Gracious

Pentecost 2B
6/7/15
Genesis 3:8-19

God of forgiveness and love, we cry out to you. Hear our prayers, guide our steps, strengthen our households, and help us always to turn to you in times of need. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

God is gracious, even when disciplining us.

In today’s first reading, we heard the story of Adam and Eve being kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

We’ve heard it before… God tells the humans that they can eat fruit from any tree in the garden, except for one… but the snake convinces them that God didn’t really mean it… so one at a time, the humans eat fruit from the forbidden tree.

And then God kicks the humans out of paradise.

In paradise, the humans had everything that they needed.

They were given food and protection, companionship with one another and a close relationship with God.

Once they were forced to leave paradise, the humans…

well… they still had everything that they needed.

God didn’t take away their food, it just becomes harder to find.

God didn’t take away their jobs as stewards of all creation, it just becomes a little bit harder to do.

God even lets the humans retain some divine powers – they still have the ability to create new life through childbearing – it’s just going to hurt a whole heck of a lot.

When God kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, they really didn’t get anything taken away from them that was necessary for life.

Their lives just became a little harder.

God was gracious to them, providing them with everything they needed, even when God was punishing them.

Adam and Eve had to struggle more to get food, to care for creation, and to create new life. But they were still able to do all these things. If their existence had become a little harder, well, that was their own doing.

Let me be clear here. When I use the names Adam and Eve for the next several minutes, please don’t think that I’m trying to generalize about all men or all women. Adam and Eve may have been actual historical characters, or they may just be stand-in names for all of our ancestors.

Either way, as characters in the Bible, Adam and Eve serve to exemplify the sinful characteristics that any one of us could be guilty of.

Clear as mud?

I guess what I’m trying to say is, this story isn’t about men and women – it’s about humanity, the human condition.

When we talk about Adam and Eve, we’re talking about you and me, and our grandparents, and our grandchildren. Any one of us could have made the mistakes that Adam and Eve made, and any one of us could have had the same opportunities to talk to God and be in close relationship with our creator.

So don’t go trying to blame all women for being cast out of paradise. It just as easily could have been the man who took the first bite from the forbidden fruit.

The actions of God matter a whole lot more here than the actions of the humans.

And God’s actions are full of grace and generosity.

I mean, the entire premise of this part of the story of Adam and Eve is that God wants to hang out with the humans, so God comes down from the heavens (or wherever it is that God usually resides) and goes for a walk in the Garden of Eden. God is looking for Adam and Eve so that they can spend some quality time together.

Wouldn’t that be great?

Wouldn’t it be awesome if God just showed up here and interrupted worship to say, hey everyone, we haven’t been spending enough quality time together lately. Let’s hang out!

God comes to the garden to hang out with Adam and Eve.

And God discovers that the humans have messed up.

And like any good parent, God knows that the children need to learn that there are consequences to their actions, so God punishes Adam and Eve for eating the forbidden fruit.

Adam and Eve broke the one commandment that God had given them.

God could have scrapped creation altogether and started over from scratch.

God could have created humans in such a way that they would not have been able to break commandments and betray the trust of their creator.

But instead, God chose to give humans the ability to choose relationship with their creator or not. And when they chose not, God gave them another chance.

God cast them out of paradise, yes, but that was their own fault. God still chose to give Adam and Eve everything that they would need to survive in the world outside of the garden.

God was even the one to make clothes for them when they discovered that they were naked and felt ashamed. He replaced their flimsy fig leaves with real clothes made out of animal skins.

Imagine that someone kicked you in the gut, and sprained their ankle when they did it. And then you bandaged up their ankle so that it would heal quickly and not cause them any more pain. That’s basically what God does for Adam and Eve in today’s story.

As we know, Adam and Eve weren’t the only ones to test the relationship between humans and God.

Moses killed a man, but God still made him the redeemer of the people when they needed to be rescued from slavery in Egypt.

David raped and impregnated a married woman, and then had her husband put to death, but God still allowed him to be king, and a great king at that.

Saul, or Paul, persecuted God’s people and watched as they were stoned to death, but God turned him in to the greatest missionary the world has ever known.

The list goes on and on…

The leaders of our country… a pastor you once knew… your crazy aunt or abusive step-father…

Your brother… your child… your partner… you…

Each one of us can find ourselves in this Bible story.

All of us have messed up at some point in our lives.

Any one of us would have probably done exactly the same thing as Adam and Eve did when the serpent started to plant doubts in their minds.

It is so easy for us to give in to temptation.

But God is gracious to us even in punishment.

Discipline isn’t meant to be crippling. It’s just what happens when we have to live with the consequences of our actions.

         Any good parent is going to get mad at their children from time to time.

But they don’t want to actually cause harm to their children.

Not really. Not for more than a few seconds, anyway.

They don’t want to do anything that will result in permanent damage or years of counseling. They just want their kids to learn how to live with the natural consequences of their actions.

Right? Even if you’re not a parent yourself – as I am not – you had parents, or grandparents or foster parents, or someone who raised you. 

That’s the kind of parent that God is to us.

We need to learn that our actions have consequences.

But even when God is teaching us that difficult lesson, God still provides for us, protects us, and gives us an incredible amount of freedom to make our own choices in life.

Adam still gets to eat, and harvest food from the earth, and provide for his family. It’s just a little harder in today’s world than it was in paradise.

Eve still gets to be as close to a god as humans will ever get – she is able to create new life. It’s just going to be incredibly painful now that she has left Eden.

Adam and Eve – humanity – you and I – we’ve messed up. So God made life a little more complicated than it needed to be, though really, that’s our own fault. When we look at what God gives to us, we still are provided with everything we need, and then some, thanks to God’s grace.

Ultimately, this is the central point of the Christian message.

God gives us all that we need to get by in life.

No matter what we do in life – how bad be are, or how good we are – God looks out for us. And God wants us to live well.

When we mess up, we have to live with the consequences of our actions.

But God still loves us. God blesses us, and helps us to move forward, by grace, through faith.

God is gracious.

Even when we mess up and deserve punishment, and God has to do some disciplining – our relationship with God is defined by God’s grace.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.