'The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’“ But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 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.'
--Genesis 2: 15-17, 3: 1-7
'As sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned-- sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.
But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man's trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. If, because of the one man's trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
Therefore just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.'
--Romans 5: 12-19
'Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written,
‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,
‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”
Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.'
--Matthew 4: 1-11
Let’s talk about sin. It seems fitting now that we are in the season of Lent, doesn’t it? You’ve already heard me talk about sin – hamartia – as an archery term that means, “to miss the mark.” Chances are you’ve also heard in one way or another that sin is the result of an event recounted in today’s passage from Genesis, what we often call The Fall. Well let’s unpack The Fall, shall we?
When folks ask me if I believe that Adam and Eve and the Garden were a true story, I always tell them yes. It’s not factual, but something does not have to be factual to be truthful. This is a story of theodicy, the exploration of why evil exists in a world that God repeatedly declares as good. What is going on in this story, the point it’s making, is certainly true. Let’s start with the serpent, a character who has long represented any entity that seeks to undermine God’s creation in some way—the Book of Revelation will go so far as to explicitly say the serpent in the Garden was the dragon John sees in his apocalypse, who is also called Satan and the devil in the Gospels of Jesus. So we see that the serpent exists within this created order, not outside or against it. When the woman—Eve—converses with the serpent it appears that God is not anywhere to be found. But how can that be, since just a few lines earlier we heard about how God walked in the Garden with Eve and Adam? Obviously, God is omnipresent, but clearly Eve at least perceives that God is absent, and so the serpent’s words are easier for her to hear. We can relate to this, can’t we? We all know that God is everywhere we go, yet we have all experienced what we might describe as an absence of God, which produces a very real lack of trust in God’s ultimate goodness, making it easier for us to hear the serpent’s whispering in our own ears.
This moment of feeling absent from God is what leads to Eve acknowledging the serpent’s words about the fruit of the tree—the text never says it’s an apple, by the way, just fruit—and she gives in to that temptation. And what is the temptation? It’s not to disobey God; in fact, disobedience never enters into this story, according to the text itself. The serpent never lies to Eve, he simply points out three things: that the fruit is good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise. All three are truthful points God has already made. So in this perceived absence of God that Eve is experiencing, she struggles by herself with three most basic of human needs: the need for sufficiency that leads to the desire for possessions—the fruit is good for food—the need for esteem that leads to the desire for prestige—the fruit is a delight to the eye—and the need for autonomy that leads to the desire for power—the fruit is desirable to make one wise. These, brothers and sisters, are the three base temptations, out of which every single one of our sins arise. They are the root cause of the Fall and everything that has occurred since.
In the very next moment, Adam and Eve are Fallen, afraid and shameful because now they know right from wrong. They sew fig leaves to hide what they have done from God out of fear of God’s judgment. Before eating of the tree they didn’t know judgment, they had no need of it, but now they do, and because they know the concept of judgment they become like God—making the serpent something of a prophet—insomuch as they begin passing judgment themselves. Adam blames Eve. Eve blames the serpent. Thus begins a vicious cycle of blame and judgment-passing that has had disastrous consequences for us as a species and for our planet as a whole. This is sin, a constant effort on our part to scapegoat, pass judgment, find fault, and righteously play the part of God in punishing wrong, all stemming from our own fears of being judged, our own shame for the exposure of our frailty, our nakedness. And in their Fall, they are expelled from the Garden. Every Feast of St. Francis I mention how our animal friends are very much still “in the garden” because they still live into that original relationship between the Creator and created, built on trust and intimacy with God. That relationship is broken and devolves into distrust and estrangement in Adam and Eve’s case, which ultimately leads to the killing of their son Abel by his brother Cain, who does so out of a sense of feeling like God had treated him unjustly. The blood of Abel still cries out from the ground every time we repeat this cycle of temptation, sin, and judgement, like some kind of endless waltz.
What then is the answer to this cycle of blame and scapegoating that stems from our own fear and shame. What, then, is the answer when sin sounds like an inevitability? It’s Jesus, y’all, and we know this because Jesus himself faces these same three temptations: the desire for possession—turn these stones to bread—the desire for prestige—throw yourself down if you are the Son of God so that the angels will catch you—and the desire for power—all the world can be yours. Jesus confronts these temptations, like Eve, in a moment when it appears God is not present, out there in the desert. Notice that, like the story from Genesis, God doesn’t intervene to offer any assuring words. But like Paul points out in our reading from Romans, which is a kind of commentary on the Fall, Jesus succeeds where the first humans failed. He overcomes what theologians have called the “original sin” by resisting that same voice and maintaining his intimacy with God. In doing so he exposes the whole mechanism of scapegoating and judgment-passing as the fraud that it is, an illusion we buy into when we give in to our temptations toward possession, prestige, and power. This is why Jesus is the only one worthy of passing any judgment, because the judgment he will pass—which we affirm in our Nicene Creed—is one based not on blame and punishment but on the love of God that has always been there since the beginning of creation. It is as if Jesus—mentally and emotionally speaking—has always been in the Garden, in a place where he knows the intimacy of his relationship with God, and he never truly lost it. And in our own relationship with Jesus, while we may lose it, we can return to that intimacy again and again through confession, fasting, prayer, and worship.
It’s never mentioned in the story, but there is another tree in that Garden: the tree of life. We never hear of anyone eating from that tree, but the implication is that it was the tree from which all creation ate—including Adam and Eve. In many Christian pieces of art Jesus is depicted as the tree of life, in part because, it could be said, he never ate of the tree from which Adam and Eve ate. So we who are the children of Adam and Eve, and who are followers and lovers of Jesus, have a choice, every day: eat of the tree of our first parents, the fruit of which leads us to wallow in shame, blame others, and pass what we believe to be righteous judgments, or eat of the tree of Jesus, the fruit of which is intimacy with God and all creation. When we eat on him, as we do at this table, we abide in the one who never knew separation from God and who knew the truth that we so often forget, as Adam and Eve forgot: that there is no such thing as being absent from God.
Lent is the time when we intentionally remind ourselves of that fact, as we ponder our own temptations for possession, prestige, and power and remember that Jesus has already faced these same temptations, and it was his intimacy with God and creation that kept him from giving in. The event in Genesis has also been called the felix culpa, the Happy Fall, because it ultimately led to Jesus coming and showing us that it is, in fact, possible for humanity to fall and yet still be raised, a scene often depicted in art as the Harrowing of Hell, showing Jesus pulling Adam and Eve out of their graves. As we move toward Easter morning, let us take time this season to ponder our own cycles of temptation, sin, and judgement, and remember that Christ has already succeeded where all others—including ourselves—have failed, and in doing so he has given us power to be resurrected even from our own Falls.
