2nd Sunday after Pentecost
Notes
Transcript
The Fall of Man
The Fall of Man
Let’s pause our lives, at the start of ordinary time - this Green Season - and consider the grand story of redemptive history.
From Creation to Fall to Redemption and Resurrection.
Today we hear the narrative arc of the biblical story.
The backdrop is that Adam and Eve have just desired more than what had given them.
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.
The word for ‘wise’ (shkl) here carries a sense of understanding
They exchanged the truth of God for a lie. The understanding they gain is not how great life is but how deep of a hole they have dug.
What is the first thing that they comprehend? Shame.
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
The second thing they comprehend? Fear.
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
In reflecting on this passage, Luther has this great line:
Luther’s Works, Volume 1 8. And When They Had Heard the Voice of the Lord God, Who Was Walking in Paradise at the Breeze of the Day, Adam and His Wife Hid Among the Trees of Paradise from the Face of the Lord.
By nature we have become so thoroughly frightened that we fear even the things that are safe.
Isn’t this true now more than ever?
He goes on to say that Adam and Eve have lost their confidence in God.
Adam and Eve were not avoiding the Devil, the culprit of their sin, they were avoiding God- their creator who is their and our redeemer!
When I worked at Walgreens every once in a while someone would drop and break a bottle of acetone nail polish remover onto the floors. Now if you’ve ever seen this happen- particularly if you’ve ever seen a case of nail polish remover break on a floor then you know immediately the floor is stripped bare. JUST ABSOLUTELY clean. Any pore is opened up and sanitized. But eventually all those little pores and that newly stripped floor catches ALL the dirt.
This is how sin works. Once we hide it we think - we’ve done it. It looks good. What hiding our sin does though is make way for a greater mess to manifest. St. Paul explains it like this:
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—
Paul goes on to say:
But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.
This is the promise from the close of our Genesis reading
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
This is known as the proto gospel or the first gospel.
Hidden in the curse is the promise that God will crush the devil. This is why at Christmas we sing Joy to the world -
“No more let sins and sorrow grow, nor thorns infest the ground, He comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found.”
Jesus comes to bind the strong man of Satan that we may be found in the blessings of Christ.
So what do we do while we wait for Christ? We live. We live between the now and the not yet. Christ has Come, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.
We live in the tension of a bruised heel and the crushing blow of evil’s defeat.
For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,
Now what?
Now what?
Friends our call as Christians this day is to redeem work. We courageously confront the tense and unknown.
And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
Our greatest task is to reform our present culture of contempt, isolation and condemnation.
Andy Crouch - the former editor of Christianity today and former strategist for the John Templeton foundation says this:
“We change culture when we create new culture” - Andy Crouch
Fundamentally, life in the garden is one of culture - of cultivating a life giving communion that does not blame nor hide but shares, calms and restores.
Christ has shared His life with us that we may be enlightened by the gospel to love the world. You are empowered by the creator to cultivate a world liberated from shame & fear.
To recap this idea let’s watch a brief video that helps elucidate gods Grand story.