February 13, 2005
Genesis 2:15-17, 3: 1-7
1. Remember that bumper sticker, “I owe, I owe, it’s off to work I go!”
If there is anything that we can all relate to – it’s work. Work is the great equalizer.
What’s that old proverb, “All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy?”
And yet, even God had to "work" to create the world, for according to the Book of Genesis: “… on the seventh day God ended his work which he had begun.”
When I left the ministry back in 1979, I needed a job and so I went to “work” for the Red Cross. But, having spent some 8 eight years in the ministry it was a big change and I felt a lot like a fish out of water.
In fact, someone has said that the two professions that are the most unlike anything in the “real” world are the ministry and the military.
Now I have never been in the military so I can’t say what that life might be like but I am told that it is very different from civilian life. I am not talking, of course, about short term military service … but rather what are called “lifers” - people who have spent many many years in uniform.
Well, in a way, the ministry can be like that. For ministers often tend to be seen as “different” from ordinary folks. Especially in the old days when clergy were really supposed to be “different” – kind of unapproachable – and were often set on a pedestal – almost perfect – things like that. Which, I am happy to say, has changed quite a bit in recent years. Although I still have to think a minute, when I am on an airplane and the stranger asks me “what I do …for a living!”
For a long time, I thought this was just a clergy thing … but one day, on the way back from the cemetery, I was talking to Angie, who is Kevin Cease’s assistant at the Cease funeral home, and she said she had the same problem. You’re on a plane and the person says, “What do you do?” And you say, “I’m a funeral director!” Sometimes, she told me, I say, I work in “social service.”
2. In many ways, the Red Cross was as close to the ministry as you can get and still be in the outside world, since it is a humanitarian organization dedicated to saving lives and runs on pure altruism … at least at the volunteer end of it. From a business standpoint it’s another story, however, and I can tell you that the national Red Cross Biomedical Services Division was, and is, a billion dollar business. So large, in fact, that if it were a private corporation it would be Fortune 500 country.
To give you an idea, in my later years at the ARC one of my more jobs was to run elaborate computer projections, which I designed myself, which were needed to provide advance estimates on potential blood collections for over 3,000 bloodmobile operations a year … which were targeted to collected over 240,000 blood donations … and which provided the annual revenue to match the budget outlay of over 40 million dollars a year … which paid salaries for nursing staff, lab staff, product management, management, equipment purchase and maintenance and all the rest.
3. So, for me, coming to work for the ARC as a previously ordained minister was an interesting experience to say the least. Largely because, my theological training put me in an unusual position unlike anyone else in that organization – except for two other persons.
One was my good friend, Larry Wieser, who, from the age of 14, spent the next ten years in the Catholic seminary preparing to be a priest, only to walk away, as so many did back in the l960s. A most traumatic experience which few can appreciate or understand and which he, even now has trouble talking about. We have been good friends for almost 20 years.
The other was John Siess, the assistant public relations director. John’s father was a seminary professor in the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church and also left it, back in the l970s, when they had their big schism, and spent his remaining career as a chaplain at the University of Minnesota Hospital. John, as you might expect, understood theology quite well. We used to have long conversations and still keep in touch now that he has left the Red Cross.
Other than these two guys who understood theology and the ministry, who I could talk to, I was in some ways, I think, kind of little bit like someone from “outer space” – as far as the rest of the employees were concerned. Many, I suspect, had never met a minister "up close."
4. Now, you are probably wondering where this is all going? Right? And, if you haven’t noticed, quite often in preaching and even general conversation I tend to meander around for a while before getting to the point. Why is this? In fact, sometimes when I get together with other clergy and I am explaining something, they start shifting around … and say, what’s the point? Where is this going?
Well, I used to actually wonder about this myself. But, one day I realized that it’s probably because that I grew up in a small town … back before television. And, in small towns, telling stories is a way of passing the time. And also, because in a small town everyone knows everyone and as a result knows that everything is connected, and so you can’t tell one thing without connecting it to a lot of other things. And, besides, half of the point of story, is in the telling the story itself … because … we are all connected … and life is complex … and, in order to understand the point of the story you have to know “the whole story” in its proper context. Do you understand what I am saying? It’s just not appropriate to get to the point too quickly … the point isn’t really “a point” … unless you understand how it got to be a point … and if you understand that - then you will understand that the point is a ”bigger point” than you might have thought. Do you follow me? It’s kind of like doing a Bible study or preaching on a passage from scripture … if you don’t provide sufficient background to the Scripture you will not only miss the point but misinterpret the message in fairly serious ways. It happens frequently. So bear with me. I am now going to get to the point!
5. So, now, here I am working at the Blood Center … and I am at the water cooler and someone … anyone … quite a few people in fact … would complain … frequently … “why is work so hard ...? Why is work so boring? … Why do we have to work at all? … Things like that. Used to happen a lot. People were always complaining.
And sometimes I would say to them … partly for fun and with a bit of an ironic smile … “Because of sin.” “It’s because of sin.” And they look at me like “What are you talking about?” Because, of course, they didn’t get it. Do you get it? Well, if you don’t get it, you haven’t been reading your Bible.
Now, what most people would have easily understood a hundred years ago isn’t so obvious today. This because a century ago there was no television, radio, and movies and only occasional newspapers, and most couldn’t afford books … so, all they read, more than likely, was the Bible. And, everyone who read the Bible knew that the reason people had to work hard and life was difficult was because of sin … because of Adam and Eve. It was all spelled out in the famous temptation story in the Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis which we read this morning.
Now, you may not quite agree with that analysis … and, of course if we had more time it can be explained in much greater complexity and satisfactorily … yet, when it comes right down to it … if you want a fairly simple answer … life is hard because of sin. In other words, life is hard because human beings made the fateful choice to take things into our own hands. For the reality of life is … that by choosing to be free and making our own decisions, we as human beings were and are plunged into a complex, changing, chaotic world … which, try as we will, we won’t manage to get through entirely without making mistakes, misjudgments, errors, and also having to endure numerous set-backs, misfortunes, and just plain bad luck. It happens to everyone … everyone … no one gets off "scott free," as we used to say.
6. This alone ought to be sufficient for a sermon today … and really if you get this main point you are way ahead of an awful lot of people who think otherwise, nowadays … or don’t think at all. Good people, I might add, who still have lots of other preconceived ideas about how things are supposed to be … and are often disappointed, depressed, angry, etc. etc. when life doesn’t turn out the way they expected.
As I have sometimes said, if I could have worked this idea up into a book, I could be rich right now. For the well known psychologist, M. Scott Peck, did it with his book, The Road Less Traveled, in which the opening line begins by saying, “life is difficult.” Oh boy! That is profound! The Biblical story actually says the same thing … but, nowadays, it takes a psychiatrist with a medical degree and an MD after his name before people will “take it seriously.” His book sold millions. And I don’t want to disparage Dr. Peck, because he is, I believe, a very decent sincere person. I actually met him personally when I went to hear him lecture for a week at Kanuga, the Episcopal retreat center in Hendersonville, North Carolina. In fact, I even have nice letter from him somewhere, which he sent me after I wrote to him about some things he was talking about.
And not only Dr. Peck, but also Rabbi Kushner, says some of the same things in his best seller, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. I’ve never met him, but I have read his books and seen him a videotapes.
7. Sin, sin, sin … it reminds me of that famous line I like to quote about President Calvin Coolidge who was asked on the way out of church, “What was the sermon about?” And he said, “Sin.” To which he was asked, “What did the minister say about it?” And, Coolidge answered, “He was against it!”
But that is not exactly what the story of Adam and Eve is all about … or maybe is only partly about. The sin we are talking about is not this sin, or that sin, or morality, or right and wrong … entirely. It’s much bigger than all that. What we are talking about is "consciousness." The human condition. It’s not just about committing sin … its about knowing we have potential for sin. Or, what we call the “loss of innocence” which marks the passage from childhood to adulthood. Everyone goes through it one way or another. For sin is really about the knowledge of good and evil and the realization that, while we may try to be good, we also have the capacity for evil – all of us – every person in the world. So, it’s not just about misfortune or making bad choices. It’s also about the potential for things which may go wrong in an imperfect world which keep you awake at night worrying about something that may not happen … but could.
It’s about raising your children as best and imperfectly as you can and then watching them walk away … and struggle to live their own lives which may or may not be any more or less perfect than yours … and knowing there is nothing you can do about it other than love them … and then wondering for a brief and illuminating moment, “Is this how God feels about me?”
8. Sin is not just about what happened to Bill Clinton … or anyone else, specifically, for that matter. Sin has a bad rap … because it is mostly trivialities … which make the news, and the tabloids, and Oprah ... and Bill O'reilly … that kind of sin … which is all to prevalent … is not what we are talking about … and is not, at the bottom of it, what the Adam and Eve Story are about.
9. So, this is what I mean … regarding sin … it is not just about morality and specific things that people do and don’t do … it is more about complexity … worry … anxiety … uncertainty … and also, joy, love, relationships … friendship … affection … romance … all mixed up together. Sin is about life. It’s unavoidable. If you live, you enter into sin … in a “fallen world.”
After all, can Adam and Eve really “know” each other before they eat the tree of knowledge? No, of course not. They don’t even know they have no clothes on! They are clueless. Like the animals. Animals, for instance, don’t wear clothes … (except for poodles. When I lived in St. Paul we had a poodle, and I actually had to put a sweater on it so it could go for a walk in really cold weather.) Well, you get the idea!
The price of knowledge, then, is the knowledge of good and evil …it is really about having to be plunged into conscious reality … to be, not exactly as God is, but to be aware … aware like never before … and to feel and to suffer … and to hope and to dream … and to talk and communicate … and all the rest … and to know right up front, that it is an imperfect world we live in and that we, too, are imperfect, despite all our efforts to act otherwise. Nobody is fooled, let me tell you! Nobody! Although, some people try, of course. But, nobody fools God!
10. Well, as we know, the biblical story of creation and the story of Adam and Eve rub right up against the whole theory of evolution … which now, amazingly, is in the news again …very controversial … and a subject too deep to go into in a sermon … except to say … that, despite what you hear, there is a very different purpose and perspective to the writing of Genesis … than there is to modern scientific explanations of, say the descent of man from Apes … natural selection … and all the rest.
For, the Biblical story is not intended to be factual as we think of it today … or literal … or to actually have happened … it is not a scientific story. This in no way means that it is not true … or that it does not contain great truths. Furthermore, contrary to what some people think, it was not written first in the Bible … it was actually written much later, when the Israelites were in captivity in Babylon and were at risk of losing their very identity. Who wrote it is not clear. But, who ever did it was among the greatest and most profoundly insightful persons who ever lived.
Think about it. Why is the Adam and Eve story among all stories every written, one of the most remembered and most pondered and most amazing stories human beings were ever inspired to create. And, inspired, they must have been. Inspired, it is clear, by the God who they believed had led them out of Egypt and who was not about to abandon them even thought they were slaves in Babylon which had its own Creation stories, by the way. But, they weren’t the same.
And, no, it was not written by scientific minded people. For when we try to look at it through the eyes of science … we just won’t get it. At least not, unless we are pretty intellectually sophisticated. And … because many people are not - and yet think they are - there is a lot of commentary floating around nowadays which is either bad science or bad religion – or both! And, what people also fail to realize is that Adam and Eve cannot entirely be squeezed into our modern ways of thinking either …for, in various ways, they stand outside of modern thinking in ways that raise very profound questions about what it means to be human … and to be created by a God … who cares very much about what happens … here on earth. Questions which are as relevant for today - as they were in Ancient times.
After all, what people often fail to realize is that Adam is not a proper name at all. Adam in Hebrew is Ad-ham which is related to adama, which stands for the earth … from which Adam – Adham is created. Adam is really the first man to become “conscious” and is therefore all of us - everyone of us. Nor is Eve, a proper name either, for Eve means, in Hebrew, “Mother of all Living,” or “Child bearer.” Eve is therefore the first woman and thereafter every woman – all women – experience what Eve experienced. Which is, of course, especially for those who have children, what all women are biologically intended to be - “child bearers.” And Adam and Eve, as the first parents, are both child bearers, and we are all here today because our parents, for better or worse, were “child bearers.” And what a burden that is, to be a “child bearer.” Say, Amen!
And so, we are not talking literally about a specific man named Adam or a specific woman named Eve. And if we were more conversant with the original Hebrew we would see it right away. This is what the danger is when the Hebrew comes over into English and then we attach our own modern ideas to something that comes out of whole different context. Which is why, instead of merely reading into the story our own preconceptions … we need to listen to the Genesis story first and learn to understand it in its original context as best we can … before we adapt it to modern times. This is, in a way, just like the way I started out. By first telling you about the context at the Red Cross for my statement about “sin” - before going on to say that it is the cause for us all to have to “earn a living by the sweat of our brow.”
This is why no spoken word or written word should be taken out of context. And is also why every spoken word here today must be understood in the context of this church, in this community, at this time in the year 2005. Which is also why God’s word appears not in all times and places but in one place and at one time and yet for all time in the person of Jesus Christ. This is what is meant by the “incarnation” – the embodiment of God’s spoken word in the person of one man – Jesus.
11. Well, I hope I have managed to confuse you somewhat and at the same time … left you with the basic idea that it if life isn’t as great as you would like … there is a good reason for it.
And if I confused you somewhat, that’s not bad … because I hope that you will go away realizing that there is a whole lot more to the story of Creation … and Adam and Eve … than you ever thought possible – enough at least for several more sermons … even many Bible studies … and that this story, while told in mythological terms, is not a fairy tale … and it is not scientific fact either. It is different, it is deep, it is profound, and it is has in it such complex truths that every generation needs to re-evaluate it in light of our current situation as many scholars have done and are doing as we speak.
12. Now if this seemingly troublesome story of Adam and Eve leaves you a bit in despair or in a quandary … about sin … and what to do about it … and wondering are we just doomed or what? Let me say that, lacking time this morning … I hope to get into what our response …should be in light of our Christian faith … and how God in the person of Jesus Christ seeks to redress the situation … next Sunday and throughout the remainder of Lent.
And, perhaps having started out on this note … this beginning note about how life began … and how sin (however we understand it) came into the world … we can better appreciate how God has responded to our predicament … out of love … and forgiveness … and what God’s purposes are for us … in this life … and the next … given the situation as we find it.
All this, and more, as they say on TV … next week … and the week after …
But, until then … keep in mind that whether or not the so-called “fall” of man was intended by God … as some suggest or not … the consequences are very real. And we, here today, are born to live out those consequences. Not in the sense of being over laden with guilt for sins we did or did not commit … but with a realistic sense of hope and purpose that, in spite of our imperfections, God has not abandoned us … and, in fact, calls us to Him … out of love. And that God, in Jesus Christ, seeks to work with us … wherever we are … whatever the circumstances … loving us, forgiving us, guiding us … to be the best we can be … without condemning, judging, and otherwise criticizing us all out of proportion to our circumstance. As -- unfortunately, some religious groups are all too willing to do.
And, on that note, let us end with prayers to God … our Creator, redeemer, guide, and loving parent … who, in spite of our shortcomings, does not stop caring … and even welcomes us home … into His loving arms. When, at the end we, at last, as St. Paul says so eloquently, “have fought the good fight and have, at last, run the race.”
