Sermon: Rude Awakening – First Sunday in Lent (Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7)

I give my sermon this morning the title of “Rude Awakening,” even though the word ‘awakening’ or ‘awake’ does not appear in the scripture reading. None of the characters have gone from a literal state of sleep or slumber into awakening. The closest we have to that idea is in verse seven, after Adam and Eve have eaten the fruit from The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad, it says that their “eyes were opened.” As they do when we first awaken from sleep. In that moment, Adam and Eve woke up. The emerged from the dream of The Garden of Eden and were confronted with new knowledge and new realities. They were confronted with their nakedness, their vulnerability, and a new dynamic in their relationship with God. Suddenly they felt shame for the first time. They felt fear and anxiety toward God, and so they hid when God came walking through the Garden. We don’t know exactly what knowledge they received when they ate the fruit, or what exactly it was that led them to feel shame and vulnerability and anxiety, we just know it happened very abruptly. It was a rude awakening.

When I was enrolled in Clinical Pastoral Education, and I was working at a hospital as a Chaplain intern, once a month I would have to work a 24-hour shift on-call at the hospital. This meant that I would have to sleep at the hospital so I could be there if I was needed during the night. I didn’t really sleep during those shifts. The bed was comfortable; the room was quiet and in a secluded wing of the hospital. But I just couldn’t get good sleep. I couldn’t let myself. I would lay there waiting for my rude awakening. When I would be called over the intercom, my pager would go off, and then my phone would ring with a call from the charge nurse. The anticipation was so nerve-wracking because overnight, if the chaplain was called to respond someplace, it usually meant death. Someone had died, or was facing an emergency situation that put them at great risk of dying. I was tired after a long, hard day in the hospital and all I wanted to do was sleep, but I couldn’t. I lay awake in anticipation of the call that would take me away from my peaceful evening, that would rudely awaken me, and confront me with the difficult, painful reality of death.

We have entered the season of Lent. This is the season on the church calendar that turns our attention toward death, to our mortality. It begins on Ash Wednesday, when we are reminded that we come from dust and to dust we will return, and continues for the next 40 days, which takes us through Good Friday and Jesus crucifixion, and eventually Easter Sunday and the resurrection. Typically, one of the stories we are offered at the beginning of Lent is the story of Jesus’s time in the wilderness. Jesus goes into the wilderness for 40 day and 40 nights for a time of fasting and prayer. While there he encountered Satan and was faced with temptations. From that story, repentance of sins and the self-discipline to resist temptations has become a common part of the spiritual practices associated with Lent. The most culturally acknowledged of those practices is the idea of “giving something up for lent.” This practice has become so common in our cultural that even many non-religious people will take part in the observance, giving up chocolate or alcoholic beverages or social media (but not until after they have posted about it on social media, of course). It becomes sort of an inverse New Year’s Resolution. Any sort of sinful indulgence that can be repented of and abstained from, so that through self-deprivation we might be in solidarity and try to understand Jesus who wandered in the desert wilderness.

While Jesus grapples with sin and temptation in the desert, the lectionary offers us another scripture reading this morning, on the first Sunday in Lent. This reading is the one we just heard, from the book of Genesis. Instead of a desert the setting is in the lush, plentiful, life-giving Garden of Eden. There, in a place where God has provided Adam and Eve with all they need for a beautiful life, we see that the reality, the challenge, of temptation still exists. In fact, many people will point to this story as the place where temptation began. The story where we see the Original Sin that humanity has been wrestling with ever since.

Adam and Eve become awakened to something. The text doesn’t tell us exactly what it is, but by the shame they feel and in God’s displeasure at what they have done there is an implication that the thing they have awakened to is sin. Or at least, something sinful. The question then becomes; What are they going to do about it? This is where temptation gets into the story. Being awakened to sin can mean experiencing temptation, because being awake means having choices to make. When we wake up in the morning a cascade of choices begins that will define the rest of our morning. Do I get out of bed, or do I hit the snooze button again? Make the bed or scroll on the phone? Sit down for breakfast or grab something on the go? Take the shortcut or the long way to work? Being awake means having choices to make about how we will live our life and spend our time and treat our neighbors.

Being awakened can also mean becoming aware of the world’s need for healing and wholeness. Bringing reconciliation and renewal to such issues is the work Jesus calls us to, and so there are choices to make. How will we respond to that awakening? What choices do we make in the face of the temptation and sin and brokenness of this world? Do we get out of bed, or do we hit the snooze button, so to speak?

Certainly, we can learn from the choices that Adam and Eve make. When Adam and Eve ate from the tree, we are told they became aware of their nakedness. In that moment the decision they make is to cover themselves in loincloths. Then in verse 8, God comes walking through the garden. In this story God has a physical form, so Adam and Eve can see God and hear God coming. The choice they make then is to hide from God. Maybe they are ashamed, maybe they are embarrassed, maybe they are afraid of God’s anger. The main thing that choice tells us is that they did not trust God or themselves. We also see that in the choice that is made to listen to the serpent and eat from the tree in the first place.

It’s hard to blame them, really. The instruction not to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree seems a bit like the old joke about someone telling you not to think about pink elephants. What is the first thing that comes to mind if someone give you that instruction? A pink elephant. Maybe it’s wearing a top hat and a monocle. Maybe its riding a unicycle. You see, it doesn’t take long for things to spiral out of control. Just as it is in this story, all the serpent has to do is bring up the tree and coax them to think a little about why it is forbidden. Is it because God has knowledge that God doesn’t want to share? Is there power that God wishes to keep to themselves? If the humans are made in the image of God, shouldn’t they be able to eat from this tree? Why limit them? And now there is doubt. Now there is another possible choice put into the mix of their seemingly simple and idyllic lives. They are not putting their trust in God or themselves.

Walter Bruegemann, in a commentary on the book of Genesis, observes that in this story humans are given three things as gifts from God. First is vocation. God gives Adam the work of caring for the Garden and its inhabitants. Second, is permission. God gives the humans nearly free reign to enjoy the fruit of the Garden. The one exception, of course, is the fruit from the tree in the center of Eden. So, God gives them a third thing, prohibition; do not eat from that one tree. God gives vocation, work and purpose within creation. God gives permission to enjoy creation for ourselves. God gives a prohibition that serves as a warning that with the freedom some choices have consequences, because we are not God’s and the world is not perfect. Even in Eden, even in what God has called ‘good’ there exists temptation and the maneuvering of ‘evil’ forces. Which in itself is a rude awakening. Upon that awakening one of the choices we have is how to respond.

Unfortunately, over time, we have come to focus almost exclusively on the prohibition in the story. On what God has told us not do and the consequences for disobeying. Because of this, many come to see God mostly as a God of prohibition and judgement and punishment. Of course, this story raises many questions. One is, would we have a sinless, perfect world if Adam and Eve had just obeyed God? However, if that is the case, why would God even put that tree there in the first place? We struggle to understand God and so we struggle to feel confident in how to respond to God. So much happens in the world and in our lives that makes us think, “Why would God let something so terrible happen?” or, “How could God love me and let me suffer life this?” We struggle to trust God and so we struggle to trust ourselves. The manipulations of the serpent in the Garden continue because it distorts the way humans look at creation, they become more self-centered than before. It all becomes about them. With this, they begin to feel shame, doubt, and fear in the face of God’s creation.

Adam and Eve are awakened to seeing the world through their own eyes, and when that happens they feel as if they have to make decisions based on their own understanding and out of their own self-interest. This is where we can all get tripped up. We feel as if we have to exert our own power and our own control over things. We can’t trust that what God has made and what God has given us as good. The mention of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the command not to take from it, leads us to assume that God has set limits on the world because God ‘knows best.’ To disobey an order like that means to assume that we can know better than God. A belief like that comes with a lot of pressure to prove it. So, we try to impose our own will and put our own prohibitions on things. Unfortunately, when we make the prohibition of things and people our main vocation, we find that it does not create more permission for us. We do not become freer. That is certainly what the first humans found out.

Look at how this played out for Jesus when he was tempted in the desert. In Matthew 4:1-11 we find the story of Jesus in the wilderness, fasting and praying for 40 days and 40 nights. Instead of a serpent, in this story we have Satan visiting Jesus, in whatever form Satan takes. He tries to tempt Jesus with the chance exercise his powers. Tempts him with the possibility of freedom from the limits and prohibitions of this world. Three times he tries to tempt Jesus. He tempts him to use his power to feed himself. He is tempted to use is power to defy death. He is offered greater power if he will worship Satan. Jesus resists these temptations, because his response in each case is to have faith in God, how God was at work in his life, and how he could serve and worship God. Jesus did not hide from his hunger, he did not hide from his mortality, and he did not hide from the limitations of his power. He let them be known to God.

Over time, because this story from Genesis is so linked to the notion of Original Sin, we lose sight of the fact that the tree also gives knowledge of the good, not just the bad or the evil. We focus on what God told them not to do, the punishments that came with it, and their failing and the negative consequences of their choice to eat that fruit. But there is good as well. In 3:21, after God has discovered them hiding in shame and doled out the consequences for their actions, something else happens. Something that doesn’t seem like punishment at all. God makes clothes for them. Seeing them in their fig leaf coverings, God clothes them and cares for them. God gives these fallen, imperfect people what they need. They will still have the work of their vocation to care for creation. They will still have permission to enjoy what God has made. The work may be harder now, and their limitations may be more obvious, they may have to deal with more consequences. But what God has called good is still there for them.

So, during Lent, we will be invited to consider our limitations and our hardships and our failings. Including death, our mortality. We may awaken to some as if for the first time. But the good news is that in all of that, God is with us, God cares for us. We do not worship a God that created a world all about judgement and punishment and death. God created a world with ebbs and flows, decision and consequence, beginnings and ends. It is a world made for living, and even in the wilderness of Lent, in the face of temptations, or in the shadow of death we are called by God to life. And in each waking moment how we respond to that call is ours to decide. I pray that our faith and our trust in God, not our fear or our shame, will help guide our response. Amen.