we have met the enemy and he is us

from my sermon on 10/25/09 from Genesis 3:1-13

I learned Hebrew the old-fashioned way. We picked up the Hebrew text and began reading from Genesis chapter 1, verse 1. In beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Hebrew was hard. You turn to the front of the book...it's the back! Hebrew reads from right to left. That really scrambles your brain. The syntax is different, the grammar is different, the letters are different. The pronunciation has lots of gutteral stops. I once say a Jewish commedian on TV, who said that on the day of his bar mitzvah, when he was supposed to stand up and read from the scroll, he had a terrible cold. He walked up, coughed, cleared his throat, awful sounds and the rabbi said, "That's close enough. YOu pass."
And the story begins with a wonderful poem. God says, Let there be. And it was. God speaks and it happens. Light. Land. Water. Sky. Animals. Humankind.
In the second chapter, there is another creation story. It is so good, it is not told just once but twice. This story is probably the older story. It is very earthy, with God getting down in the dirt (adamah) to create humankind (adam). We are only a bunch of chemicals until God blows the breath of life into us and we become living beings.
Then there is the third chapter that we read today. We all knew it was coming in class. It happened to be a Monday afternoon. It had to be on a Monday. We were taking turns reading the Hebrew out loud and then translating into English. I don't know about anyone else, but this is what was going on in me, "STOP! Can't you see what you are about to do? " But they don't stop. A cloud outside the window blocked the sun. It grew dark in our classroom and in our souls.
It is called the Fall in classic theology. Although the word Fall is not used n the passage, we know that we have lost something. We are less than what God intends. The word sin is not used in the passage, yet it tells us a lot about the nature of sin.
Can we see that this is a story about who we are? I know some of you say that we Methodists don't talk about sin much, but today we are going to. Maybe you can find yourself in the story as we slow it down.
There is a sssssnake. I hate ssssnakes. I have been bitten by a sssssnake. The ssssnake is crafty. It is ssssubtle, ssssneaky, sssseductive, sssslippery. Most appropriate for characteristics for sin. The sssssnake doesn't make humans do anything. I grew up with the commedian Flip Wilson, who used to say, The devil made me do it. That's not the case here.
The ssssnake ssssimply talks to woman, and places doubt in her mind. Did the LORD say you can't eat? And the woman in reply adds to the LORD's words by saying, "Nor touch it." It is a dangerous thing to talk to the ssssnake and start adding to God's words, to go beyond God's authority. Some commentators say that this is the beginning of sin.
There is only thing the LORD has asked humankind not to do. And what do they want to do more than anything else? That one thing! When you can't have it, you only want it more. We have two sons. They used to fight over a toy. So we would buy them identical toys. What would they do? Fight over the one the other had. But yours is exactly the same, we would say. But I want his, they would reply.
The ssssnake says that humankind want die. They will know good and evil. What's wrong with knowing good and evil. If you read the start of the 4th chapter of Genesis, you will find that Adam knows his wife Eve and they conceive and have a child. To know means to create. We want to create our own standards for good and evil, make our own rules.
Adam and Eve both eat. I am sorry guys but we cannot put it all on the women. The Hebrew is pretty clear that Adam is a willing, passive, and silent partner throughtout the whole drama. I understand that this passage has been wrongly used over centuries to put all the weight on women.
When they eat, their eyes are open. They realize that they are naked, vulnerable, exposed. And they try to cover up. Do we hear this phrase today? Oh, almost every day. Someone does something wrong, and there is a cover-up.
And now we find some Jewish humor. With shat do they use to make clothes? fig leaves. Have you touched a fig leaf lately? They are scratchy like sand paper. Imagine wearing fig leaf underwear! Our attempts at cover-up are often ill-advised and painful.
They hear God walking in the cool of the evening, and they hid. I know you have never hidden your sin from God, run away from the One who made you. God asks, "Where are you?" I used to hear this as an accusation. As I have gotten older, I know hear the loneliness of God. "Where are you? I miss you. I made you for relationship." I know that there is a lot of sin in the world because there is a lot of loneliness in the world. This is not what God intends. Can you see that sin is more than they breaking of law? It is also the breaking of relationship.
"Did you eat?" the LORD asks. And the man says, "The woman gave some to me." And the woman says, "The snake." Blame assignment runs rampant even today. We point the finger at someone else, at something else. Only problem is that when you point the index finger at someone else, how many are pointing back at you? Three! We cannot avoid our culpability.
There was an old comic strip called Pogo, whose lead character was a possum. In 1953, Walt Kelley, the cartoonist, in a panel that was actually about taking care of the environment has Pogo say, "We have met the enemy and he is us." This is the story of sin. There is no one else to blame.
What are we to do? We are sinners. What does God do? Yes, there are consequences for our actions, but there is also grace. God makes clothes for the human beings, not out of fig leaves. God demonstrates fierce love, coming to human kind in Abrahan and Sarah to start a covenant people, to Moses who liberates, to the judge Deborah, to the prienst Samuel, to Ruth and Naomi, to King David, to the prophets like Jeremiah, and finally in God's own Son, Jesus, the Word made flesh. It is as if God says, "I will keep at this until I find a way for them to come home to me. I will not give up. I want you back."
It may feel like this to us today. Every Monday morning at our house in south Austin, I roll a big garbage container to the curb. Every Monday morning someone comes and takes it away. It doesn't matter how much it is or who generated it, it is simply gone. All the trash is taken away, and I get to start clean again.
In this house, it is every Sunday. God doesn't ask how much you haveor whose at fault. God simply takes it away. God wants us to be clean. God wants us back. That is the good news I have to share with you today.