Who Will You Listen To?
Genesis 3:1-13a
February 26, 2023
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq55tAL4fvw
The Bible stories we’re exploring this Lent are full of questions. Many of them are about people who bring questions to Jesus. Some of them are stories we return to again and again because the questions that human beings share haven’t changed much across the centuries. Our theme for the season is Seeking: Honest Questions for Deeper Faith. In other words, we are going to encounter some questions every week.
It seems appropriate, then, to start by thinking about how we approach questions. There are some people who need permission to ask questions. This is not necessarily true of the vocal majority of us at Emmanuel. Most of us are actually kind of fond of questioning each other or ourselves. We are comfortable questioning accepted doctrines or standard interpretations of the Bible. In fact, if someone tries to suppress questions or to provide answers we think are too glib, they are likely to trigger our Oppositional Defiant Baptist Disorder. But some of us may need permission or enough time and space to ask our questions and that is OK.
We begin with the question “Who will you listen to?” Where will you get reliable information? What are the messages you choose to receive? Do they come from elders or teachers or healers? Are they the voices of friends or politicians or salespeople? There are messages coming our way all the time and we have to discern who to listen to.
When the world began, it seems that there were fewer voices clamoring for attention. The first voice, of course, was God’s. From God, the man and woman had heard a purpose – to till and keep the garden. They had heard permission – to eat freely from the trees in the garden. And they had heard a prohibition –not to eat from the tree of knowledge. Just three things to keep track of – purpose, permission and prohibition.[1]
However, there is another voice that makes itself heard. It is the voice of the serpent. We should notice that, in this story, the devil is not mentioned. In the Garden of Eden, apparently snakes can talk. Perhaps in the Garden of Eden, all animals can talk.
Anyway, ultimately it is the snake’s voice that the man and woman choose to listen to. We often say it is the devil, but the Bible does not say that. When this story was being told around campfires, when this story was being written down, the story of the devil as a fallen angel had not been told. When this story was being told around campfires and written down, what might have existed was the idea of the satan who later became identified with Satan who later became identified with the devil. In Hebrew, satan means accuser or adversary. In the time that this story comes from, the satan, the adversary, is a heavenly being who sometimes walks the earth with instructions from God. In this story, it is not Satan who speaks to the woman, it is the snake. We need to read the story on its own terms.
God says “Don’t eat of the tree of knowledge or you will die.”
The snake says, “Did God really say that?”
The woman says, “Yes.”
The crafty snake says, “Go ahead. Eat it. You won’t die.”
The woman listens to the snake. She eats the fruit. She gives some to the man and he eats it.
It turns out that the snake told the truth, partly. Like all good misinformation campaigns, there is some truth in the lie. The truth is that they do not die a physical death. But God told the truth as well, something died. We might call it the death of their naïve innocence.[2] They learn that not every voice is to be trusted. They learn that a life of wisdom requires the ability to discern.
When they eat the fruit, they do not die; instead they see more clearly. But it turns that seeing more clearly wasn’t really a blessings. Something does die: the joy of unselfconsciousness.[3] That is when they realize that they are naked and vulnerable.
The relationship with God changes. The next time God comes to the garden, they hide because they are naked and afraid. Their nakedness is not news to God. They’ve been naked the entire time and it was never an issue until now. But now they are afraid. Now they have done the one thing God asked them not to and the relationship is altered.
I have some questions about this story. I want to know why they don’t talk to God after they hear from the snake, before they eat the fruit. Whey don’t they ask for more information about the tree of knowledge? And my other question is this -- if the garden is such a good place, full of harmony and wholeness, why does it have such a dangerous tree in the first place?
My bigger concerns are about how this story has been interpreted, how it has been deeply woven into some of the first messages that we receive about God and ourselves.
This ancient story was used by Christian theologians in support of an idea called original sin. That idea came from St. Augustine some 300 years after Jesus. The doctrine of original sin says that when Adam ate the fruit in disobedience to God, that was the first sin. And when he did that, something changed in his body. That change is genetic, something that gets passed down in human DNA to every generation since Adam. All the way to you and me. We are born sinful because of Adam and Eve. That’s the prevailing popular message of this story.
I want to push back on that a little. Actually a lot. I find it interesting that this doctrine of original sin relies on a story in which the word sin does not occur. There are several words for sin in Hebrew. None are used in the Bible until Cain murders Abel outside the garden.[4] This story is not central to a Biblical understanding of sin. The Hebrew Bible does not reference it at all. Neither does Jesus.
You know the Calvin and Hobbes comics, right? Calvin is the 6-year-old boy. Hobbes is his stuffed tiger. In one of the comic strips, Calvin asks
“Do you think that babies are born sinful?
That they come into the world as sinners?”
Hobbes the tiger replies
“No, I think they’re just quick studies.”
I’m going to agree with Hobbes on this nature/nurture question. We are not born sinful, but we quickly learn to get our way, even if it means hurting others. People are not perfect, but they are not irrevocably flawed either. I am not denying the existence of sin, not by any means, but I do want to hear this story on its own terms.
The Bible says that after they ate the fruit and knew that they were naked, God made clothes for them. And after that, they left the garden. Disobedience has consequences. It changes the nature of their relationship with God, with each other, with the creation. But it does not sever the relationship. God leaves the garden and stays with them.
The message of original sin is that humans are fundamentally broken, that we are predisposed to sin which separates us from God forever. But the story says that we are made in God’s image. The story is placed at the beginning of a long story of God’s continuing relationship with human beings. The story says that we have a purpose and permission to do many things. If we read the whole story on its own terms, it suggests that humans have the capacity for both good and evil.
Instead of using this story long ago to focus on a doctrine of original sin, we might have created a doctrine of original relationship or original blessing. Many contemporary theologians are doing just that.
Danielle Shroyer is one of them. She says “Sin is not the primary thing that is true about us. Before we are anything else, we made in God’s image . . . Before scripture tells us anything else about ourselves, it tells us we are good. . . When we ground ourselves in the fact that God created us good, we are capable of confronting all the other things that are true about us, even the difficult things. . . . Original blessing is the stubborn assertion not that we are perfect, but that we are loved.” [5]
The questions in the bulletin went out by e-mail earlier this week. In response to the question about where you hear messages of destruction and despair, one of you said that in your head there is a voice that says “I’m not good enough.” Thank you, whoever you are, for setting the bar for honest and meaningful responses.
This voice that says “I am not good enough” is a voice that many of us carry around inside of us. It is a destructive voice with a harmful message. Many things give power to the voice – the way we are raised, the value our culture puts on productivity or beauty, our early experiences of success or failure. But certainly one source of power is the toxic theology of original sin which is nowhere to be found in this story. We are not fundamentally flawed. We are fundamentally blessed.
To the question about where you find messages of wholeness and hope, one of you, maybe the same person wrote, “any kind of affirmation from anyone pulls me back to connection with what is real.”
Again thank you to this person for this response. You should have been the one to preach today.
Affirmation – “creation is good and even very good,” God says. Connection – “let us make humans in our image,” God says. Affirmation and connection are part of God’s good creation.
Original blessing, original relationship, is the most powerful and central part of our identity. As Danielle Shroyer says
“Original blessing means realizing your sin is not the most important thing about you, even if the world—or the church – makes you feel like it is.”[6]
The snake says humans are not enough; we need to do more, to be more.
God says humans have divine purpose, humans have limits, but most importantly, humans are made in God’s image and loved as we are.
The snake says humans are not enough; we need to do more, to be more.
God says we have divine purpose and limits, but most importantly, humans are made in God’s image and loved as we are.
Who will you listen to?
[1] This description of purpose, permission and prohibition comes from Walter Brueggemann, Genesis: Interpretation A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982), p.45
[2] Danielle Shroyer, in her commentary on this text for A Sanctified Art’s sermon planning guide in the resource Seeking: Honest Questions for Deeper Faith
[3] https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-02/sunday-march-13-2011
[4] Kathleen M. O’Connor, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary: Genesis 1-25A, (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, 2018) p. 62
[5] Danielle Shroyer, Original Blessing: Putting Sin in its Rightful Place, )Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2016), p. 32.
[6] Shrover, Original Blessing, p. 24