Proper 5B’24
9 June 2024
Genesis 3.8-15
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
North Little Rock, Arkansas
The Rev. Carey Stone <+>
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” Amen.
– The Jesus Prayer, Desert Monastics, 4th Century
One of the first things I do when I’m leading a class is to hold a bible up (like this) and to ask them “what is this?” The first answer is usually “a bible.” I then ask yes, but what else, and they usually answer “a book!” I then say “no its not!” I never get tired of seeing their puzzled looks at my answer, then I quickly add “No, it’s a library!” Most protestant bibles contain 66 books with Anglican and Catholic bibles containing 73 books. Imagine going into a library and seeing how many sections there are: Language, Science, Physics, History, Poetry, Mathematics, Music. No one in their right mind would ever think that all of these books would be read and studied in the same way. Nor would they expect them to all fit together neatly into one narrative like a single huge novel with a beginning and middle and an ending. But this is exactly the way many have learned to read the bible and it has created some pretty wild and erroneous ideas, and interpretations. Imagine adding all the letter of a poem together and then attempting to apply it to a math formula, or using each letter as a numeric code.
The library of the bible contains these different forms of writings: Poetry, Parables, Prophecy, History and Narratives, Wisdom Literature, Apocalyptic Literature, Letters, Proverbs, Allegories, Gospels, and last but not least Myths. To use the word myths doesn’t mean that they aren’t true. In fact, the truths are so massive and far reaching they can’t be told literally but must be told using mythic stories.
As one scholar notes, “those who take this passage as an accurate historical account often follow the conclusion of the seventeenth-century archbishop James Ussher, who calculated the date of creation to be October 23, 4004 BCE.1” This makes the universe a little over 6,000 years old, which science has totally disproven. This is what happens when we fail to read a particular book of the bible in its proper type of literature. This is what led to the infamous Scopes trial of the last century and the Creation vs. Evolution controversy that continues to this day.
Today’s reading from the Old Testament book of Genesis, is an example of mythic literature. Genesis is a Greek word meaning, “origin, creation, and generation”2 This is the BIG story told in the first 11 chapters where we learn that God created the world and us, and that we didn’t create ourselves. We learn that God has commandments for a reason but we humans continually want to go our own way independently from God. We learn that God’s creation is all good but humans have been given freewill and that is what often gets us into trouble. It’s not trying to tell us about our first ancestors as it is trying to tell us something about ourselves, about the human predicament and condition, and what happens to us on a daily basis. In our lesson from Genesis, we are given a classic window on our broken relationship with God, ourselves, and each other.
The reading picks up the action of what happened immediately after both Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit from the wrong tree in the garden, and what do they do – they go and hide? Have you ever hidden from God after doing something that you believed to be wrong? We sin by choosing our own will over God’s will, then the shame and guilt hit us and we run and hide, if not physically then psychologically, and we are left with a feeling of being alienated from God. Adam and Eve were scared just like you and I can become, whenever violation and fear come between us and our relationship with God. God then calls Adam to account by asking if he had eaten the forbidden fruit. What happens next is classic: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” Uh God, it wasn’t me, it’s this woman you gave to me, she made me eat it. Wow in one sentence Adam shifts the blame away from himself, and blames not only Eve, but blames God for giving him Eve in the first place! Not to be outdone, Eve says: “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.” Oh yeah, a well-worn line – “the Devil made me do it!” God curses the serpent and described a permanent conflict that would exist between humans and snakes. “Humans will strike your head and you will strike their heels.” This story of origins shows us something about God, ourselves, and our fellow humans this is where the “blame game” got started!
Here are a few funny lines I found to illustrate the point:
A Husband and Wife, in marriage counseling, one says to the other: “You symbolize everything that is wrong with me!”
Two high school dropouts on skateboards, one says to the other: “My life has been totally messed up for years, but so far no one has stepped up to claim responsibility.”
A dog appears before a judge. The judge hands down their judgment as follows: “Gas was passed, you get the blame, that is the system.”
Genesis reveals the system that we are all born into and without God’s help our goose is cooked!
Through the mythic literature of Genesis, the system we are all caught in is revealed we are told of something that never actually happened, but actually happens to us all of the time. We are each tempted to live independently from God. “If we could eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil we would know right from wrong and be able to choose the right way all by ourselves – we wouldn’t really need God after all.”
Theologian and writer John Rollefson captured our struggles when he wrote, “There is something wrong, something screwy, about us human beings at our core—not necessarily bad or evil, but amiss. It is not that the Image of God (imago dei) has been erased from our DNA but that deep within ourselves we are not fully what we are meant to be and, what is more, we know it. We sense that there is an estrangement from our essential, created selves that is rooted in our alienation from our Maker and gets expressed in behaviors that alienate us from one another.3 Let us pray:
O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature:
Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your
Son, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever
and ever. Amen.
– Collect for the Second Sunday after Christmas Day, The Book of Common Prayer, p. 214
1 Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 3 David L. Bartlett & Barbara Brown Taylor
https://books.apple.com/us/book/feasting-on-the-word-year-b-volume-3/id1606792623
2 https://www.etymonline.com/word/-genesis
3 Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 3 David L. Bartlett & Barbara Brown Taylor
https://books.apple.com/us/book/feasting-on-the-word-year-b-volume-3/id1606792623