Where Are We?
“Where are you?” asks the Lord God as he walks through the garden at the time of the evening breeze! Ah, how good that must feel. And yet, disappointing at the seeming absence of the man and the woman he had placed there. As one of the oldest stories in all of the Bible, no one ever reading this has ever thought for a moment that the Lord God has no idea whatsoever where they are. (note to self: Where are you? Is plural, not singular). I imagine those first telling this tale around a campfire before ever committing it to the written Word letting out a not-quite stifled chuckle as they tell the tale. For the question, we must assume, is for the couple, not for God. It is perhaps the most central question in the entire Bible: Where are we? Do we have any idea where we are?
The comedy continues to unfold. They are hiding, not because they are naked. Not because they have disobeyed and eaten the fruit of the forbidden tree. And what a surprise! The man says, “She made me do it! The woman you gave me, it’s all her fault.” Gee, that’s novel. Where have we ever heard that before? The woman, however, is not much better. Her defense is that the serpent made her do it. If the Lord God is not laughing by now, he must be in tears. Almost as if to go along with the absurdity of it all, God chastises the serpent. Because…well why not. That is easily done, but still does not get to the heart of things. His question has yet to be answered. [i]
The problem facing the couple in the garden is quite simple really. They have forgotten who they are. The serpent represented that if they ate from the forbidden tree they would become like God. That, of course, is a lie. In this world, many such lies try to seduce us into forgetting just who we are. And whose we are. In the Genesis story, all the way back in chapter 1, we are told that “female and male, we are made in the image of God.” That’s who we are created to be: God’s image, God’s living icons, God’s representatives in this world of tremendous fruitfulness.
The question, “Where are you?” means to alert us that we left our essential being: we are God’s Beloved. As with his Son, Jesus, God is well pleased with us. Until we hide from God. And forget who we are. And just as importantly, whose we are! Thus, is the beginning of division. The serpent simply reminds us that there are always those wooing us, seducing us, to leave the space and responsibility of our imago Dei, our Belovedness, and to follow an alleged bigger and better dream.
Yet, what dream can even begin to compete with our God-given tasks to build a friendly world, of friendly folks, beneath a friendly sky?
God’s “Where are you?” echoes throughout the ages,
throughout the Bible, throughout all of time. Indeed, where are we? The
psalmist knows what the couple hiding in the garden know: “Out of the depths
have I called to you, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice; let your ears consider well
the voice of my supplication. If you, Lord, were to note what is done amiss, O
Lord, who could stand?” [ii]
There we go again. “If, you, O Lord, were to note what is done amiss?”
Seriously, we lack any and all biblical imagination if we think for one minute,
one second of one minute, God has no idea what has gone amiss amongst us!
Despoiling the tree stands in for despoiling the environment, the ecology of
God’s creaton. Trees are foundational and essential for life on planet Earth,
our fragile, island home. Without trees we could not breathe. Without breath,
we have no life. We die.
It is dying, perhaps, that lies at Paul’s concerns with the congregation in Corinth. Like the first couple in Genesis, the Corinthians have grown surly, divisive, dividing themselves into factions – they no longer preach the good news, says Paul, let alone live it. Perhaps ringing in Paul’s ears are those famed words of Jesus, attested in three of the four gospels, and quoted by Abraham Lincoln in a speech after he had received the Republican nomination to be the candidate for the US Senate from Illinois in 1858: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided.” [iii] Paul extends the “house” metaphor writing, “So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”[iv] Despite all division among God’s people, in Christ there is still the hope for a future. A future we cannot see, but can trust it will be here.
This points to another theme through the entire history of the Bible. For the word for house in New Testament Greek is oiko – the root for such words as oikologos, “ecology” the “house in which we live; and oikonomos, “economy – rules of the household.” The couple in the garden have divided themselves from God. The psalmist feels an intense separation from the love and mercy of the Lord God. The Corinthians have divided the community of Christ into factions, and worse. The Scribes try to drive a wedge, a division, between Jesus and his followers by claiming he is subject to the Prince of Demons. And the narrative is often construed to make us think Jesus is dividing himself against his own family. But that is not what he says or does. For the sake of his Father’s kingdom, he says all who “do the will of God” are included in his own family. A family that came to be only because a young woman named Mary, and an older gentleman named Joseph, accepted the challenge of letting the will of God determine their future. A future that, as Paul has suggested, we cannot yet see, but which will not pass away as so many other of our divisions and allegiances will, but rather is, and always will be, eternal.
Indeed, where are we? Where do we find ourselves fitting into the Dream of God that all divisions shall cease? Where do we find ourselves today? As a people? As a nation? As God’s Beloved Community in this world? A world torn, and re-torn every day by one more division so that some serpent can slither up to us and at worst lead us into temptation, and at best cause us to hide from the steadfast love and mercy of God altogether out of guilt.
A Prayer from Howard Thurman that seems to sum up the Word
of God give to us this day:
Our Father, fresh from the world, with the smell of life upon us, we make an act of prayer in the silence of this place. Our minds are troubled because the anxieties of our hearts are deep and searching. We are stifled by the odor of death which envelopes our earth, where in so many places brother fights against brother. The panic of fear, the torture of insecurity, the ache of hunger, all have fed and rekindled ancient hatreds and long-forgotten memories of old struggles, when the world was young and Thy children were but dimly aware of Thy Presence in the midst. For all this, we seek forgiveness. There is no one of us without guilt and, before Thee, we confess our sins: we are proud and arrogant; we are selfish and greedy; we have harbored in our hearts and minds much that makes for bitterness, hatred and revenge.
While we wait in Thy Presence, search our spirits and grant to our minds the guidance and the wisdom that will teach us the way to take, without which there can be no peace and no confidence anywhere. Teach us how to put at the disposal of Thy Purposes of Peace the fruits of our industry, the products of our minds, the vast wealth of our land and the resources of our spirit. Grant unto us the courage to follow the illumination of this hour to the end that we shall not lead death to any man’s door; but rather may we strengthen the hands of all in high places, and in common tasks seek to build a friendly world, of friendly men & women, beneath a friendly sky. This is the simple desire of our hearts which we share with Thee in thanksgiving and confidence. [v] Amen.
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