July 9, 2023 homily on Genesis 3:1-7; 2. Cor. 15:20-26 by Pastor Galen Zook
Greatest Hits
This morning we are starting a new sermon series for the summer which I’ve entitled “Greatest Hits of the Bible: Revisiting the Bible’s Most Beloved Stories”
Often when we hear an old familiar song we just start singing along without paying too close attention to the lyrics. But occasionally, when we really stop and pay attention to the words, they may strike us differently depending on the circumstances or our particular season of life.
Similarly, if you grew up attending Sunday School then you probably heard certain stories from the Bible over and over again. The stories of Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood, David and Goliath, Queen Esther, and more have captured the imagination of children and adults for thousands of years. So much so that when we hear them, we might begin to “sing along” to the words without really paying that much attention. Frequently we may be tempted to believe that we’ve learned all of the moral lessons there are to learn from these stories and that we’ve sort of outgrown them.
But, for the next couple of months, I’m going to invite us to slow down, to pay attention to the “lyrics,” and to see how these familiar stories from the Bible might strike us differently given the current context that we’re in. We’ll revisit some of these favorite stories to see if there might be an angle that we may have missed, to see if it might be a moral lesson for us to learn that may relate to us as teenagers or adults in perhaps a slightly different way than they did when we were children.
So come along with me on this journey as we start today at the very beginning, in Genesis chapters 1 through 3, with the story of Adam and Eve.
Adam and Eve
In Genesis 2, God created the first human, “Adam,” and placed him in the Garden of Eden to take care of the Garden. God said that he could eat of every tree in the garden except the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But God saw that it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone, so God created all of the animals and birds and fish, but none of them were suitable partners for Adam, so God caused a deep sleep to come over Adam, took one of Adam’s ribs out of his side, and created a woman. Everything seems to be going great until a serpent came to them and tempted them to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which they did. After this, they were cursed, and banned from the Garden of Eden. And this is how we ended up in the mess we’re in today, living in a world where there is sin and evil and brokeness.
Now this story, at its simplest and purest form, teaches us that we ought always to obey God’s instructions. We learn that God wants the best for us, and even if we don’t understand why God tells us to do or not to do something, we should always obey God.
But in addition to these moral lessons, the story of Adam and Eve has often been used and abused throughout history to argue for or against any number of different social or political agendas. And so we’re going to look a little more closely at the story, to see exactly what it says and what it doesn’t say, and then we’re going to see what lessons we made draw from this story in light of Christ and the work that Jesus did for us on the cross.
Made In God’s Image
If we look more closely at the Genesis narrative, we see that the story of Adam and Eve is actually one of two stories back-to-back in Genesis chapters 1-3 about the creation of the universe. The first story, found in Genesis chapter 1, makes it abundantly clear that all people were made in the image of God. Genesis 1:27 says, “God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” The word that’s used here in the Hebrew is “adam,” a generic term referring to humans or humankind.
Equal Partners
And we see in the following verse that all of the adams, men and women, were given the mandate to care for all of creation. People of all genders were meant to be co-laborers, coregents—ruling over creation, being fruitful, and multiplying and filling the earth (Gen. 1:28). Being fruitful and multiplying doesn’t mean here that everyone in the world has to have children. We can also be productive in our work and in ministry, and we can help our species multiply through caring for others, including caring for children who are not our own. But again, we see here equality—all people being made in the image of God, called to be colaborers together.
Genesis chapter 2 starting in verse 4 is where we get the story of Adam and Eve. Here the Bible tells us that “the Lord God formed adam from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the adam became a living being.” Again here we have the word adam, which can be translated “human” or “person,” or I’ve even heard it translated “groundling.” The emphasis here is not on the gender of this first person who was created, but rather that we as humans are created by God, from the dust of the ground. It is God who gives us life.
Eventually, we see here that God creates a partner for the human because no suitable partner was found among the other creatures God has created, and because it was not good for the adam to be alone. And so God creates a partner for the adam. And it’s not until after that happens that we start to have different terms used for the male and female: ish and isha. But it’s important to note here that the isha, the woman, was taken from a rib from Adam’s side, connoting equal partnership, and that what’s emphasized here is their similarity as humans, rather than their differences.
I want to point out too that the word sometimes translated “helper” or “helpmeet” that is used to describe the woman is not one connoting inferiority, but rather it is a term of rescue, often used of God as in the case in Psalm 121:2: “I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” The isha was sent to rescue the ish from loneliness, rather than to be subservient to him. None of us are meant to be alone. And this doesn’t mean that everyone has a soulmate, or that everyone needs to get married or have a partner, but rather that we were made for community. None of us is an “island.” We need others in our lives.
Breaking the Curse
Now, of course, Adam and Eve didn’t stay in this garden paradise forever. They disobeyed God and were banished from the Garden of Eden.
Often Eve gets blamed for falling into temptation. But it’s important to note that the story clearly states that Adam and Eve were together when they chose to disobey the Lord (Gen. 3:6). They both seemed to know God’s instructions, and they both knowingly decided to go against God’s command, enticed by the serpent who caused them to question God’s intentions.
After Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden fruit, they were punished. God told Eve that her pain would be increased in childbearing, that her desire would be for her husband, and that her husband would rule over her (Gen. 3:16). God tells Adam that he will have to work hard and toil to survive, “by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19).
But the curse found in Genesis 3 is descriptive, not prescriptive! In other words, it is a realistic depiction of the way life would be for Adam and Eve now that they deviated from God’s plan. It is in no way a prescription of the way things are supposed to be. We should not just live with the curse. We can and should search for ways to make life better and easier, to lessen the effects of pain and sickness, to prolong life and make things more equitable and just in our society, just as God intended from the very beginning.
The Story of All of Us
Now it’s easy for us to shake our heads in disgust at Adam and Eve, to blame them for all of the pain and death and destruction that we see in the world. Adam and Eve had everything they could have ever wanted and needed. Why did they have to disobey God and mess everything up for the rest of us?
But in so many ways, the story of Adam and Eve is the story of every single one of us. Every person in the world is born naked and unashamed. Every single one of us is born with freedom of choice. We are born with the potential to make a positive or negative impact on the world.
But each and every one of us at various times in our lives doubt the goodness of God and question God’s intentions for our lives, and we disobey God’s commands. And each of us in large and in small ways, every single day, choose to go against God’s plan, to do the things that we think are best for us but that in the end hurt us and those around us, and sometimes those who come after us. The story of Adam and Eve is the story of each one of us.
Jesus
But the story of Adam and Eve is also the story of God’s desire to relate to us as human beings.
In the story of Adam and Eve we see that even after they ate the forbidden fruit, God still came to walk with them in the cool of the evening. When they hid, God called out to them and searched for them. And when God saw that they were ashamed of what they had done and afraid to stand before God, God clothed them with animal skins to take away their shame.
Throughout the Bible, God continues to search for and seek out people. God continually sent prophets, judges, kings, and others to call the people back to God.
Ultimately God sent Jesus, to give his life for us, to show us the way to God. Jesus demonstrated God’s love, grace, and mercy to us, and broke the effects of the curse by dying and rising again. As we read in 1 Corinthians 15, “For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:21-22).
So may we remember this morning that we are all made in God’s image. That God loves us so much that God came to rescue us from ourselves. And may we seek to live according to the wonderful plan that God has for us, working together in partnership and community to break the effects of the curse and multiply and expand God’s Kingdom on this earth. Amen!
Hampden United Methodist Church 