So many things happening in today’s readings. It was rather difficult to choose among which story to wrestle with – the question of who family is, which is a surprising moment in Jesus’ teachings – but I kept coming back to the Old Testament reading, to Genesis, partly I think because the figure of Eve has always been fascinating to me. She has been a bit of a scapegoat over the centuries, and indeed in Scripture we only hear from her for about four chapters, and then she disappears. There are a lot of sermons there to be preached as well.
But the language that resonated in particular this week comes from the beginning of today’s reading, and I’m going to start with a song – I will not sing it – but some of the words are this:
Now is the cool of the day
Now is the cool of the day
Oh, this earth is a garden
The garden of my Lord
And He walks in His garden
in the cool of the day
That’s a song Jean Richie wrote and recorded back in the 1970s, though I first came across it later – I learned it at a workshop and then became familiar with a recording that country singer and environmentalist Kathy Mattea made of it. It came to mind as I was thinking about this morning’s beautiful and rather heartbreaking passage from Genesis.
“They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze…”
In this story of creation, or from creation, not only was Paradise beautiful, but in the
evenings, God walked there, just like you or me. God sought out the company of God’s creation – what a wonderful image of the Garden of Eden – Adam and Eve didn’t have to seek God out – God was part of their everyday lives, in close relationship with them.
Oh, this earth is a garden
The garden of my Lord
And He walks in His garden
in the cool of the day.
“They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”
As is the case with many of our Sunday readings, some of what’s most important to know about the story is what comes just before or just after, or both – the parts of the story that are left out of what is chosen for our lectionary.
So today’s passage stars after what is perhaps the most dramatic and most familiar part of this story, that famous one we see in historic paintings and sculptures and movies and Bible story books – Adam and Eve, unclothed except for some strategically placed fig leaves, standing in the garden, looking at the Tree, which God has told them they cannot eat from. Satan is depicted as a serpent, and he’s offering an apple – never mind that apples didn’t likely grow in that part of the world at the time of this story’s writing, but that’s how artists have depicted it over the years. It’s the story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit – a story that imagines the coming of sin into the
world, tries to make sense of why there is sin in the world. A serpent to stand for evil, a delicious fruit to stand for temptation, two innocent human beings, and Paradise – the world before sin.
As Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber puts it: “… this absolute paradise in the garden between God and Humanity lasted approximately 20 minutes. Until Eve had a chat with a talking snake and then disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit … Eve messed it up for everyone by eating some piece of fruit God told her not to. Which feels kinda unfair to her and kinda unfair to us. But this is what we are told the story is about.”
The Creation story of Adam and Eve likely didn’t happen literally – science tells us, for
instance, that the world took much longer to create than seven days – a different kind of cosmic miracle, no less miraculous. So what do we take away from the story, this iconic story, that has been read and re-read and sometimes mis-read over the years?
The serpent tells Eve that if she eats the fruit, she will know the difference between good and evil. The Tree, the serpent tells her, gives wisdom. This doesn’t seem like a bad thing to have. Adam and Eve eat the fruit, and suddenly they have wisdom – they have knowledge of good and evil, and they have self-knowledge – they are ashamed – they are naked – and for the first time, they hide from God when God comes into the garden in the cool of the day.
God knows what has happened, or has a pretty good idea, but asks them anyway: “Who told you you were naked? Have you eaten the fruit I told you not to?” Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent. How often is that our first instinct when we’re caught doing something we aren’t supposed to be doing?
But is this story about obedience and about rules, or is it about relationship? Adam and Eve, instead of trusting the God who created them and takes care of them, listen to another voice, give into temptation, and they break their promise to God – they break their promise to a friend. And God’s response, in this chapter of Genesis, is anger, a curse on Adam and Eve, on their children, on the land that they will work, and then they are expelled from the Garden. Adam and Eve have broken this relationship of trust. Before God ever closed the gates of Eden to them, they in one sense had stepped out of Paradise already, themselves.
But before they go away completely – and this is one of those things that happen after the passage that we read today – God takes compassion on them – he makes clothing for them, to protect them from the elements – a small act of kindness and protectiveness before they leave Eden forever. God doesn’t stop loving them because they have broken that trust with him. Though Adam and Eve leave Paradise, God never leaves them, or their children, or their children’s children,
through age after age.
The story of Adam and Eve, and the apple and the Tree, are not likely literal, but that story of Eve and Adam is in another sense always happening. We move in and out of paradise, in and out of relationship with God, every day, sometimes because our faith is shaken by crisis or by grief or by hurt, but often, more often I suspect, because we focus on other things – we de-center our faith – we drop out of conversation with God and we listen to other voices. I think God is much less likely to bar us from Paradise than we are to leave it ourselves.
My Old Testament professor in seminary, Dr. Stephen Cook, believes God was and is always trying to establish a friendship with creation – that God loves in spite of and perhaps because of humanity’s mistakes and weaknesses. And Dr. Cook asks a really intriguing question: Is there another way to replant the seeds of Eden?
My Lord, He said unto me
“Do you like my garden so fair?
You may live in this garden if you keep the grasses green
And I’ll return in the cool of the day”
Can we replant the seeds of Eden? Can we return again to conversation and daily closeness with God, as individuals and as a people? How does Paradise happen again in this world?
We know God is never far off – God walks among us in the cool of the day, and the bright sun of morning, under the midnight stars and on the mountaintops. How do we plant new seeds? How do we make a garden where God meets us, and walks with us and talks with us and shares the joy of a creation that is good?
…Then my Lord, He said unto me
“Do you like my pastures of green?
You may live in this garden if you will feed my lambs
And I’ll return in the cool of the day”…
If God walks in the cool of the day and the sun of the morning, under the midnight stars, and on the mountaintops, God also walks in hospital rooms and bombed cities and in prisons and refugee camps. God walks in elementary schools and in halls of government, in airports and in nursing homes. If God has created us in God’s image, then all humanity is part of the beloved Creation – all of humanity has a place in the garden, and every place has potential to be a garden, space for peace, reconciliation, friendships across differences to take root and grow and blossom.
So how do we replant the seeds of Eden? We can begin by centering God, re-centering God, in the way we see the world, by watering, feeding, planting, making space for light, making time for prayer, looking for ways to serve God’s beloved children, and opening our ears to God’s voice in the cool of the day.
Amen.
Sermon delivered by The Rev. Cara Ellen Modisett on June 9, 2024, the third Sunday after Pentecost.
