Lenten Devotions – Week 1

READING: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

Our Lenten pilgrimage through the wilderness began last Wednesday in the valley of Ashes. There, we were reminded that we were dust and ash and to dust we shall return. But we were also reminded that the cross stamped on our foreheads that night was first placed there in baptism, as a sign of God’s claim on us – a brand marking us as belonging to the Body of Christ. 

Then on Sunday, we visited the wilderness of temptation with Jesus. There, Jesus revealed to us that in the Wilderness, God meets God’s people. 

But our wilderness roaming is not aimless. In fact, along the way, we come to places of significance and meaning. Having already come down to the valley of ashes and the desert wilderness, our next stop is the Garden of Eden. You might recall this stop from Sunday’s readings. 

Though impossible to place on a map, Eden was paradise. There the Lord God walked with the Adam… the creature made from the mud of the ground – which is what the name Adam or A’Dam means in Hebrew. The Lord God made Eden a home for the Lord God’s good creation. In the Garden, the A’Dam was free to live in peace and free, though the Lord God instituted a few rules. The Lord God told the A’Dam that he could eat from any tree in the Garden except the tree of the knowledge of the Good and Evil. If Adam ate from that tree, he would die. 

Now the Lord God’s command was not prescriptive or intended to be punishment, rather it was like a parent warning a child not to touch a hot stove, for if you touch you will burn your hand. 

Then we jump from the Lord God and Adam, to the serpent and the woman. Our reading skips a few verses, the ones in which God takes a rib from Adam, or perhaps more accurately in Hebrew, splits Adam into two and creates Eve, which means the mother of creation. 

The serpent and Eve share in the first theological conversation of scripture. The serpent asks if the Lord God said that she should not eat from any tree in the Garden. Now of course, Even wasn’t there for the initial boundary setting between Adam and the Creator. She only has second-hand information. 

But like any good theologian, she looks for context. She locates the tree in the middle of the garden, offering a way to know where the tree could be found in order to avoid it. Then, in a theological move that every good Hebrew faithful would know, Eve adds a layer of protection. Just as the 616 laws of Israel that governed daily life: what could be eaten, what work could be done, and how to remain ritually clean, as they were designed to keep people always two steps back from directly breaking one of the 10 commandments – Eve adds an extra step to the Lord God’s boundary of not eating the fruit of the tree. Eve declares that the tree could not be touched. If the tree cannot be touched, then surely none of its fruit will be accidentally eaten. 

The serpent then presents Eve with a new reality – eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and you will be like God. 

This is where the gravity of Eden begins to pull on us. A good Hebrew or a good Lutheran ear would know that being like God is the issue at the heart of the commandments. It is to contravene the first commandment – I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other Gods before me. 

As Martin Luther said, if we keep the first commandment, then we keep all the others. If we fail to keep any of the other commandments, we also fail to keep the first. 

The temptation of the old sinner within us is the temptation to be like God – to be God in God’s place. 

Being like God also means innocence lost. Being like God means the reality of sin, the reality of suffering, the reality of self-centeredness, self-righteousness, and self-importance enters into our awareness. 

Eden is no longer possible for those who seek to be like God. 

And yet, it is human to want to know God. Human to seek understanding. Human to seek context and location. Human to speak words that try to articulate the divine, that try to describe God and God’s creation. The serpent in all his craftiness knew this. 

And the serpent knew that this meant Eden would end. 

But Adam and Eve do not leave Eden empty-handed. We do not leave from Eden empty-handed. 

God gave Adam and Eve skins and furs to wear, and God gave them a promise. That no matter where they went, that would be known. Known by and to each other. And known by God. 

Known by the God who gave us Eden, who gave us paradise. 

Known by the God who leaves Eden, who leaves paradise with us. 

The God who, knowing sin, suffering and death, would enter into the world by humanity… decided to be like us. To take on our flesh, our world, our lives. And to bear to our suffering, bear our sin and bear our death all the way to the cross… that we will one day see Eden once more. 

Amen