Sermons

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What Happened?
September 29, 2002
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
Fourth in a sermon series,
"Back to the Beginning," on Genesis 1-11

Genesis 3:1-13

Martin Luther once said,

“The Bible is alive, it speaks to me;
it has feet, it runs after me;
it has hands, it lays hold of me.”

Nowhere does this seem more evident than in our passage for this morning from Genesis 3. We continue our series on the early chapters of Genesis, Genesis 3:1-13, and I invite you to read with me.

WHAT HAPPENED? Everything was so very, very good in the early days of the creation. The beauty, diversity, color…the world was alive, and there was life, and the peak of creation, the human life. As we saw last week, there was only one thing that was not so good, and that was that the man was alone, and so God created the woman so they could be together, both reflecting God’s image. The only asterisk to the whole painting was the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they were not to eat of. But as long as they remained with God, that tree was irrelevant. And for that one brief moment, everything was good. Adam and Eve with God, Adam and Eve with each other.

The New York Times Magazine from two weeks ago printed the absolutely bone-chilling story of a woman named Pauline Nyiramasuhuko. Pauline was the Minister of Women’s Affairs in Rwanda during the genocide of 1994 when over 800,000 people were slaughtered in a six-week period. Conservative estimates say that Pauline purposefully incited the rape of over 250,000 women during that same time period.

WHAT HAPPENED? A snake happened. A snake who introduced SUSPICION into the world. Clever, this snake was. Everything he said that was wrong…had just a little bit of truth in it. “Oh, Eve, did that mean God say you can’t eat from any of the wonderful trees in this incredible garden?” Well…no, just one tree, actually. Just one that we can’t eat or touch, or we’ll die. Just one.

A snake happened…who introduced DISSATISFACTION into the world. Before the hissing started, the humans were content. After he was finished, they had this vague suspicion…that they were missing something. Maybe God was holding out on them. Maybe He wasn’t totally truthful. No longer were they satisfied with all that they had; they craved just one more thing. Just one more.

The snake says, “No, no, no, you won’t actually die (at least right away)…your eyes will be opened (in a way you wish they weren’t), you’ll know what God knows, in fact you’ll be like Him.” One Bible scholar says that “the serpent encourages talk ABOUT God,” instead of talking TO God. Let’s make sure we get the words just right. What exactly did He say? What shade of meaning was there? Let’s talk ABOUT God…instead of worrying about living in obedience WITH God.

Four often-convicted felons robbed a bank this week in Norfolk, Nebraska, population 24,000. In their first 40 seconds in the building, they shot and killed 4 bank employees and 1 customer.

WHAT HAPPENED? An apple happened. Shiny, red, juicy-looking piece of fruit that stared at Adam, that called out to Eve. It captivated, it mesmerized.

It would be good eating. It was pleasurable to look at and hold. And it could make one wise. And SURELY those were all good things God would want for us. Somewhere in the back of the minds of Adam and Eve an alarm was going off, the echo of God’s ONE limitation, just one. God had said, “Just trust me for this one thing. Depend on me for this one thing, live on MY terms this one time…don’t eat from the one tree.”

And then with two crunching bites of an apple, a huge rift, a giant sucking sound filled the universe. Something fundamental had changed. The environment was different. A fish is absolutely free so long as it stays in its environment of water. A bird is absolutely free so long as it flies in its environment of the air. A human is truly free, so long as it is in its intended environment…of dependence on God. But no more.

A husband decides that all of his needs are not being met by his wife. He pursues another relationship, has an affair. The wife of course finds out, and is of course crushed. Never again can she believe him. Never again can she trust him. In fact, she no longer wants him.

WHAT HAPPENED? A fig leaf happened. The consequences had already started. Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened, and they were now trained on themselves. Their eyes are opened by choosing their own way. The fig leaf is now a barrier between God and his human beings, and between the two humans as well. They cover themselves, they run and try to hide from God. Their eyes have been opened so wide, they can no longer look at God, so they hide. They’re watching out for themselves now.

A women hears that she has been the topic of destructive gossip by someone she considered a close friend. Without confronting her, she chooses to protect herself by ignoring the friend, and in fact, sends some juicy talk out into the gossip circle designed to lash out and injure.

WHAT HAPPENED? God walked in the garden. A gracious, creative, providing God goes to look for the objects of his love, and finds them hiding in fear. There is no turning back. Something has happened. When God questions Adam, his answers are so very telling:

“I heard the sound of you in the garden, I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself...”

The first result of the humans choosing their own way was the fixation on themselves. The second result was the tearing apart of their relationship with one another.

“What happened,” God says.

“She did it, it was her fault, I blame her.”

“What happened,” God says.

“It was the snake, it was his fault.”

The first finger-pointing cover-up in history…but not the last. The first time each member in a quarreling couple thought the other was more to blame than themselves…but not the last. Everybody was listening to somebody…and nobody was listening to God.

WHAT HAPPENED? The world you and I know has never looked like that brief moment in the garden. How is it that Adam and Eve are our ancestors, and the shadow they cast still exists? As Paul says, “Sin came into the world through one man.” Theology would call it “the doctrine of original sin.” It doesn’t seem fair. How can someone in 2002 still bear the mark of something done at the dawn of creation?

St. Augustine, back in the 5th century, theorized that it had to do with what he considered the sinful act of sexual procreation…and that all generations continued to be marked by that particular sin. St. Augustine got a lot of things right…but I don’t think he got this one right.

I heard about a much more intriguing explanation from Dr. James Loder back at Princeton Seminary. Dr. Loder, a brilliant theologian and psychiatrist, used some of the terms of modern psychology to get at this issue. Dr. Loder theorized that every human, at a very early age (infant), became aware of the presence of what he termed “The Face.” The Face was the pleasant presence of a significant other, usually tied initially to the infant’s mother…but in reality, the intuitive awareness of God. The child develops a longing for The Face. But, at an early age, the infant would become aware that The Face…could disappear, could leave. And the fear, or sense of abandonment caused the child’s Ego (conscious, way of dealing with the world)…to turn inward. To get in a defensive posture to protect itself, so that it can not be harmed. That ego stayed in that defensive position of self-dependence and protection on into adolescence and adulthood…even throughout a person’s life, unless something happened…to displace it, to move it towards an open posture that allowed the human spirit to be oriented toward the presence of God.

For Dr. Loder, that “something” was the “transforming moment.” The transformation that one undergoes when they encounter the love and grace of Jesus Christ, and that (and only that) had the power to turn the ego aside. Now, Dr. Loder may or may not have been onto something. But his idea stirs our thoughts to consider how the human being follows his ancestors Adam and Eve…into the idolatry of the self that the Bible calls “sin” through an almost primeval choosing.

Reinhold Niebuhr had a simple way of stating nearly the same thing. Niebuhr said that the human being sins “inevitably, but not of necessity.” Inevitably, because ALL rebel against God…but not out of necessity, because each one chooses for themselves.

In the Christian church in the United States, we seem mostly content to exist as though the rest of the world is nonexistent. We consume natural resources far out of proportion to our population, we worry over our retirement plans when a million people will die in the next few weeks because of malnutrition or lack of clean water. If the world were a village with exactly 100 people, 50 would suffer from malnutrition, 70 would be unable to read, 80 would live in substandard housing. We, the followers of Jesus, are often at best paralyzed, and at worst disinterested.

I love the way G.K. Chesterton perhaps sums it up by saying, “One of the strongest arguments in favor of Christianity is the failure of Christians… who thereby prove what the Bible teaches about the Fall and Original Sin.”

What happened? What happenS? A fundamental decision, repeated over and over, to choose myself over God, repeating the sin of Adam and Eve. It’s not the murder or the rape or the robbery or the infidelity or the gossip. It’s not the apple, or the fig leaf.

Those are just the sinS, the exterior things played out when our heart says, “I will choose my own way.” If we leave this story, feeling only that “I’m not such a bad person,” or “I’ve never done those things,” we have entirely missed the point. Day in and day out our world reflects the new thing introduced into the world so long ago, that changed things forever…the move of the human being away from trusting in God. And since then, God has moved from a primary identity as a Creator…to a Redeemer who goes to find the lost.

2,000 years ago, something horrible happened. Worse than anything I have talked about. The worst expression of sin imaginable occurred on a deserted hillside near Jerusalem. 2,000 years ago, the Son of God, Jesus the Christ, sent to earth to find the lost…was nailed to a wooden cross. The Tree of Death from the Garden became the Tree of Death that Jesus hung upon, bleeding, tortured, impaled. And at that most horrible moment, the words that came out of the mouth of this Son of God:

“Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they do.”

On that cross, and in the resurrection to follow, Jesus introduces something else new into the world. The grace…that undoes Sin. The Romans passage tells it so clearly, that what Adam (and Eve) did…Jesus undoes. The words of grace are stronger than the words of sin. And we don’t hear them by trying harder to be good, or by becoming more learned or more educated. As much as we are able, as honestly as we can…we turn towards God. That’s a picture which has been very helpful to me lately, even in my prayer time. Of simply facing God, open to Him.

A couple of weeks ago, the kids were channel-surfing through commercials during a ballgame, and I saw Billy Graham’s face pop up on the TV. I had them go back to that station. Billy was speaking to a stadium full of people, or course. Billy is now an old man, a very old man. And in the two minutes that I watched, he was talking about Jesus, as you would expect from someone who has spoken so well for so long. And suddenly, he seemed to deviate from his talk. He said, “You know, in the last two years there have been two different times when I was told that I was most likely dying. Two times, I was convinced that I was in my very last day. And both times, I lay there in that hospital bed, and prayed to God. And here’s what I prayed…” Now, the way he said this, I thought that he was going to say that he prayed, “Lord, I’m so glad that I know you and don’t have to worry about where I’m going.” But he didn’t. Instead, with a quivering voice, he shared his prayer: “Lord, forgive me for what I’ve done.” Turning towards God, and being open to His transformation.

Friends…you may have followed Christ for 20 years…or maybe you have never chosen His way over your own. In this moment, I don’t think that really matters. We all need the same thing…to be turned towards God…so that He might work inside of us.

It’s clear…the world is no longer a paradise. What happened? You did. I did. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says we should not call this story “The Fall,” but “The Flight.” And yet…for all the pain and evil and darkness in the world, still this light of hope remains, and will not go out. The final word actually did not belong to the snake, nor to Adam nor to Eve. The last word belongs to Jesus.

“Father, forgive them.”

That’s What happened. That’s what happenS. Let’s pray.