Leaving Home

Leaving Home (Genesis 2: 15-17; 3:1-13)

Sermon (February 26, 2023)

As I “bend your ear” for the next twenty minutes or so I’m going to take you a multi-faceted tour of a well worn story…the story of Adam and Eve. And while our tour will have some twists and turns, keep in mind the main theme…leaving home.

Years ago I was doing some volunteer work at an after school bible program at one of the Lutheran churches in Spokane. A child, a girl about age 10 or 11, asks me an interesting hypothetical, deeply theological question. She asked, “If a baby dies and isn’t baptized. Will that baby go to hell?”

My response to her was, “Well, since neither of us are God we can’t really answer for sure about what happens to any of us after we die, but,” I said, “I believe that God is fair and just. Do you believe that God is fair and just?” She replied, “Yes.” Then I asked, “Do you think it would be fair or just for a baby to burn in hell?” She answered, “No.” And then I said, “Neither do I.”

In that short interchange, I hope I eased her mind. But then the bigger question I have is, How on earth did such a question even come to be? Where did this idea originate?

Well….it has its origins in our scripture this morning…the story of what is commonly called“ the fall.” This idea that death (through sin) came through the disobedience of Adam. It was, a part of Paul’s theological understanding reflected in Romans 5:12, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man (Adam), and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people because all sinned – for before the law was given, sin was in the world”.

And while Paul’s understanding of original sin is expressed in his letter to the Romans, it really was Augustine (or Saint Augustine – the very influential fourth century theologian) who really amplified and made the idea of original sin (and innate depravity) a center piece of Christian thinking which has been around now for well over 1600 years.

Regrettably, Augustine tied the idea of original sin to the theology of salvation and eternal damnation. Thus came the terribly unsettling and destructive notion that unless one was baptized before death, regardless of age, then that soul would burn in hell forever.

This is where the idea of “original sin” became a powerful mental construct inflicted upon the minds of millions of people and whole societies. This notion plants within our minds and hearts the idea that you and I are fundamentally, at our very core, depraved. We are ontologically doomed. The poison of this theology basically says, “You are fundamentally wicked, and there is nothing you can do about it. That is who you are. And your only hope….YOUR ONLY HOPE…. is to accept Christ as you personal Lord and Savior and be baptized.” Does this theology sound familiar? Many have been wounded by this theology. Many still are.

I know I’m going out on a limb here, but I consider the notion of total and innate depravity to be a kind of heresy.

And don’t get me wrong….this is not to say there is not evil and sin. We humans are deeply flawed and broken creatures. At best we can say “we are works in progress and in great need of repentance and redemption. One of my favorite thinkers and orators, Dr. Cornell West, often describes himself as “a redeemed sinner….with certain gangster proclivities.” In other words, while being a redeemed sinner, he is (like all of us) a work in progress. There is a plenty of sinner (or gangster) in most of us.

So this morning I want to give you an alternative reading of Genesis 3.  I want to suggest not original sin…but rather LOST INNOCENCE.  This is an archetypal story (i.e. a kind of universal story applicable to the human experience) about growing up.  It’s a story that describes something we all have to live out. (Or maybe I should say… “Get to live out.”)  Thus, the title of this sermon, “Leaving  Home.”   As we lose our innocence we all at some point in our lives will experience a kind of “leaving home.”

Let’s consider our text ….. Here’s God….God creates this marvelous creature we call a human being (Adam).  And, as it says in Gen. 2…. “God placed the man in the garden to till (or tend) and to keep it.”  That right there is one of my top ten scriptures.  In other words, this is our calling in life.  Not to be farmer necessarily….but to be steward of the garden.   All of us are brought into this world with ….. call it responsibility, call it vocation, call it privilege, call it opportunity….but each and every human being’s task is for the care of life on this planet.  So everyday remind yourself of your highest calling….the care for the people, things, and places that surround you.  Celebrate the small, seemingly insignificant tasks of tending to the garden.

Then, beginning in Chapter 3 of Genesis things start to get real interesting.    Enter the serpent. (Now, nowhere in this story does it say that the serpent is Satan, or even evil.  Mischievous perhaps, but not necessarily the devil.  Maybe a kind of “trickster” character.  Similar to raven or cayote in indigenous myths).  But however we want to characterize the serpent we do know the snake is the one who plants in the mind of Eve the idea of eating the forbidden fruit.

“Eat of the fruit, and you will become like God…knowing good and evil”  So Eve takes the fruit eats, gives some to Adam and he eats, and then it says “their eye’s were opened….and they saw themselves as vulnerable/exposed (i.e. naked), and most importantly, self-aware.

Some suggest that this is a story about the birth of human consciousness.  Perhaps the pre-frontal cortex.  The part of our brain where the ego resides.  That part that says, “I am I. And you are you.”  That part that imagines and creates stories.  That part that chatters away and won’t stop talking.  That part that separates and divides all things into “This is Good, and That is Evil.  That part that replays the past and forecasts the future.  That part of our brain that is both brilliant and glorious, and troublesome and mischievous.

And then notice what happens….not only are Adam and Eve self-conscious,  they are also plagued by shame and fear.  And because of that fear and shame they try and hide from God.

This “hiding from God” is what we humans are doing all the time.  (And this is true even if one doesn’t believe in God).   We try and hide.  Or another way of saying this is that we hide from the Truth.  We hide from what is.  And even in the church, we try and hide from God.  (In deed, religion is a great place to try and hide from God where we are tempted to wrap ourselves in false piety and dogmatic certitudes).  But in the end, we know that is absurd.  We’re really just hiding from ourselves.  Nobody can hide from God.  Nobody can hide from Reality.

We’re all playing hide and seek from God.   Like little children, right?  The littlest ones will cover their eyes thinking no one can see them, while the bemused adults look on and say, “That’s so cute.”   That’s what I think of when I read the line in this narrative where God is looking for Adam and Eve as they are trying to stay hidden.

“Where are you?” God calls out.  (As if God doesn’t know).  Again, imagine hide and seek with small children.  The adult calls out, “Where is Suzie?  She must be hidden really well!”  While all the time the adult knows very well where Suzie is, as she giggles behind the couch thinking she’s really hiding well.  That’s what I think of when I read this part of the story.

And then Adam replies, “When I heard you coming, I hid myself because I was afraid and naked.”

And then God asks, “Who told you that you were naked?  Have you eaten from the tree that I explicitly told you not to eat from?” (As if God doesn’t know!)

And then Adam points to Eve and blames her.  And Eve then points to the snake and blames the snake.  And then, what follows of course, is God setting out punishment or consequences to Adam (he will henceforth toil and sweat in hard labor for the rest of his life.  And to Eve (she will bear children in pain and worse yet…be subject to her husband).  And to the snake (snakes will have to crawl on their bellies for the rest of days).

I love the humanity of this whole story!  Can we not see ourselves in this drama?  The human tendency we all have to palm the blame onto someone or something else?  To make excuses?  To try and protect us from vulnerability and shame through denial and excuses.

Why would we do that?  Why would we try and shift blame?  Why are we afraid of being found out?  As God calls out to Adam (Adam being us), Adam says to God, “I heard the sound of you walking in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.”  I was afraid.  I was vulnerable (naked).  And I hid.

I know that the word “ego” is not a word we will find anywhere in the Bible, but that’s the  word that comes to my mind.  It is the ego that holds onto the illusion that I am God… I am the center of all things…. And that I exist unto myself alone.  That I must protect myself at all costs.

I believe that for the Spirit to live, control of the ego has to die.  And the ego feeds off of fear.  And it is in our fear (echoed in Adam’s words to God, “I was afraid and so I hid from You!”) that we will do anything and everything to maintain the dominance of the ego…. Including throwing someone else “under the bus”.   “The snake made me do it!”  “The woman made me do it!”  (Apparently, poor snake doesn’t have anyone below him to blame.  Maybe snake could have blamed the tree itself.  Or maybe the snake is just more mature.  I don’t know).

Again I say, For the Spirit to live, the dominance of the ego has to diminish…if not die. (Yes, we need the ego to function in life, but it can’t be in control of our life!). This is why Jesus says, “You must be willing to lose your life in order to find it.”    “The greatest among you must become the least.”  “The master must be willing to be the servant.” Later Paul echoes this in Philippians 1:21  “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”  Certainly those words can be taken to mean physical death, but also perhaps, as I’m suggesting this morning, those words can point us toward a necessary psychological death.

Spiritually speaking, we have to relinquish control of the ego.  And for that to happen we have to deal with what is behind that…and that is tyranny of fear and shame.

We have to stop being ashamed and afraid.  Time and time again the Bible says, “Fear ye not!”  Spiritually speaking we cannot love well when we live in fear.  As the letter from 1 John so clearly says, “Perfect love, cast out fear!”

So, getting back to the title of this morning’s meditation….  What does this have to do with leaving home?

At the appropriate time and in the appropriate ways, in order to grow and mature we all have to lose our innocence.  We all have to leave the garden.  We all are forced, by life’s circumstances, to grow up by leaving home.  Growing into maturity is what God intends for us…and to do that we have to leave the warm cozy protection of the Garden.

Now, I acknowledge that many things happen to us that are grossly unfair…. Things that happen to us that took away our innocence (that booted us out of the garden) when it shouldn’t have.   Children should never be booted out of the garden of innocence prematurely.  “Better for a millstone to be cast around one’s neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble,”) Jesus said.  We all deserve a nurturing childhood, and we know too oftentimes that innocence is taken away when it shouldn’t be.   Terrible things happen, and too soon.

So when I say “leaving home and losing our innocence,” I’m talking about how it is that we naturally enter into the normal trials and tribulations of life as a necessary initiation into adulthood.

What were the milestones in your life?  What were those moments in your journey when you became aware that you “had left the garden?”  Those times when you realized you were on your own?  Maybe it began when you it dawned on you that your parents really didn’t know everything….and that they too were flawed and struggling human beings.  Maybe it was when you discovered that good friends sometimes weren’t such good friends after all.  Maybe it was when your personal heroes betrayed the very values they had taught you.  Maybe, for some (myself included) was when we found ourselves wrestling with depression.  Or maybe when someone close to us suffers unjustly or dies prematurely.

There are a million ways that we are “expelled” from the garden.  And all of those ways can become the pathway by which we grow into the more beautiful, the more wise people.

One of my favorite poems about “leaving home” is written by the late Richard Hugo… who taught writing at the University of Montana in the 70s and 80s.  The poem is called Glen Uig.  A poem written as he spent a sabbatical year living on a remote Scottish isle (The Isle of Skye.  Picture a cold, wind-swept, remote grassy island.  Glen Uig is a local name for the place he is writing about.  A glen being a grassy meadow.

I’ll read this in closing…..

Glen Uig

Believe in this couple this day who come
to picnic in the Faery Glen. They pay rain
no matter, or wind. They spread their picnic
under a gale-stunted rowan. Believe they grew tired
of giants and heroes and know they believe
in wise tiny creatures who live under the rocks.

Believe these odd mounds, the geologic joke
played by those wise tiny creatures far from
the world’s pitiful demands: make money, stay sane.
Believe the couple, by now soaked to the skin,
sing their day as if dry, as if sheltered inside
Castle Ewen. Be glad Castle Ewen’s only a rock
that looks like a castle. Be glad for no real king.

These wise tiny creatures, you’d better believe,
have lived through it all: the Viking occupation,
clan torturing clan, the Clearances, the World War
II bomber gone down, a fiery boom
on Beinn Edra. They saw it from here. They heard
the sobs of last century’s crofters trail off below
where every day the Conon sets out determined for Uig.
They remember the Viking who wandered off course,
under the hazelnut tree hating aloud all he’d done.

Some days dance in the bracken. Some days go out
wide and warm on bad roads to collect the dispossessed
and offer them homes. Some days celebrate addicts
sweet in their dreams and hope to share with them
a personal spectrum. The loch here’s only a pond,
the monster in it small as a wren.

Believe the couple who have finished their picnic
and make wet love in the grass, the tiny wise creatures
cheering them on. Believe in milestones, the day
you left home forever and the cold open way
a world wouldn’t let you come in. Believe you
and I are that couple. Believe you and I sing tiny
and wise and could if we had to eat stone and go on.

I don’t know about you, but in this poem I hear echoes about leaving the garden.  I also hear affirmations of love and warmth within the midst of life’s harshness.

Whatever your journey has been, and continues to be…. May you and I believe, if we had to, we could “eat stone and go on”….. this is possible because we have others who love us, and because there is no where we can go where God is not.