Being Human
I assume that on any journey, we meet some new characters, right?
I have a friend who started to hike the Appalachian Trail, beginning at the southern end, in February before the pandemic took hold. I watched his journey with great interest. He retired as a Colonel from the Army, and this was his transition journey as he started a new chapter.
I was surprised that almost every post he made introduced a new character he’d met on the trail. I hadn’t thought about it much, but of course, when hiking thousands of miles, there are other folks doing the same thing…you gather new friends for support, for guidance, for shared experience.
We are going to meet some new characters on this journey as we make the road by walking.
Today, I want to introduce us to two. Maybe they aren’t characters – maybe they are more like “presence.” As in these two ideas will accompany us for the rest of the journey – our whole lives in fact.
Our primary text is the second creation story found in Genesis 2. That’s right, there are two distinct creation stories. If you take a moment to read them side by side, you’ll note how details are different, how the tone is different. There are places where they sort of contradict one another. Historians and language experts would point out difference in voice and structure. Different authors had different priorities even if following the same God.
In the first story which we discussed last week, we recognized that God created everything with amazing diversity. And everything that God created was declared GOOD. We also remembered that as humans, we are bearers of God’s image.
So…we don’t bear the fullness of God – we are not God, but we reflect some of God into the world. We bear God’s image, much like a reflection in a mirror.
And that is good.
As we move into the second story, we learn here about a first human created from dust. And about a garden into which that human is set, where God has created every tree that is pleasant to look at and good for food.
And two specific trees – the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.
So this is an interesting layer – in the first creation story, God creates and it is good. But here in this second telling, we are introduced to this idea that there is something other than Good. While all was created good, it seems that there is this idea that we might also be able to know something that is not good – it might be possible to know both good and “evil.”
As God sets the sole human up in the garden, there is a specific instruction – you can eat of everything growing here EXCEPT the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil – if you do, you will die.
That seems pretty specific. Eat from this tree, you will die.
But what does it all mean? What would it means to eat from the forbidden tree?
Remember – the 2 trees aren’t the tree of life and the tree of evil. Nope. The tree that we are not to eat from is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – don’t consume the knowledge/awareness/understanding that there is something other than the goodness which is inherent in all of creation.
So it would seem that the risk is not so much evil itself but the attempt to KNOW for ourselves the difference between what is good and what is evil?
I wonder…why is it that the knowledge that there is something other than goodness might steal life?
If all that God has made is declared GOOD, what does it mean to know evil?
In the chapter in We Make the Road by Walking for this week, McLaren ponders this:
“The second tree could represent the desire to play God and judge parts of God’s creation – all of which God considers good – as evil. Do you see the danger? God’s judging is always wise, fair, true, merciful and restorative. But our judging is frequently ignorant, biased, retaliatory, and devaluing. So when we judge, we inevitably misjudge.”
He goes on with this…
“If we humans start playing god and judging good and evil, how long will it take before we say this person or tribe is good and deserves to live, but that person or tribe is evil and deserves to die – or to become slaves?”
We are created as a reflection of God but when we grab for knowledge that causes us to begin to try to separate by our own power that which is good that which we judge evil, perhaps we’ve grabbed too much – grabbed God’s identity and power and claimed it for ourselves.
We mostly know how the story goes from here, although that is a sermon for another day.
But I hope we will rest with this tension for the week to come… the tension of being presented with a choice of life in God’s goodness versus the power of perceived knowledge that we might choose to use to judge.
The gospel text that accompanies this second week is from Mark 3: 1 – 6:
Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. 2 They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. 3 And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.” 4 Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. 5 He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. 6 The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
This is an occasion when the Pharisees seek to apply the letter of the Law – a law that would prevent healing on the Sabbath. They set out to make a judgment based on their knowledge...
And Jesus sets a vital example. We all walked through the what would Jesus do movement….and here it is as if Jesus is having a “what would my Father do” moment. He chooses to heal that withered hand.
What seemed plain for the Pharisees seemed differently obvious to Jesus.
Maybe the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil are not exactly characters on our journey. Maybe they are like an ever-present fork in the road on this journey, begging us to pay attention to our choices and the way we choose to reflect God in the world. Will we choose life, accepting the goodness that God has created? Or will we choose instead to take on God’s role?
I love McLaren’s reflection on how we use our hands – think of them. We can use our hands to paint something beautiful, to play music on an instrument, to hold a child’s hands. We can use our hands to make an angry or violent fist…or to take something away from another.
How is it we will stretch out our hands to that tree of life?
I pray it is with grace and the eager anticipation of eternal life.
May it be so.
Amen.
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