This Is the Life: Genesis 2:4-25 - Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Four-year-old Robert opened the big bible which had been in his family for years.  Absolutely fascinated, he flicked through the old pages.  Suddenly, something fell out of the bible. Robert picked up the object and looked at it.  What he saw was an old dry leaf that had been pressed in between the pages.

'Mum, look what I've found', the boy called out.'

What have you got there, dear?'

With astonishment in the young boy's voice, he answered, 'I think I've found Adam's underwear!'

There’s no shortage of Adam and Eve jokes out there, and the reason for that, I suspect, is that the story presents itself like a joke: the setup is that God puts two human beings in paradise. Everything is perfect and beautiful; nothing is lacking; all living creatures are living together in absolute harmony. There’s only one rule: don’t eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The expectation is that Adam and Eve will live happily ever after, the end. Following that rule should have been a piece of cake. But Adam and Eve mess it all up. 

Photo by Sasha Kaunas on Unsplash

As soon as they eat the forbidden fruit, they discover their nakedness, and hastily gather fig leaves to cover up what has already been exposed. Then they attempt to hide from God, as if someone could do such a thing. When God confronts them, they point their fingers in blame: Adam says it was Eve’s fault, and by extension God’s fault, for giving him Eve, who duped him. Eve blames the serpent for having “tricked” her into doing what she knew she wasn’t allowed to do. 

Things quickly go from bad to worse when their firstborn son kills his younger brother. Before long, God is so full of regret for having created that Noah is loading up the ark.

So what happened here? Why wasn’t paradise good enough for Adam and Eve? And why did God put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil where Adam and Eve could get to it? Didn’t God know what they were going to do? Shouldn’t God have put an electric fence around it?

But the presence of the tree actually teaches us something about how God made us.

In the beginning, God created the earth and its creatures in such a way that each was dependent on the other. Everything exists in relationship to everything else. Humanity was dependent on the earth, earth and its creatures were dependent on humanity, and all creatures were dependent on God. But God didn’t create the earth to operate like a machine, nor humans to exist like ants in an ant farm. 

God has given us the capacity to choose how we will live in that relationship. When you choose to live in that interdependent relationship, you are choosing to be a servant: to God, to the earth, and to the neighbor. We call that love. Love is the highest form of being, because love is what makes life flourish. 

On the other hand, when we choose, like Adam and Eve chose, to reject our role as servants, we sin. In seeking what’s not ours to take, and in taking what’s not ours to possess, we create the conditions for death and disorder.

God had every right to put the Tree in the Garden. It was there for a purpose, and that purpose was not to tempt Adam and Eve with what they could not have. That tree was a living expression of God’s authority to define what’s right and wrong, and what’s good and evil. It stood there to say, “God is God, you are not, and that’s the way it will be!” It was just as much Gospel as it was Law. 

This ancient biblical story is more relevant now than it ever was, considering how much humankind lusts after power, wealth, and dominance. 

So many people go through life with a huge sense of entitlement, like every restaurant server, and customer service representative, and teacher should treat them as if they are God. Society’s definition of “living well” means basking in all the comforts and luxuries money can buy. We’ve turned everything into a status symbol: from the clothes you wear, the car you drive, to the coffee you drink and the cup you drink it from. The poison in our politics has far less to do with anything liberal or conservative than it does the mindset that seeks power and dominance over cooperation and community. If America ceases to exist, it will be because of our refusal to be servants to each other.

Adam sinned by choosing superiority over servanthood. But the curse of Adam is broken by the one who became a servant to all of us: Jesus Christ. You are no longer a slave to sin but a slave to righteousness and a servant of all. This is what life is truly all about: not being God-like but being Christ-like.

This world has fallen far and hard from the paradise of Eden. But we retain our God-given place as servants of God, creation, and each other. Therefore, the power to create, to restore, and to transform rings through your voice and works through your hands.

So challenge yourself to see how much better your life will be when you answer God’s call to be a servant, in ways both big and small. And be on the lookout for people God will send to be servants to you.

For this is the life God has created for you: to live as part of this vast but beautiful community of life God has made. You are alive because God, the earth, and others serve you. You create life when you serve God, the earth, and others. That’s your piece of Paradise. That is the good life. That’s your place in this world.

On the day the Lord God made earth and sky— ⁵ before any wild plants appeared on the earth, and before any field crops grew, because the Lord God hadn’t yet sent rain on the earth and there was still no human being to farm the fertile land, ⁶ though a stream rose from the earth and watered all of the fertile land— ⁷ the Lord God formed the human from the topsoil of the fertile land and blew life’s breath into his nostrils. The human came to life. ⁸ The Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east and put there the human he had formed. ⁹ In the fertile land, the Lord God grew every beautiful tree with edible fruit, and also he grew the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

¹⁰ A river flows from Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides into four headwaters. ¹¹ The name of the first river is the Pishon. It flows around the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. ¹² That land’s gold is pure, and the land also has sweet-smelling resins and gemstones. ¹³ The name of the second river is the Gihon. It flows around the entire land of Cush. ¹⁴ The name of the third river is the Tigris, flowing east of Assyria; and the name of the fourth river is the Euphrates.

¹⁵ The Lord God took the human and settled him in the garden of Eden to farm it and to take care of it. ¹⁶ The Lord God commanded the human, “Eat your fill from all of the garden’s trees; ¹⁷ but don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because on the day you eat from it, you will die!” ¹⁸ Then the Lord God said, “It’s not good that the human is alone. I will make him a helper that is perfect for him.” ¹⁹ So the Lord God formed from the fertile land all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky and brought them to the human to see what he would name them. The human gave each living being its name. ²⁰ The human named all the livestock, all the birds in the sky, and all the wild animals. But a helper perfect for him was nowhere to be found.

²¹ So the Lord God put the human into a deep and heavy sleep, and took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh over it. ²² With the rib taken from the human, the Lord God fashioned a woman and brought her to the human being. ²³ The human said,

“This one finally is bone from my bones
        and flesh from my flesh.
She will be called a woman
        because from a man she was taken.”

²⁴ This is the reason that a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife, and they become one flesh. ²⁵ The two of them were naked, the man and his wife, but they weren’t embarrassed. (NRSV)