Rev. Marlene W. Pomeroy

First CongregationalChurch of Pasadena (UCC)

Genesis 2:15-17 & 3: 1-7

March 13, 2011

 

I have a friend whom I call my “go-to-girlfriend.” I go-to her for the big things in life – not hair, make-up, my weight, Reality TV or what car I drive. She could care less about those things. Instead she is my go-to girl about the big things in life: job, vocation, church, faith, literature, art and creativity, husbands, children, parents, and all things existential. Whenever I want a different perspective on something, I see her out. She always has a slightly different angle on the subject than me; or she raises an issue that I have not thought of.  Or, she says something that causes me to pause in reverence.

 

We all need people like that in our lives – whether real people or people in books who write about important issues. Sometimes these people are no longer living. You have people like this – someone who has made such a deep impression on your life that you can hear their voice in your head: “stay focused; don’t lower yourself to their level; keep your eye on the prize; forgive, and forgive again; use your gifts” they say. We channel them when we need to be patient or stay focused and not get de-railed by something or someone.

 

The book entitled Genesis, A Living Conversation by Bill Moyers is the book that changed my relationship with biblical storytelling. Like my friend, it gave me a whole new perspective on how to read the Bible that I had never been taught by anyone else. Genesis, A Living Conversation, which I put on the table as one of my pivotal books that shaped my faith, is a conversation about 10 stories from the biblical book of Genesis. Moyers takes 38 different writers, scholars and thinkers and assigns a handful of them to each of the 10 stories – and then they just have a conversation!  They are allowed to raise any theme that they want. Sometimes one dismisses a theme and just says, “That is simply not interesting to me,” or “I don’t think the Bible says that at all.” These people come from differing backgrounds and religious traditions and they bring that uniqueness to the conversation. What they do for me is offer me a multi-layered reality of the story they are focusing on. They remind me that every text in scripture has more than one meaning or interpretation, depending on factors such as: age, race, religious tradition and social location are. They invite us to read the Bible with real seriousness and to read it in community and to listen for the complexity of the story. We are urging folks to have prayer partners during Lent for this very reason. If you choose to read some scripture together and reflect on it, you will probably discover that your partner finds different things within the text than you do. By listening to another’s interpretation of scripture, we broaden our understanding of what the Bible might be offering to us.

 

I re-read the conversation on the story of Adam and Eve and the Apple this week and pondered the themes they raised. They talked about how the Bible in general, and this story in particular, teaches us about our humanity and our lives as well as teaching us about our God. Within the narrative in Genesis chapters 2 and 3 I counted over 25 different themes that are at least touched on! If I divide the themes between what they tell us about humanity and what they tell us about God, here is an example of what is covered in just 26 verses in our scripture:

 

About humanity, the text explores:

-the choices we make that can transform us and our world through our actions

-death and our awareness of it

-loneliness and companionship

-what causes curses and blessings

-Truth versus the quirks of an old culture

-shame and what it causes us to do

-the story of growing up and leaving the innocence of childhood behind

-the notion of women being subordinate to men as a consequence to their actions

-the connection between our behavior and consequences

-the fact that the serpent asks the first question recorded in our Bible

-misplaced trust (Eve and the serpent/ Adam and Eve)

-Eve’s disobedience resulting in the pain of childbirth – and is this prescriptive or descriptive?

-knowledge of good and evil and what is the cost of that knowledge.

 

About God, the text explores:

-presenting God as a being who is affected by the decisions/actions that created beings make

-God who creates a world lovingly and carefully? and then entrusts us with the greatest gift of all – free will

-the notion of God as personal rather than distant – one whose footsteps we hear walking in the garden

-God as punitive and angry when we disobey

-God as one who doesn’t put the magic cookies in the attic, but places them right on the kitchen table within our reach (Genesis p. 47)

-God as someone who creates us in God’s image

 

If we just sit and ponder all of those themes in one full chapter of the Bible, it is truly amazing and will provoke great discussions. I fully expected to pick one or two themes and talk just about that, but once I listed all the themes that came up, I was struck by that fact. Our Bible raises many, many issues about life and purpose and humanity and God and if we take the time to sit with and reflect on these stories, we will learn so much about who we are and who we are to be in this world.

 

There is a method of reading scripture called Lectio Divina. It is a devotional reading of scripture that was evident in biblical times and formally developed by the Roman Catholic Church in the 12th century. It asks you to sit and meditate with small pieces of scripture and let the text speak to you. Like the folks conversing in Bill Moyer’s book, it invites you to sit with the words and to ponder their meaning over time. What emerges is new incites and new understandings of words that we have heard. The only requirement is that we must have time to listen and be open to hearing something in a new way.

 

If I asked you to tell me the story of Adam and Eve and the serpent in the book of Genesis, you could probably tell me the story and it would go something like this: Adam and Eve were happy and naked in the Garden of Eden. The serpent offered Eve an apple; she ate it and offered it to Adam and he ate it as well, even though they were told not to eat of the fruit of that tree. As a result, they were aware of their nakedness, they were ashamed and they hid from God. God was mad and cursed them and banished them from the garden. One traditional message you would get from this re-telling is: don’t eat the fruit that you are warned not to eat; don’t listen to the wife.

 

That is accurate factually. And yet it is not the whole story. Through Lectio or employing a conversation with others, you will discover new teachings, new lessons and new questions.  You will see a God who employs both tender love and harsh consequences to get us to make good choices.  You might see and hear of the human instinct to question authority and break rules? and to then live with the consequences of their actions. You will be invited to ask – in whom do we place our trust, and are they worthy of that trust?

 

The Bible does have laws and rules and ordinances that teach us right and wrong and that are far more straightforward in their message than these stories; teachings like “use kind words” and “don’t kill.” ”Reach out and help those who are poor and feed the hungry.”  The Bible also has stories that work quite differently than rules and teachings; these stories guide us and engage us and invite us to use our imaginations. They inspire us to forgive, repent and reach beyond our base instincts to live in splendor!

 

However, to do that, we must set aside the time to engage these stories – preferably alone as well as with others.  Lent will give you many, many stories from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament to ponder in the next forty days.  You may also find stories from outside Scripture to enhance your faith journey. There are 15 books that we have laid out on the table in the parlor for you to peruse during coffee hour that have been nurturing for your pastors. Write down a title and purchase it at your local book store for spiritual nurture!

 

In addition, today we are invited to see the Bible as an exciting storybook that addresses the deepest parts of our lives – and to open that storybook regularly. And to listen? Amen.