Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7 Commentary

Illustration

One of the most compelling recent apologetics for sin comes, ironically, from Francis Spufford’s book, Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense. Emerging from a long line of once-skeptical British intellectuals returning to Christian faith and finding that it does, in fact, “make surprising emotional sense.”

In his second chapter, “The Crack in Everything” (an allusion to a song by Leonard Cohen, which I offer to you as an illustration within an illustration) Spufford tours the cultural trivialization of sin, often a word relegated to a restaurant menu on the dessert list.  He observes this makes it particularly difficult to take—and to talk about—sin seriously. So he suggests another phrase, an acronym that I am adapting/altering here as (you can look up Spufford’s original if you wish): HPtMtU, which stands for “the human potential to mess things up.” “What we’re talking about here is not just our tendency to lurch and stumble and screw up by accident, our passive role as agents of entropy. It’s our active inclination to break stuff, ‘stuff’ here including moods, promises, relationships we care about, and our own well-being and other people’s, as well as material objects whose high gloss positively seems to invite a big fat scratch.”

It’s true of all of us. “Wherever the line is drawn between good and evil, between acceptable and unacceptable, between kind and cruel, between clean and dirty, we’re always going to be voting on both sides of it, despite ourselves. Not all of us, on every subject, all the time, of course; but all of us on some subject or other some of the time.”

Naming sin is not a deeper dive into judgmentalism or self-condemnation. It is the counter-intuitive way out of the pit of despair and condemnation. It is finding the bottom rung of the ladder, which may lead our way out. Admitting our culpability in the universal HPtMtU “helps you to stop wasting your time on denial, and therefore helps you stop ricocheting between unrealistic self-praise and unrealistic self-blame.” Naming sin is the place where we begin to acknowledge our need and, in acknowledging our need, we begin to look for a solution, a hand up out of the pit, someone (to put a fine point on it) who can save us from ourselves.

Commentary:

Starting in verses 3:1-7 but extending through verse 13 to tell the whole story, I propose a title like:

How to Sin in 10 Easy Steps

Step #1:         The beginning of sin is this question: “Did God really say?” Of course, cooperation and communication with God are central aspects of Edenic life.  One imagines both these exercises include curiosity, deepening understanding of what God says, what God means and how we are to live well in God’s world. The question initially offered by the serpent is different from that, argues Walter Brueggemann, in that “Theological-ethical talk here is not to serve but to avoid the claims of God.”

Step #2:         Twisted appropriations of God’s words.  Notice that the serpent asks, “Did God really say you can’t eat of any tree in the Garden?” Since Genesis 2:15-17 are part of the reading, we know that is almost the photographic negative of what God said. When the serpent twists God’s words, Eve corrects him but adds to God’s prohibition: not just that she could not eat but that she must not touch this particular tree. Notice that over-scrupulosity it its own form of misappropriating God’s command.

Step #3:         A two-pronged attack in v. 4: God is wrong AND God is keeping a good thing from you.  This step argues first that what God has said is not true and, second, that God’s character is not kind.

Step #4:         Recalibrating. Observing the fruit through the lens of the lie tips Eve into agreement with the serpent that God is keeping a good thing from her. Based on this new perception of reality, Eve acts as though God is untrue and unkind.

Step #5:         Involve accomplices! Once Eve has eaten, she “gave some to her husband, who was with her.” Note, however, that she doesn’t have to go looking for him.  He’s been standing there the whole time.

Step #6:         The text tells us that “they both saw clearly and knew that they were naked.”  They were exposed (pun intended) to themselves at least.  Vulnerability, shame and guilt rear their ugly heads for the first time in all of creation.

Step #7:         Ghosting God.  Adam and Eve hear God walking in the Garden.  I wonder if their regular practice was to run to meet him, to lift up something they had made that day, to ask about an animal in the garden they were stumped on naming.  In a modern-day example, one wonders if God sent a text, looked down to see the three dots of a message in process and then…nothing.

Step #8:         God searches and draws them out.  “Where are you?”  Author and professor Chuck DeGroot has recently observed that this is the first question we ever hear God ask of people and, perhaps, it offers insight on the question God continues to ask of humanity, and of each one of us today.  Where are we?

Step #9:         The strategy here is deflection and distraction: YOU GET SOME BLAME! AND YOU GET SOME BLAME! Pay not attention to little ol’ me.  The man points to the woman.  The woman points to the snake.

Step #10:       The woman tells the truth about her HPtMtU.  She starts with “the snake tricked me.” Notice here the vulnerability of admitting to being silly, weak or ignorant enough to BE tricked. Yes it’s a deflection but it’s also an admission and then both Adam and Eve go on to end their answers to God’s interrogation by confessing “and I ate.”

Bonus Step

Step #11        God gets to work. We see it already in step 8 and verse 9 when God calls out to Adam and Eve.  Although the consequences of sin are dire, it is also the case that the rest of the True Story of the Whole World is about God working to redeem and restore every facet of what has been lost.  Certainly sins are forgiven but broken relationships are also repaired, creation is sustained, work—while made more difficult—still brings satisfaction and purpose.

Antonio Gonzalez in his book, God’s Reign & the End of the Empires, concludes his commentary on this text by observing, “After Adam’s sin, the expected death sentence is not carried out; instead, God tenderly covers Adam and Eve with tunics of skin, with which they leave paradise. The different episodes of human sin are always accompanied by a word of mercy from God.” And perhaps that isn’t a bad place to conclude.

[Note: For the Year A Season of Lent and leading up to Easter, CEP has, in addition to these weekly sermon commentaries, a special Lent and Easter Resource Page with links to whole sermons, commentary on Lenten texts, and more.]