Adam and Eve: A Story About All of Us

From a sermon preached by Jack Cabaness on September 11, 2016.

Katonah Presbyterian Church

Where was the Garden of Eden? Was it somewhere in Asia, somewhere near the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers?

Would you be surprised if I told you that it could found at 3207 Donegal Road in El Paso, Texas? And the action took place not in 4004 BC, but sometime in the Fall of 1979. 

I was ten years old, almost eleven. My parents had decided that I was old enough to be left at home by myself for a couple of hours. Those two hours proved to be just enough time for a scientific experiment to go horribly wrong. I was curious to find out just how flammable a single sheet of tissue could be, and the sheet of tissue immediately became a small fireball. I dropped it at once, and successfully stomped out the would-be fire, but the carpet had been singed. I wondered how on earth I was going to explain all of this to my parents. Here, they had trusted me to stay at home by myself, and I had given credence to the stereotype of unsupervised children playing with fire. 

I was embarrassed and ashamed. I went to my bedroom and decided that I could pretend I had fallen asleep while reading a book. When my parents came home, I didn’t greet them, and I continued to pretend to be asleep. And then I could hear my mother’s voice calling, “Jack, where are you?”

You see, this ancient story is a story about all of us. The word Adam in Hebrew is A-dam, meaning the man, or the human. The word Eve means mother of the living. This is an archetypal story about what it means to be human; this is a story about you and me.

The traditional Christian interpretation of this story, going back to St. Augustine in the early 5^th century, is that it’s a story about how sin came into the world. In Augustine’s view, Adam and Eve’s sin was very grave indeed. They only had to remember one thing. ONE THING! Don’t eat from that particular tree. And they blew it! During that time in the garden there was only one possible way in which Adam and Eve could sin, and wouldn’t you know it, they managed to do it anyway! That was what St. Augustine found utterly inexcusable!

The traditional Jewish interpretation is that this is a story not so much about how sin came into the world as it is a story about human self-consciousness. Once upon a time we were like children, naked but unashamed, trusting and unafraid. We were like a two-year-old after his bath, romping gleefully through the living room, free of that unnatural restraint called clothing. In the beginning, says Genesis, we were unself-conscious, and we had the trusting simplicity of children.

But we quickly became aware of limits. You are free to enjoy the garden—only stay away from that tree over there. As one commentator explains, the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is a tree of limits, for what makes us different from God is that we don’t always know what is good, whereas God does. Because we’re not God, we live with limits. (from a sermon by Will Willimon preached at the Duke University Chapel, October 9, 1988)

Life itself has its limits. We don’t know everything. We will die someday. And one of the things that we don’t know is when we will die. Once we were naked and unashamed, but then we became naked and afraid, and we realized that we were way more vulnerable than we’d ever care to admit.

I find myself holding on to both Augustine’s view of the story and to the traditional Jewish view.

What I learn from St. Augustine’s reading of the story is that choices have consequences, and sometimes those consequences are tragic:

--Leaving a loaded gun where a four-year-old can find it.

--Drinking and driving.

--Words spoken in anger that destroy a relationship.

--Realizing how a controversy about building a pipeline through Native American burial grounds in North Dakota evokes generational sins of systemic racism and cruelty.

--or how this 15^th anniversary of 9/11 reminds us once again of the shocking human capacity to be inhuman.

These are some of the many things that Augustine helps me remember.

What I learn from the traditional Jewish interpretation is that there are times in life when, on the surface, everything seems to be going well. I’m sitting on a couch in my living room, very relaxed, and, suddenly, out of nowhere, I catch a glimpse of my own mortality, and once again, I am naked and afraid.

Earlier this summer, I quoted from a Facebook post by author Anne Lamott, which she wrote immediately after the tragic shootings in Dallas and the attack in Nice, France. She wrote,

Life has always been this scary here, and we have always been as vulnerable as kittens. Plagues and Visigoths, snakes and schizophrenia;

Cain is still killing Abel and nature means that everyone dies.

I hate this. It's too horrible for words. When my son was seven and found out that he and I would not die at the exact same second, he said, crying,

"If I had known this, I wouldn't have agreed to be born."

Perhaps you’ve felt that way at times, too. Whether you find Augustine or the traditional Jewish view more persuasive, there are times when we all find ourselves naked and afraid.

But the good news for all of us who are naked and afraid is that there is a voice that calls out to us and asks, “Where are you?” It’s the same voice that cried out in the very beginning, “Let there be light,” and then there was light. It’s the same voice that cried out, let there be mountains and oceans, aardvarks and elephants, and then there were mountains and oceans and elephants and aardvarks.

Every time the voice cried out, creation responded. Thus, when the voice cries out to us, “Where are you?”, there is a hopeful expectation on God’s part that we will respond.

Close your eyes just for a minute. Close your eyes, and listen. Listen for the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze. Can you hear that sound?

Now, I’d like you to listen for a voice. Listen for a voice that asks, imploringly, “Where are you?”

What tone of voice do you hear?

Is it a menacing voice of someone determined to do you harm, or is it the voice of a loving mother looking for her son who’s hiding in his bedroom?

Do you hear a loving voice calling your name?

Just as the creation itself was called for by the voice of God, we, too, have a calling to respond.

In the words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks,

The responsible life is a life that responds. The Hebrew word for responsibility comes from the Hebrew word for other. God is that great Other, calling us to use our God-given freedom to make the world more like the world that ought to be. (Jonathan Sacks, Lessons in Leadership: Weekly Readings from the Jewish Bible)

In that same Facebook post that grieved a summer of violence, Anne Lamott offered several practical ways for each of us to take responsibility. She wrote,

I know that we MUST respond. We must respond with a show of force equal to the violence and tragedies, with love force. Mercy force. Un-negotiated compassion force. Crazy care-giving to the poor and suffering, including ourselves. Patience with a deeply irritating provocative mother. Two dollar bills to the extremely annoying guy at the intersection who you think maybe could be working, or is going to spend your money on beer. Jesus didn't ask the blind man what he was going to look at after He restored the man's sight. He just gave hope and sight; He just healed. To whom can you give hope and sight today? What about to me, and disappointing old you? Radical self-care: healthy food, patience and a friendly tone of voice.

As I read Anne’s words again, it occurs to me that God models this kind of care for us.

A loving voice calls out to Adam and Eve, where are you? And when God learns that Adam and Eve have fashioned for themselves clothing out of fig leaves, which must have had the same comfort level as medium grade sandpaper, what does God do? God fashions for Adam and Eve clothing out of animal skins. Can you see the progression? From fig leaves to fur coats.

God’s grace wins out. Or, as Anne Lamott says, “Grace always bats last.”

Today is Homecoming Sunday in our congregation, and my prayer is that you can hear the healing note as the evening breeze carries God’s question, “Where are you?”

My answer is that I am here, with other disciples of Jesus, who are doing their best to follow. I come here not because I have everything together, but because I do not have everything together, and I am more vulnerable than I’d care to admit. And I’m painfully aware that I haven’t always made the best choices.

But I am here because I’ve heard that loving voice calling out to me, inviting me to become a person of love and responsibility, working alongside you to make this a more just and gracious world.

All glory and praise be to our God. Amen.