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. From Genesis, chapters 2 & 3
I said last week there’d be an abrupt change of tone in church today, didn’t I?! I forgot it was this abrupt! Not to mention another looming snowstorm.
I’m glad you’re here, and I wish I could reward you with something light this morning, but today is a Serious Sunday in the Church.
You know we mean business when we begin the service with the story of Adam and Eve, our first parents, eating of the forbidden fruit and falling from grace. We only bring this reading out for grand, important occasions: the first service of Easter on the night before Easter day. The service of Lessons and Carols before Christmas--these being big seasons in the church when, as in Lent, we recall the sweeping history of humankind from our fall from grace to our redemption in Christ. Seasons when we acknowledge that there is something about us that likes, that can’t resist, rebelling against God, and going our own way. That we need, redemption.
The story of Adam and Eve by itself is one thing. Placed into the Christian narrative of Fall and Redemption, it’s another. There's a lot going on here. Our Christian faith has tended to define it more narrowly than it deserves. That's partly thanks to St. Augustine, who in the 5th century took this passage and made it the basis for his doctrine of Original Sin. Adam and Eve passed onto their children and to every human being ever to live, Sin, handed down biologically, as essential a feature of a human being as the blood coursing through our veins. No one is born without it.
The Jewish men and women who preserved these stories almost 3000 years ago would be surprised at how we’d box it in like this. They weren’t writing history or creating doctrine. They wrote stories that transcend fact or fiction, stories that explore why we do certain things, and why we are the way we are.
In the Jewish tradition, you’ll often find (both historically and today) a greater willingness to ask questions of the story. Why did God put that tree there? Is God responsible for Adam’s sin? Is Eve really the hero of this story? Isn’t it good to quest after knowledge? Is it better to be smart and broken, or dumb and happy? If God created everything, there did the serpent come from? Sometimes Christians have gotten into the creative spirit, too. I think it was one of you, in a study on this passage, who once told me about the early Christian sect that believed the serpent was Jesus, in disguise, introducing to Eve, knowledge.
But--on this first Sunday in Lent, there’s no doubt we’re to see this reading as our tradition sees it. It’s here to remind us That we sin. That we continue to rebel against God and our neighbor. That our sin has consequences.
And that we need to set aside time to think about that.
Episcopalian theology doesn’t start with The Fall. It is not human sin, and weakness that drives us to the Christian story. It’s not central to who we are as people of God. You’ll never find Episcopal tracts that start with the threat of hell or of human depravity to get you to convert.
At baptisms in our church, you may have noticed that sin is a part, and not a very big part, of how we define what we’re doing. We’re welcoming a new soul into the body or community of Christ. We’re pledging to bring this infant up in the teachings of Jesus, his teachings of justice, and caring for others, especially the stranger and the poor. Cleansing from sin, or the inescapable condition of it, is there in the service, but it is by no means what stands out, at that or at any other time of our Christian year as Episcopalians.
And that makes those times we do bring it up, which are not often, all the more surprising. We sit up. We take notice. … And that’s a good thing.
Listen to what the Psalm for today says of not having times when we acknowledge the bad in us. “While I held my tongue, my bones withered away because of my groaning all day long. For your hand was heavy upon me day and night. … Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and did not conceal my guilt … and you forgave me the guilt of my sin.”
We don’t focus on sin much. But when we do, we know it’s important to. Sin is real, and if ignored it becomes corrosive (“my bones withered away”), or heavy (“your hand was heavy on me day and night”).
The best definition of sin I’ve ever heard was in a work of fiction, my favorite novel, actually: Silence by Japanese writer Shusaku Endo. One of the priests in the novel observes: “[Sin] not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious to the wounds he has left behind.” This is what we’re talking about, when we talk about, “sin”: All the ways we hurt others and walk on, willfully, or oblivious.
Lent, these next forty days, is the church’s gift to us. It’s our time to examine those parts of us that we spend a lot of time and energy hiding. In Lent the days get lighter and we have more light, more time, to shine on the stuff within. And then comes Easter. Because if we observe this season well, it will be time to move on. We can only handle so much honesty and self-scrutiny. But we definitely can’t handle life without it.
I wish you all a holy Lent. This is the church’s gift.
Take it. Use it well. Amen.