Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." 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'?" The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; 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.'" But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." 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. 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.
If you had to summarize each of today’s readings with a single word what would you choose? The Gospel tells a story of temptation. The letter to the Romans speaks of sin. But what about the tale from Genesis? What word would summarize that fable? Throughout history many words have been used to summarize that story: Shame, Original Sin, Satan. All those words miss the point.
Throughout history many people, usually men, have used this story to point that a woman, Eve, is the cause of all human pain and struggle. All those men miss the point. Let’s try to rethink the Genesis story and follow the contours of its complex vision of God and humanity.
Whenever you see pictures of this story, Eve and Adam are usually depicted as adults. But what if you picture them as teenagers, young people learning about themselves and how to relate to one another, God and the world. Most of you can remember the challenges you faced as teens. You were trying to make sense of how to balance our desire for independence against the rules laid down by our parents. You were struggling to learn how to navigate in a complex world and take on the role of adults in that world. You were feeling the surge of sexual energy and the attraction of desire and were experimenting with how to manage that energy. What if you place the story of Eve and Adam in the context of teenagers learning their place in the world and left out the shadows of sin and shame and guilt which church people have laid on our original parents?
Let’s start with the serpent. While many of us see the devil in the snake, nowhere does the bible call the reptile anything other than a talking snake, a crafty snake, like you might find in other ancient world tales. The snake functions as a trickster, the one who transforms situations and overturns the status quo. Something needs to change in paradise, the land of innocence, in order for the teenaged Eve and Adam to become adults. The snake begins that transformation, a change any teenager makes in discovering their authority as a moral agent, an authority they assigned to their parents, a transformation which begins by stepping outside the boundaries established by God.
But let’s take a closer look at our first parents. Like most teenagers, this first pair will overstep themselves and mess up some things. Throughout the story, Eve is depicted as the inquisitive one and Adam the one who follows Eve’s lead. Did the serpent sense that Eve was questioning the order God established when it tells Eve: God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Listen carefully to Eve’s motivation for eating the fruit: 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. The Tree was to be desired to make her wise. Eve is on a journey to deeper wisdom, to learn the difference between good and evil, and she takes the next step on that journey.
God was correct in saying that if Eve and Adam ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they would die. They die to their childlike innocence and enter into the wisdom of adults.
You would be right to assume that Eve and Adam discover themselves as sexual persons by eating the fruit. They learn the lesson we learn as children, that social conventions require us to wear clothing and that we shed our clothing to express our sexuality with one other.
Perhaps this reinterpretation of the story of the Garden may help you in your feelings about sin and shame and guilt. Some of the sin which we commit comes as a part of our journey into wisdom, our stumbling on the path as we mature into adulthood. Our society layers feelings of shame and guilt especially on women whenever a woman expresses her sexuality or acts on her desire. That shame and guilt can also come to us if we fail to comply with a heterosexual norm for our sexual expression.
Perhaps we can rethink the ways our culture has layered shame and guilt on our hearts and come to a different way of understanding the paths we took on our journey of wisdom. Perhaps we can help the young people in our lives take that journey as they reframe the boundaries of authority, as they discover inner powers of discipline, as they discover themselves as sexual persons, as they take the steps our first parents did in the garden in discovering the path of wisdom on which they should walk. Perhaps we can help the teenager in each of us to resolve the conflicts we encountered on our journey to adulthood and discover the deeper wisdom we all desire.
God offers us during this season of Lent an opportunity to purify our hearts, to restore us to a greater wholeness, to heal what is broken in us. May each of us open our hearts to that creative work of the Holy Spirit and discover that inner restoration we so desire.