“The Garden of Eden in Context” based on Genesis…

March 1, 2020
by Sara Baron

Six years ago I
shared with the worshiping community in this church my learnings
about the Garden of Eden story. Some of you weren’t here yet, and
some of you don’t have perfect memories. The challenge of serving
THIS church, though, is that some of you DO seem to have perfect
memories, and I don’t want to bore you. So… if I do, I’m sorry. I
promise I’m getting to new and different points, but we all need to
get there together, and that requires reviewing the information about
the story first.

The Creation
story that starts in Genesis chapter 2 is the Yahwist version, which
means it is folk literature, aimed at explaining why things are they
way they are. Folk literature and shared communal myths are pretty
deeply related. While the entire rest of the Hebrew Bible never
comes back to mention the Garden, or Adam, or Eve again, the
Christian tradition has been quite obsessed with this story. That’s
likely due to the work of Paul in Romans, and the way that Paul’s
understanding became a normal way of understanding the point of
Jesus!

However, the
story itself makes the most sense when we look at it in context, and
the context for the story is the Ancient Near East, and the creation
stories of the Ancient Near East. For transparency’s sake, my
understanding about this text comes from the brilliant Roman Catholic
priest and scholar Addison Wright, who shared with “Ecumenical
Scripture Institute” in 2011.

The Canaanites,
neighbors and frenemies of the Ancient Israelites, have a creation
story centered around their tribal god, Baal. Baal
was for them the storm god and fertility god. He fought Leviathan in
order to bring order out of chaos. He dispensed well-being on the
earth. He is called rider of the clouds, and much of this is
appropriated for YHWH. Baal has a holy encampment on his holy
mountain after the intentional flood at the sea – like YHWH with
Sinai and Noah. Some text fragments of Baal’s creation story have
incantations against snake bites, with a story about a man in the
east near the Tigress called Adam who touched a tree he shouldn’t
have touched, and got bit by the snake, and by calling on the gods he
got the incantations to avoid death, and the enmity between humans
and snakes. That tree was the tree of death.

OK,
so hopefully I’ve done my job in convincing you that the early
Genesis stories that the Yahwist tells fit into the Ancient Near
East. Now, in the Ancient Near Eastern people believed that
you could EITHER be immortal OR reproductive. You probably can see
the problem – if you let immortals reproduce, you get to infinite
people very quickly. You can probably also see then, that for the
people who believed this, sexuality was inherently related to death
and mortality. The capacity to procreate came WITH the reality of
dying. And, lest we forget the rather long era of human history
before effective birth control, sexuality and children were tied
closely together. So again, parenthood and death was one option and
immortal life without sexuality was the other. One could not have
both, as they saw it.

Furthermore, in
Ancient Near East stories, paradise gardens are places that IMMORTALS
live. Thus, children do not live there. Given this assumption,
eating from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”
transformed Adam and Eve from being immortal, asexual beings into
mortal, sexual beings. That knowledge seems like it may have had a
lot to do with sexual maturity.

Now, when I
first heard this, I liked it a lot. Mostly I liked it because it
pulled us out of blaming women for everything, and out of a hyper
focus on sin. I wasn’t really convinced by it though.

Then, Father
Wright pointed out that the punishments given in the story fit this
understanding. After they eat, they see that they are naked, which
fits a burgeoning sexual awakening. We stopped reading before the
rest of the punishments, but they are: the couple is thrown out of
the Garden, the woman will have pain in childbirth, sexual desire
will complicate life, you will have to work to stay alive, and you
will now die. Which it turns out, all fits. Leaving the Garden is
what happens when you aren’t immortal. Pain in childbirth is only
relevant when childbirth is going to happen. Sexual desire IS
complicated, and wasn’t when they didn’t have any. Having to work to
stay alive isn’t necessary when you can’t die. Finally, being mortal
means death will come. Perhaps most interestingly, at the end of
the list of punishments, the woman is named for the first time. Adam
(whose own name means mud-creature) calls her “Eve, because she was
the mother of all who live.” Eve means to breath, to live, or to
give life.

At that point,
I was convinced that Father Wright was not only onto a cool
interpretation, his interpretation was superior to any others I’ve
ever heard. The only problem is that it doesn’t work with Paul’s
take in Romans, at least as it has been used through the millenia.
Paul argues that as death came into humanity through Adam, the sting
of death is removed from humanity by Jesus. In fact, Paul is sort of
taking on the whole Ancient Near East, because he is claiming that
with God’s work in Jesus, one can have children AND be immortal, just
not an immortality on earth. Paul is trying to make sense of Jesus,
and of the impact of his life, and this is how he does it. I don’t
think Paul meant to create quite the firestorm of misogyny and
sin-guilt that he accidentally did.

Which then
leaves us free to be rather grateful to Adam and Eve, since if they
hadn’t eaten of that tree, none of us would exist 😉 Moreso, it
gives us freedom to reconsider our understandings of both gender and
sin. It feels like a good reminder that by “sin” the Bible means
“missing the mark” which always feels a lot lighter than what I
would otherwise assume.

One of my
curiosities is about why we’ve held onto this story so tightly.
Again, the ancient Jews did not, and while Paul makes this argument,
we could have rather ignored it as well. Yet this story is still one
of the living folk narratives in our culture, for Christians and
non-Christians alike.

I’ve wondered
if it relates to a yearning for “paradise.” It is all sort of
interesting, right? Because once we bring Paul into it, paradise
comes back in the form of afterlife. And I think people yearn for
paradise, quite possibly because the world we live in is so full of
suffering and we’d like to consider other options. The Garden of
Eden itself though, according to the story, was quite small! It was
small enough for one person to tend to it, and it contained only two
people. That would be REALLY boring for ETERNITY. Exiting
definitely seems like the right option.

And yet, the
world is not as it should be. We know this in our bones. And we
YEARN for it to be better. Sometimes our yearning takes the form of
remembering the past in a way that cleans it up and makes it seem
closer to perfect than it was. Sometimes our yearning encourages us
to close our eyes to the pain and suffering around us. Sometimes our
yearning for better closes our eyes to the harm we are doing, and the
shame we live with. Sometimes our yearning for better erupts in
anger for how things are. Sometimes our yearning for better makes us
afraid of what is and what might come.

AND, sometimes
our yearning for better is how God works with us to make the world…
better. Isn’t it complicated that the same yearning can do harm and
do good? Oh, human life. I think there are two best ways to respond
to our shared yearning for a better world. One, as you might guess,
is to work with God and each other to make the world better. The
other is to put our energy on noticing the things that are already
good. There may be a natural desire for paradise, and we don’t live
in one, but we do live in a world filled with wonders, and when we
forget to attend to them, we can miss out on all the goodness that is
already with us. The kindom, they say, is already here in part and
is coming in completion. Let us pay attention to both parts – as
they are the work of co-creating that paradise with God. Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/
 https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 1, 2020

Sermons

“Distributive Justice”based on Genesis 1:1-2:4a

February 18, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

In the early days of Christianity, new Christians were baptized on Easter and spend 40 days in preparation for that baptism, much like Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness preparing for his ministry after his baptism. (I don’t know why the order was reversed.) This included time included fasting, prayer, and teaching.

Eventually, the 40 days before Easter became a time that baptized Christians used to reconsider their lives, their faith, and the next sets of commitments they were ready to make to make space for God to sanctify their lives. The math oriented among us may have noticed that there are more than 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday, our tradition says that Lent does not include Sundays because all Sundays are celebrations of the resurrection, and as such are not fasting days but feasting days! Lent is 40 days, not including Sundays.

My intention during this Lent is to reconnect to those roots, in a different way. John Dominic Crossan theorizes that the primary difference between the way of Jesus and the ways of human empires is how they hold power. Namely, Jesus lived and taught nonviolent resistance, whereas human empires inherently engage in violence. If I were to come down to one difference between the ways of God and the ways of the world, I’d have to agree: God is nonviolent and the world is violent.

I’d give you examples, but I doubt a single one of you needs me to. 🙁

Nonviolence is way to create a world of justice, a world without anyone dominating anyone else, a world of fair distribution of good, a world where the people can thrive. You’ve likely noticed that this isn’t the world we live in right now. It wasn’t the world Jesus lived in either. Nor was it the world that the ancient Jews occupied.

Last week in my sermon I mentioned domination systems, “Domination systems are humanly contrived legal, social, political, economic, military, and religious systems deliberately designed and built to create and maintain power by a few at the top over the many below them. They exist to perpetuate the power of dominators over those dominated, explain why it is necessary, and to transfer wealth from workers up the ladder to the few obscenely wealthy persons at the top of the pyramid. Domination systems of various types have existed since the beginning of recorded history.”^¹ I proposed that one of God’s primary aims is to disrupt systems of domination and oppression by building cooperation and connection, to bring justice and wholeness.

This Lent, I intend to focus on God’s vision for justice, how we see it in the Bible, how we can feel its urgings now, and what that means for our lives. In other words, I think God wants wholeness for all people, and the only way to get that is by creating a just world. This seems to me to be one of the strongest overarching themes of the Bible, and I’ve chosen 5 passages as examples of how it plays out.

As you probably noticed, the first passage starts at the beginning of the Bible. Our Biblical scholars think that this story is the creation of the Southern priests of Judah. The priests were not intending to claim that they knew how the world had really started, but they were intending to make meaning out of existence itself. (Since the priests were likely also some of the most significant editors of Genesis, if they really thought they had “the answer” to creation, then they wouldn’t have included another answer immediately after this one.)

John Dominic Crossan presented some great ideas about this text during is Carl Lecture this fall. Thanks be to God, they are also written down in the 2^nd chapter of his book God and Empire, which has made it much easier for me to recreate his brilliance for you. Dom, as he invited us to call him, points out that the priests present God as first “building a house” and then “furnishing it.” Each of these takes 4 steps, so you might expect creation to take 8 days, or 9 to add a Sabbath. Yet, there are double actions taken on days 3 and 6 to force it all to fit into 6 days of action and a 7 day week. He thinks the 8 parts fitting into 6 days is actually intentional, it draws our attention to the work done to make it fit, it emphasizes getting to 7 at the right time! Dom concludes that this is intended to mean, “in creating the universe, not even God could skip the Sabbath. Put another way: in creating the universe, God crowned it with the Sabbath.”^²

He also notices that in day 7 there is a repetition of “rested from all the work he had done”, namely, “And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.” (Genesis 2:2-3) Dom explains the repetition this way, “It is not humanity on the sixth day, but the Sabbath on the seventh day that is the climax of creation. And therefore our ‘dominion’ over the world is not ownership but stewardship under the God of the Sabbath.”^³ Those priests really were thinking theologically (like they do). This creation story tells us again and again that God sees creation as good and tells us that God is the God of the Sabbath.

Now, the sabbath is one of the ten commandments, likely the one we take the least seriously. Perhaps because our understanding of it has been limited! I want you hear how it is put in Exodus, where the commandment reflects back to this creation story:

Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it. (Exodus 20:8-11)

Dom says, “The Sabbath Day was not rest for worship but rest as worship. It was a day of equal rest for all – animals, slaves, children, and adults – a pause that reduced all to equality both symbolically and regularly.”^⁴ In some texts it even says that the Israelite males should rest SO THAT their slaves and animals could also rest. (Exodus 23:12 and Deut 5:14). This wasn’t something I’d noticed before Dom pointed it out, but he adds even more meaning into this, it gets even juicier! Dom suggests that because the Sabbath was the crown of creation, and one of the first things we know about God is that God is the God of the Sabbath AND because the Sabbath is about equal rest for everyone THEN the Sabbath is about DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE of rest, AND our God is a God who built distributive justice into the fabric of creation.

This creation story then suggests that everyone, all of creation, has a right to rest built into the rhythm of time itself! Furthermore, time itself beats to the rhythm of justice, with the rest as the centerpiece of time keeping. Dom concludes that the sabbath tradition itself is a distributive justice, one that starts by distributing rest equally, and then seeks to distribute food, education, and health. The desire for these to be well distributed is inherent in both God and in creation.

However, distributive justice is not inherent in most human societies. Domination systems are the opposite of this proposed rhythm of creation. Domination systems aren’t about rest OR justice. Sabbath tells us of God’s own need for rest that makes space for our shared rest. Sabbath is a gift, and one we are to share.

Today, we desperately need Sabbath. We need time away from the 24 hour news cycle. We need time for in person relationships. We need time for play! We need time to let our attention wander and not need to pull it back. We need time without pressure to be producers or consumers. We need a break from our “normal” to be more fully humanized. We need time for prayer and contemplation, for laughter and celebration. We, like all other humans in all other times, need rest.

But God doesn’t force us to take it, we have to let ourselves have it. Our tradition says that while God does set things up to be good for us, God does not force us nor dominate us to make us do it. Domination systems are bad for humanity, but God doesn’t force us out of them either. God works against them, and God’s people are asked to work against them, but no one is forced to do so.

Furthermore, the work against them can only be nonviolent and in love, or else we become a part of what we’re trying to dismantle.

This Lent, I invite you to Sabbath. Find rest, hold it dearly, and do whatever you can to enable rest for others as well. Remember the rhythm of creation, take note of the God of Sabbath, sense the yearning for justice in the world – and rest. It is the first step towards justice. It is an imperative step towards living nonviolently, as it is living nonviolently with ourselves, and thus modeling it for others. Thanks be to God for being the God of Sabbath. Amen

1Jim Jordal, “What is a Domination System” found on 2/10/2017 athttp://www.windsofjustice.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=356 written on March 14, 2013.

2John Dominic Crossan God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now (USA: HarperOne, 2007), page 51

3Crossan, 51.

4Crossan, 54.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady