The One Thing that is Not Good [Proper 5B]
The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson
Genesis 3:8-15
The One Thing that is Not Good
In the beginning, when God created
the heavens and the Earth, God declared the creation good. Each new day, something new; each new day,
something good: light and darkness, Sun and Moon, the planets in their courses,
animals and plants, and a human being – all created by God, all given the
ultimate seal of approval. And at the
end of the work, God saw everything that God had made, and indeed, it was very
good.
Well, almost everything. After
taking some time to look things over, to double-check the work, God caught one
aspect of the creation that could not be called good, one oversight in an
otherwise flawless creation. In the
second chapter of Genesis, God observes and declares, “It is not good that the
man should be alone.”
And so God creates one more thing:
a community. God sees that it is not
good for a person to be alone; and so God blesses the first person with another
person – a beautiful and generous gift: the gift of relationship. Just a few verses after the first human
relationship is created by God, however, the first cracks of separation appear.
Even though it is not good, the man
seems intent to be isolated and alone – creating the kind of separation that
inevitably leads to human loneliness.
And this should not surprise us because we see the same thing happen in
our own lives and in the lives of others; isolation and broken relationships
seem to be conditions of our human existence that we cannot, or will not,
shake. These old stories continue to be
very true.
The stories in Genesis are origin
stories – which should not surprise us given the title of the book. Through story, poetry, and myth, the biblical
authors seek to answer questions of ultimate concern – questions about life,
death, and existence. They are not
scientific or historical expositions; they are theological reflections –
stories about God and humanity, stories of love and sin, cause and effect,
chaos and order.
The story we hear from Genesis
today is part of a larger reflection on the origins of sin and separation. It is a back story. We live in a world of shattered
relationships. We know that. We witness the brokenness; we see the
devastating consequences. But when did
the first cracks appear? That is what
this story is about. This story tells us
that it barely started before it all started to fall to pieces.
We know that what immediately
precedes this morning's text is that Eve and Adam eat of the fruit of “the Tree
of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” - the tree of which God forbid Adam to
eat. It was the first act of human
disobedience, the first time a person decided that he or she knew better than
God – the first of many, many times.
Historically Christians have read a
lot into the text that is not there, so let's clear up a couple of misreadings
before we consider what is actually in the text. First, this story has often been subject to
misogynistic interpretations, readings used to blame the pain and evil of the
world on women. Often it is suggested
that Eve used her sexuality to entice and trick Adam into sharing in her
disobedience. That is not in the text,
but probably says more about the reader than the writer. Also, Adam is with Eve the entire time
according to Genesis: when she converses with the serpent, when she questions
God's provision, when she takes the fruit and eats. They are in it together, a package deal,
co-workers and companions. Though he
blames her later in the story, Eve does not trick Adam; he is well aware of
what is going on. As now, so it was in
the beginning: both man and woman chose disobedience; both chose not to follow
God's instructions.
The other detail of this story that
carries a lot baggage in Christian readings is the serpent. The serpent has long in the Church been
equated with the devil. Again, that is
an interpretation; nothing in the text suggests that the serpent is the devil;
nothing even suggests that the serpent is evil, in fact. Tony Cartledge points out, “[T]he serpent
does not lie to the woman so much as it asks questions and adds nuances to the
truth in a way that leads Eve to have thoughts of her own that lead her to
mistrust God's gracious care. The
serpent, then, acts as Eve's alter ego, an inquiring voice that engages her
mind in doubt and debate. To this point, one assumes, Adam and Eve had lived in
perfect obedience to God. Only when the serpent appears…do they become aware
that there is another option: they have the power to choose not to follow God's instructions.”[1]
And that is what they choose. Like any good, time-tested myth, the details
of the story are purposely sparse – which perhaps is why later readers feel the
need to flesh it out. The fruit was, the
author of Genesis tells us, “good for food, a delight to the eyes, and to be
desired to make one wise.” And so Eve
ate. And so did Adam. God said “don't”; they did.
The consequences of their decision
went far beyond full, satisfied bellies.
They recognize for the first time their nakedness. Before disobedience, before sin, they lived
in complete vulnerability with each other and with God. The fig leaves, from which they fashioned clothes
to cover their bodies, were the first layer of separation, the first step
towards isolation. There was now
something between Adam and Eve. There
was now something between humanity and God – a layer of separation that would
only grow.
Theologian Paul Tillich famously
defined sin as separation. That is what
we see in today's text. Once sin is
introduced into the human story, people hide from God, try to get away – search
for separation. It starts in the
human-divine relationship and then spreads.
The man blames the woman; the woman blames the serpent. It's a self-perpetuating cycle: sin begets
separation begets sin begets separation.
And by the end of the story, humanity is once again returning to a state
of isolation – disconnected from God, from each other, and from the rest of the
creation.
And it is contagious. The fruit of the first broken relationship
will carry on a legacy of separation.
The sin spreads. Cain kills
Able. Cain hides from God. Cain wanders the earth – cut off from human
community. Just another tale of human
isolation – our stubborn attempt to hold onto the only thing in creation God
could not declare good.
Genesis chapter three gives us the
back story of the world we still observe – a world riddled with sin and
separation. And in giving us this
ancient back story, Genesis reminds us that the roots are deep. Genesis also reminds us that God wants
something better for us. God wants us to
be together, to live in community. What
we often consider a burden was meant to be a gift.
Why this matters is that we are
called to be ministers of reconciliation in this world of brokenness and
isolation. God was right: it is not good
for a person to be alone – isolation is bad for us. George Monbiot recently wrote an article
called “The age of loneliness is killing us.”
In it he writes, “Social isolation is as potent a cause of early death
as smoking 15 cigarettes a day; loneliness, research suggests, is twice as
deadly as obesity. Dementia, high blood pressure, alcoholism and accidents –
all these, like depression, paranoia, anxiety and suicide, become more
prevalent when connections are cut. We cannot cope alone.”[2]
We cannot cope alone. But we continue to try. We build walls, and dig moats. We hide our true selves from God and from
each other. And we are lonely. In the absence of human contact and
relationship we try to fill the void with other things – usually harmful things
that kill both body and spirit. Johann
Hari writes that: “Professor Peter Cohen argues that human beings have a deep
need to bond and form connections. It's how we get our satisfaction. If we
can't connect with each other, we will connect with anything we can find -- the
whirr of a roulette wheel or the prick of a syringe. He says we should stop
talking about 'addiction' altogether, and instead call it 'bonding.' A heroin
addict has bonded with heroin because she couldn't bond as fully with anything
else.
We, who have been baptized, we have
been made a community. We are the body
of Christ. And in the body of Christ
there are no severed limbs; we are all connected – to God and to each
other. It is what God wants for us. We who were once alone and isolated, have
been made a family – brothers and sisters in the household of God. God's gift to us is still relationship.
And as God's people in this world,
this is our gift too. It is not good for
anyone to be alone. And so we are called
to open our arms and open our hearts to the lonely and the isolated, to all
those people in this world, in this city, in our neighborhoods, desperately
longing for human connection. No one can
cope alone. Our job, as the Church, is
to make sure no one has to.
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