things
are meant to be), Christians have used this story to justify a world where
women have been associated with ‘desire’, sin and earthiness, and men’s ‘rule’
(the literal meaning of the word patriarchy = ‘the rule of the father’)
has been seen as divinely commanded. And that way of seeing the world has done
untold damage to women, to men, and to our relationship with each other and the
earth itself.
But the story is in fact much
less about one particular sinful act and its consequences, and much more about
what Sin (maybe we should give it a capital S!) is. Remember back to our
early reflections on the roots of the tree, as what connected us to each
other, to the earth and all its creatures, to God, to our own self. Our
rootedness is what enables us to grow spiritually, we said – to grow in our
connectedness – which is the source of all other kinds of growth. Sin (with a
capital S) is another name for disconnection: from our fellow human
beings, from the earth and all its creatures, from God – and even from our own
selves. Sin is what prevents us from growing spiritually – prevents us from
growing and thriving in any way at all. Sin is not about earthiness, or
‘desire’ in itself (or indeed sex), but is at the root of our blame
games, and our hierarchical worldviews that enforce the ‘rule’ of some and the
subservience of others.
And so we know, from our
own bitter experience, as well as a glance at the way the world is (and always
has been), that Sin isn’t really about ‘bad people doing bad things’. Sin is a
tragic fact of life that infects every part of our world: from the most
intimate levels, to the planetary scale.
But Sin doesn’t have the
last word. While it can be destructive, it doesn’t destroy everything. While it
can paralyse us, it’s not all powerful. While it can affect our decisions and
distort our desires, we are not completely in its grip. The created world’s
goodness remains, endures. God’s faith, hope and love remain, endure…
·
The
end of this chapter in the story tells us of God lovingly clothing her
children, before journeying with them (as we’ve seen with Abraham and Sarah,
Hagar and Ishmael, and Jacob/Israel) way beyond the garden of beginnings.
·
The
very end of this whole Big Story (in Revelation 22, that we’ve already caught a
glimpse of, and that we’ll return to before too long) reminds us that the Tree
of Life still stands ahead of us, in a garden-city whose gates are always open,
waiting for us to enter – a place where we might once again bump into God in
the cool of the day.
·
Somewhere
between the beginning and the end of the Story, we catch a glimpse of that
garden-in-the-city, not as future promise, but as a place already present (it’s
early in the morning on a whole new ‘first day’), where a woman (Mary
Magdalene) does indeed bump into God and hear God speak her name.
We’re living in the
middle of the Story, somewhere between the beginning and the end. And here, and
now, the ‘go-between God’ of creativity and connection is always at work,
re-connecting what has become disconnected, inviting us into the garden,
inviting us into relationship and community, inviting us to join her in her
labour of love.
Reflection (Sally Nash)
Imagine a chubby little girl in a
primary school classroom and the teacher says “What is happening next is that
we are going to work out the average weight of the class, you will all come to
the front to be weighed and then I will show you how to work it out”. The little girl died inside and pretended to
be ill so she could hide from the rest of the class because she was ashamed of
her weight. It’s not only God we hide
from when we think of sin, it’s others too.
I sinned, I lied to get out of a situation but I would probably argue
now that I was sinned against too by a teacher who hadn’t done what we would
now call a risk assessment on an activity that was probably only devised to try
and make maths more interesting! This incident was the trigger that led me to
write a book on shame fifty years later!
What is shame? At its very simplest shame is feeling bad
about who we are (whereas guilt is feeling bad about what we have done). In my example if I had said something to the
teacher he might have felt guilt but I felt shame, I was a bad person because I
was the heaviest girl in the class. When we feel shame we might feel useless or
dirty or flawed, or weak or defective or inadequate… and many more words that
when we read them don’t sound like much fun!
We can also experience shame physically, blushing, stomach pains or body
language that shows we are hiding are some of the ways.
In Genesis 2.25 we read that Adam and
Eve were naked and not ashamed and by the end of our Bible passage today they
are feeling shame, apportioning blame, not taking responsibility and hiding
from God, and sin is the reason. At its
simplest we sin when we break God’s law and, in essence, I understand that to
be about loving God, loving our neighbour and loving ourselves (Luke 10.27). We all sin and we all do things which are
wrong in each of these three areas and sometimes we will feel shame about
them. This shame can then make us want
to hide from God because we wonder how on earth God could love someone as awful
as us. We also feel it about some of our
relationships and can get into self-loathing too. Shame can be dangerous to our wellbeing.
When we sin and experience shame then
we need to process and deal with it rather than let it linger and gnaw at our
inner selves. There may not always be a
quick fix, particularly if there is something we have felt shame about for a
long time (and many of us feel shame over things we should not feel shame
about, particularly when that was inflicted on us when we were children, often
by someone else). We also need to
recognize what triggers shame in us, so we can recognize it and try to move on
rather than being dragged down by it. For example, I can get very frustrated
supermarket shopping and end up snapping at the person on the checkout, that
causes me shame, it is not the sort of person I want to be, I would like to
appreciate everyone for their contribution to my life. Thus, when I do it, if I catch myself quickly
I can apologize to the person, or if not, can say sorry to God and pray for
patience, and thus have tried to become more the person I hope to be. I appreciate not all shame experiences are
such an everyday experience but it is getting me into better habits of
realising when I feel shame and wanting to do something about it.
The most important verse to me in
today’s passage is the final one – Genesis 3.21 which says that God clothes
them. They are having to live with the
consequences of their sin but the final act we read about is God showing them
compassion, forgiveness and mercy. Think
of how a good parent might act, they would tell a child off for something they
have done wrong but ensure at the end of the process that the child feels loved
and accepted and that their actions have not impacted the parent’s global perspective
of them as beloved. Sometimes we find it
hard to believe that this is how God feels towards us.
As I reflect on this passage, there
are several things I find it helpful to consider:
·
Adam
and Eve hid from God – that is what is known as today as a flight response, it
is a common reaction to conflict. When
we find ourselves hiding, we need to think about why, what caused it and
remember that God calls our name, God looks for us.
·
We
should take responsibility for what we do, not blame others.
·
Exclusion,
as happened to Adam and Eve, impacts our identity and relationships and causes
us shame, we need to be aware of the dangers of excluding others and causing
them to feel shame (with the exception of usual safeguarding issues).
·
The
boundaries and constraints there are on human behaviour – living God’s laws,
enable us to live together and experience the shalom that is possible for the
children of God.
I want to finish with a prayer for
those times when we are feeling shame because of others reactions to us written
for my book by the children’s author Gemma Willis:
When they tell me I’m not good enough
I am more because you say that I am
When they tell me I’ll never make it
I am more because you say I am
When they tell me I’m unwanted
I am more, because you say I am
When they tell me I’m dirty and worthless
I am more because you say I am
Help me Jesus to see everyone as you see them,
to be a bringer of worth, value and peace to those you love. Amen.
Reflection (David Walton)
The blame game seems so important to
us, we all play it at some time at some level.
Adam blames Eve, “The woman whom you gave to be with me…” So, is he at
another level blaming God who had created Eve?
The blame game can take the guilt away from us and put it firmly
somewhere else. If it is not our fault
perhaps it can be easier to live with the consequences. But all to easily pouring that guilt on
someone else can lead to feelings of revenge rather than justice. When I got my first car many years ago, I
actually read the insurance documents.
I’ve not been so vigilant of the detail since. The one thing I remember is that if I was
involved in an accident, I was not to admit any responsibility, even if it was
obvious that I was at fault. That might
have consequences if there were claims and litigation later. How many times has
something gone wrong in an institution, company, health service and a grieving
or hurting family simply want someone to apologise, but no apology is
forthcoming as that might be an admission of responsibility which might have
consequences if litigation follows.
There have been attempts to move on from that in recent years, but it
doesn’t always prove easy.
The 11th September marked
the nineteenth anniversary of the atrocities in New York and Washington DC and
the struggle on board UA Flight 93 on 11 September 2001. As the unforgettable
images of the Twin Towers falling are brought to mind once more, it is
particularly poignant this week to remind ourselves of what the Hebrew Bible has
to say about the fallen state of humanity in one of its most familiar and
evocative stories: Adam and Eve’s Fall.
It is a reminder of the depth of evil that does exist in our world and
how far people are prepared to go. On
one level the blame is easy, those who carried out the attack, those who
thought it up, organised and financed it.
But if we dig deeper in the causes and reasons people go to such
extremes, then blame becomes much more complicated and messier.
It does not take more than a day of
following the world’s news cycle to see how much truth is contained within the
story of Adam and Eve and our fallen state. With a very different style of
writing from the more liturgical creation account in the first chapter of
Genesis, the philosophical reflection by means of mythology on the nature of
humanity that we find here could easily be its own story. It does, however,
helpfully provide that reflection on the more formal creation account that
precedes it. That reflection is one of trying to create understanding of what
is: how we are who we are. It helps us grapple with the reality of living in a
world with such capacity for evil on the one hand and good on the other. It is
a story that challenges the way of thinking that sees a purely individualised sense
of moral responsibility to one in which we recognise the habits and poor
decisions of those who have gone before us that have shaped our world in large
part. It helps to focus the Hebrew people as they think back to the arc of
their own story to see how, right from the earliest times, there was a
struggle. That struggle initially, as the mythic story tells, revolves around
the temptation of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the original
case of forbidden fruit, the temptation is too much to bear. Eve and Adam
succumb. They do it together, we do not blame one more than the other, and
lament the historical use of this passage to demonise women. The struggle with
their decision continues throughout the story of the Hebrews. This is a crucial
part of the story that one feels has been rather misunderstood as it has been
adopted into wider theological paradigms such as Adam’s ‘original sin’. This
story is not just about a once and for all event, rather it is a story to help
us all understand that each day brings opportunities in which people make
decisions—some for the good, but sadly many that are not, most not with
malintent. The story of the Hebrews is
of continuous occasions of ‘fall’.
How often do we, when we have the
allure of a titbit of knowledge—something that we think might give us an
advantage over someone else or assist us in a particular situation—decide to
ignore the knowledge that it is but gossip and utilise it instead? But, and
this is where it goes wrong, while Adam and Eve ate of that fruit and thus
gained knowledge, their capacity to fully understand that knowledge was still
limited. Whereas God can hold it all together, we cannot. As Paul, much later,
would say, “we see things imperfectly as if through a cloudy mirror”. Without
that complete understanding things can go awry rapidly. This may not be out of
any particular desire to do evil, but rather that there are unforeseen
consequences to the decisions we make of which we may not be fully aware at the
time we make our decision. Nonetheless, the story is clear that the decisions
we do make will impact us, whether we fully understand those implications or
not. Such was the way for the Hebrews, such is the way for humanity today.
5th
Gospel (Ros
Sheppard)
As I think about the Genesis reading
this week and my own journey with God there are three things that spring to
mind. The first one is when I was working for NACRO (National Association for the Care and
Resettlement of Offenders) in the late 80’s, the second one is
when I was on a ministry exploration placement at Swinfen YOI (Young Offenders Institute) and the third one is bringing up my own children!
Working at NACRO involved helping
young people to develop computer skills and to apply for jobs. It was also
about working with adult colleagues to help shape the thinking, ethos, and
development of the centre we all worked at.
It struck me quite early on, that
even though the young folk and adults had ‘done wrong’ and some had served
time, that there was basically no difference between them and myself. I may not
have committed Grievous Bodily Harm or stolen large amounts of money, but I was
capable and had potential to engage in this type of wrongdoing and had done
wrong in other ways.
Working at Swinfen around 10 years
ago with the Chaplain, I got to know some of the inmates quite well. I joined
in the bible study groups and Sunday worship, and visited cells and had
conversations. I was struck by the sadness of some of the stories I heard and
the real difficulties these young men had experienced throughout their entire
lives right from the moment of being born.
It was hard not to feel that there
was a link between these awful life experiences through no fault of their own
and the crimes that they had gone on to commit. I felt that if I or anyone
else, had experienced and lived the lives of these young men, then who knows
whether this would have led into such crimes being committed. I reflected on
the words ‘there but for the grace of God go I (and many others)’.
Bringing up my own children: I
remember my mother telling me when I was quite young that ‘two wrongs do not
make a right’ and ‘treat others as you wish to be treated’. With my own
children I soon realised the importance of establishing what was acceptable
behaviour and what was not. I allowed them some freedom to work this out for
themselves. I always felt uncomfortable with punishment for the sake of it but
wanted to encourage and persuade them to think deeply about the result,
consequences and effect of their actions on other people and themselves, and
help them to work out their own ways of compensating for any wrong behaviour.
In the reading from Genesis, God
punishes the snake, the woman and the man. So, what is the place of punishment
when we think about sin and wrongdoing? I would like to offer some questions
for reflection and discussion:
·
How
do we deal with punishment as a society, as a community and as individuals? How
important is it to us?
·
Can
sin be dealt with through confession and repentance and forgiveness alone or is
punishment needed?
·
If
punishment is necessary, how should it be decided upon, and how should it be
implemented?
·
What
other possibilities might there be for responding to wrong-doing, reforming
wrong-doers and restoring relationships?
Questions for reflection / discussion
As I read / listened to the
readings and reflections for this week…
·
what
did I notice, or what particularly stood out for me?
·
what
did they make me wonder, or what questions am I pondering?
·
what
have they helped me realise?
·
is there anything I want to do or
change in the light of this week's topic?
Activities
/ conversation-starters
with young (and not-so-young!) people
TO DO:
·
play
a game of hide and seek – in some woodland, if possible!
TO REFLECT ON (alone or with people you love and trust):
·
Think
of the last time that you wanted to hide away (that wasn’t playing a game).
What had happened, that made you want to hide? How were you feeling? What
helped you come out of hiding? What helped you feel better?
·
When
you fall out with someone, what are the things that help restore that
relationship? What do you need them to do? What do you need to do? What do you
sometimes need other people (a ‘third party’) to help with?
·
Who do you know that isn’t popular, who might feel bad about
themselves? What can you do over the next week to help them?
TO PRAY:
·
With
someone you love and trust, you might want to pray together the prayer at the
end of Sally’s reflection, above.
[1]
‘Why crab apples are sour’ by Maria McCann, from Why Willows Weep:
Contemporary Tales from the Woods, edited by Tracy Chevalier and Simon
Prosser (IndieBooks, 2011).
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