“Clothing by God”
A sermon by Sid Burgess for Edgewood PC, Birmingham, AL
1st Sunday in Lent, February 10, 2008
Text: Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
We are in the first year of the three-year lectionary cycle, that table of prescribed scripture readings that keeps our weekly worship interesting, and makes sermon reruns difficult. Throughout this Church year readings from the Gospel of Matthew will be paired with excerpts from Genesis and Exodus. Readings from Genesis are quite timely as creationism and so-called creation science has been much in the news of late. Here in Alabama religious fundamentalists have won a concession which has the State Board of Education placing a disclaimer in all biology texts books asserting that evolution is just a theory.
Up the road a piece, in Petersboro, Kentucky, there is a new museum that tries to put all of our doubts to rest. The $27 million dollar Creation Museum is devoted to the idea that the creation story in Genesis is literally true and that the Earth is just 6,000 years old. Scientists, who put the age of the Earth at 4.5 billion years, say these folks have given new meaning to “lying about your age!”
I was eager to know how the museum illustrates our story today about Adam and Eve. So I took a virtual tour using the Creation Museum’s web page. I found full-color photographs of the First Couple enjoying their short-lived stay in the Garden of Eden. Not to worry, abundant garden greenery and Eve’s lovely long hair protect the innocent eyes of sweet cherubs on tour. Now, the Creation Museum prides itself on literal interpretation of the Bible--claiming, for example, that Noah’s ark accommodated dinosaurs. But the museum’s depiction of Adam and Eve in the Garden doesn’t show them doing what our text from Genesis says they were put into the garden to do in the first place--that is, “to till it and keep it.” In the Creation Museum’s displays, Adam and Eve don’t go to work until they land in what the museum calls “Corruption Valley.” Here come scenes of the serpent, the forbidden fruit, and then the fall. The museum skips the fig-leaf fashions to show Adam and Eve in sheepskin attire, standing over a bloody, skinned lamb. The final scene in Corruption Valley shows a shirtless Adam digging in rocky, barren ground; Cain and Abel as children lending hands; and, a pregnant Eve, watching attentively.
Now I doubt the Big Red One, our church van, is going to ever make the haul up to Petersburg and the Creation Museum. So we’d best stick with the view of Adam and Eve that Genesis provides us. What I find of particular interest here is the sewing! Chapter 3 says that after eating the forbidden fruit, the first couple saw they were naked and “sewed fig leaves together.”
Next, they hear God walking in the garden and make themselves scarce. But of course, God finds them and their disobedience is immediately obvious. Adam and Eve make lame excuses, and then God proceeds, forthwith, to pronounce judgment. Now remember that the terms of the lease on the Garden were, eat the fruit of that one, particular tree and “you shall die”(2.17). Our merciful God commutes this sentence but banishes Adam and Eve from the Garden. The woman is sentenced to hard labor in childbirth and the man, to busting rocks down on the farm. The first couple fall from lush garden to “thorns and thistles”(v.18), from freedom from worry to “another day older and deeper in debt.” Although spared the death penalty, this sentence seems to my “bleeding heart” to be excessive. All for one mistake, one small act of defiance.
Elsewhere in the Bible, God is far more lenient. My goodness,
those evil Egyptians,
harsh taskmasters of poor Hebrew slaves, get nine chances to change,
nine plagues before the angel of death strikes. King David, guilty
of sexual abuse in the case of Bathsheba, follows it up conspiracy
to commit murder. When confronted by the prophet Nathan, David
repents . . .and is forgiven What about Jonah? Runs from God, then
gets three days in the belly of the whale to reconsider. He gets a
second chance. How come Adam and Eve don’t get a second chance? All
they do is eat the forbidden fruit. Who among us had not done that
from time to time, maybe even for a midnight snack on a regular
basis?
I was mulling these questions when my eyes focused on a verse
deeper into chapter 3--
a verse not included in our reading. Immediately after God hands
down those harsh sentences, listen to what God does:
1 And the Lord God made garments of skins
for the man and for his wife,
and clothed them.
The God of all creation, the God of power and might, the God of stern judgment, imagine this God now sitting down at the sewing machine, trying to do button holes. Trying to make the zippers work. Trying to get the hems and the cuffs just right.
I don’t know much about sewing--I can barely thread a needle. But we have a group of women here at Edgewood who practice what they have dubbed a “Prayer Shawl Ministry.” By loving hand, they knit shawls for ailing women and afghans for men who have fallen ill. They knit scarves, prayer socks, and baby blankets. These faithful women pray over their work and they pray for the person receiving the gift.
They tell me that knitting, like sewing, is tedious,
time-consuming work. Imagine God making clothes for Adam and Eve.
See the Great Un-seeable sitting there on a stool, sewing for first
son and first daughter. Wanting something better for them-- more
comfortable, more useful than fig leaves. Like any loving parent,
doing for them what they cannot do for themselves.
1 And the Lord God made garments of skins for
the man and for his wife, and clothed them.
Old Testament professor Walter Brueggemann says this about the Adam
and Eve story.
This is not a simple story of human disobedience
and divine displeasure.
It is rather a story about the struggle God has
in responding to the facts of human life.
When the facts warrant death, God insist on life
for God’s creatures. 1
Let’s break down the brilliant Brueggemann’s insight so we mere
mortals can absorb it. This is not simply a story of human
disobedience--man and woman screw up-- and divine displeasure--the
“wrath of God.” It is a story about the struggle God has--who ever
said this business of creation was easy for God? It is a story about
the struggle God has
in responding to the facts of human life. Plain and simple, the
facts are we mortals are hell-bent on disobeying God. Even so, “When
the facts warrant death, God insists on life for God’s creatures.”
Remember the Great Flood, when all of humankind had so disappointed God? The facts warrant death, but through Noah and his family God provides rebirth. Remember all of the evil kings of Israel, mistreating the poor--women, orphans, and strangers in the land. The facts warrant destruction of the whole nation. But in the end, God restores Israel. Remember the rejection of God’s own son. The facts surely warrant death for all humanity. Instead, God raises up the Son to new life, and with him, the promise to us of life with God forever and ever. “When the facts warrant death, God insists on life for God’s creatures.”
We are the recipients of this divine gift--life itself. We are clothed in the mercy and grace of God. Every day, as we put on shirts and pants, blouse and skirt, coat and sweater, socks and shoes, imagine the very threads we wear as coming from the loving hand of God. The God who made clothes for the disgraced Adam and Eve, is still making garments for flawed human beings. Because God insists on life for God’s creatures.
Now to the Ruler of all worlds,
undying, invisible, the only God,
be honor and glory, forever and ever!
Amen.
1 Brueggemann, Walter, GENESIS, Interpretation, A Bible Commentary to Teaching and Preaching, Atlanta: John Knox Press, p. 50.