To Till and To Keep
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God say, “You shall not eat from any tree in the garden”?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.” ’ But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
So—I’m still pretty new at all this. This is only my third year in parish ministry, so the amount of Bible I’ve preached on is pretty minimal. Not to mention the fact that I worked as a chaplain for 6+ years after divinity school, so a lot of this stuff is stuff I haven’t looked at in depth in a decade or so. So all that being said, a lot of my preliminary reading and research I did on today’s passage really blew my mind. It made me think about this part of the creation story in a very different way, and I gained brand new perspectives on this incredibly familiar and infamous story.
When we hear this story, I’m betting there are a lot of things we take as givens—we probably think of sin, the idea of original sin, and in turn, maybe sex; we think of apples, the forbidden tree, the devil in the form of a snake.
Well, if we pay attention to what Sue just read to us—we find that the words sin, sex, apple, devil… none of those words are used. To make matters even more interesting, this is the only time in the entire Bible, in either testament that this mysterious forbidden tree of knowledge is mentioned. All these strange twists and additions and interpretations of this story came centuries and centuries later. What this says to me—and apologies for the blasphemy that’s about to come out of my mouth—is that this strange story isn’t super important. People have twisted it and changed it to promote their own motives and agendas—whether those agendas are about sexual purity and shame; whether those motives are about promoting the idea of devil and hell, or promoting an anti-intellectualism with this forbiddenness of the tree of knowledge… whatever the agenda is, it’s not a pleasant one.
It's nearly impossible to try to erase what we’ve heard about this story that so deeply imbedded into our cultural and religious consciousness, but let’s try.
To begin with, the serpent is not the devil. It’s not a devil. As it says right in the story, he was “more crafty than any other wild animal that God had made.” Which means—he’s just one of the wild animals, just a little smarter than the rest. The serpent, more than anything, is a plot device. It’s a trickster character who slithers into the story to move things along. The man in the woman were all set to stay blissfully ignorant and steward the paradise they were gifted and nothing more. They needed something to convince them.
Interestingly enough, the serpent is doing to God’s word and God’s orders what so many people have been doing for millennia. It’s twisting the word of God into something for its own tricky agenda. In theologian Walter Brueggemann’s commentary on what the serpent is doing, he writes, “This is the first theological talk in the narrative. The new mode of discourse here warns that theological talk which seeks to analyze and objectify matters of faithfulness is a dangerous enterprise.” This is just what we talked about last week, right? The Cormac McCarthy quote from The Passenger that inspired the direction of last week’s sermon works for this week just as well, or maybe even better: “God [is] not interested in our theology but only in our silence.” Now of course this is all rich coming from a minister who is deeply steeped in academic theology, being inspired by Brueggemann, who is a practicing theologian, but the key here is what is this Lenten theme I’ve (kind of ironically) just stumbled into—intention. When we really sit with these strange and ancient stories, or the commands we read and hear from God, are we thinking deeply about what we’re going to take from these stories? Are we thinking deeply about how we can act out God’s commands in the world, not in a way that benefits us or that pushes any kind of potentially harmful agenda, but rather in a way that betters the lives of all people?
The first line of today’s passage—“…God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” God created this paradise so that it would be cultivated and brought to fruition by us humans. That really was all our original command from God was. We didn’t know what good was, we didn’t know what evil was, we didn’t even know what we were; all we knew was that we lived on this beautiful planet, and it was ours to care for. I wonder if we could work on getting back to that. I wonder if we could work on getting back to this basic, original command from God—to take care of this earth and the creatures that reside here.
After these first two human eat of this forbidden fruit, they’re not thinking of the caring for their surroundings anymore because they’re all of a sudden self-aware. They’re all of a sudden all too aware of their nakedness, their vulnerability. They’re looking out for themselves.
While this story may be relatively unimportant by Biblical standards, as far as the lack of references to it throughout the rest of the Bible goes, it’s actually does strike me as a wildly relevant origin story. Because we are a people who are deeply concerned with our own selves, aren’t we? So much so that we’ve created entire economic systems that are built around self-worth, building individual wealth at the expense of others. We’ve come up with loopholes and workarounds so that a tiny percentage of people are legally able to, even encouraged, to exploit workers, anyone below them for more personal gain. We’ve developed disingenuous online personalities to gain followers and exposure and money. And all these get rich quick schemes and laws that allow the rich to get richer and richer, they’re not just at the expense of our fellow humans, but at the expense of this very earth, this very paradise that God gifted us.
God gave the man two orders (and notice I specify the man here, because the woman wasn’t even created yet when God gave these orders, but that’s another sermon for another occasion)— but those two orders were: till and keep this garden, and don’t eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. So the damage of eating of the fruit has been done; so would it be so much to ask to get back to these basics of caring for and honoring this earth?
But really honoring this earth would mean stepping back from our egos, stepping back from this idea of self-preservation at any cost. In a world where money runs everything, where money does indeed seem to create security and happiness, the last thing on our minds is the state of the environment. Thankfully, but also frighteningly, I think this has changed in the past several decades with more and more dire warnings about our warming planet, with more and more natural disasters happening… but those in power would rather us not think about those things so that they can continue to damage God’s creation in order to line their wallets.
In recent weeks, I’ve been absolutely enraptured and appalled by the East Palestine, Ohio derailment. It only started making national news several weeks after the disaster, but if you weren’t aware, a train carrying gallons of hazardous chemicals derailed in a small town in Ohio, not much bigger than ours. Residents are still complaining of sick and dying pets, asthma attacks, rain that smells like chlorine. The company responsible for this, Norfolk Southern, has seen record profits in past years… record profits as they’ve cut jobs and safety regulations… record profits as the rate of accidents has increased every single year of the past four years. Sure, they’ve spent a couple billion on their trains and infrastructure. But they’ve spent $18 billion on stock buybacks for their obscenely wealthy shareholders. And now, for the next several decades, innocent residents who live near the derailment will have to keep an extra close watch on their health— because we may not know the full consequences of this derailment and the effects it has on our sisters and brothers and on this planet for years.
With knowledge of self, came a very real knowledge of our vulnerability. And with that comes a very real fear of being hurt, of being lost, of being cast out. And with that comes a sometimes dangerous need for self-preservation. Now obviously I’m not saying we shouldn’t care what happens to us—what I am saying is that we can’t practice this self-preservation at the expense of others. We can’t exploit others to get what we think we need to feel safe and comfortable. But we do. As a human race, this is what we do. This is what those people in charge of Norfolk Southern have been doing for years—cutting safety measures to make sure they can stay comfortable and content while rail workers (whose complaints and concerns about these cuts have fallen on deaf ears) are worked to the bone and the flora and fauna suffer the consequences. And that means we all suffer the consequences.
That’s what gets lost in this obsession with individualism and self-preservation. Ultimately, we all suffer. Ultimately, we all suffer the consequences of CEOs cutting safety and environmental regulations, of governments not doing enough to hold them accountable and keep us safe. We all suffer the consequences of warming planet. From folks in Florida constantly readying themselves for another hurricane, to my in-laws out in Southern California always wary of drought-induced fires, to maple sugarers right here in Vermont trying to navigate these new strange and erratic winters and springs so they can continue to make their livings. It affects us all, it affects the entire planet, but that doesn’t matter to those in power who are only thinking of how they themselves are affected at that very moment.
If there is an original sin at all, it’s certainly not sex or nakedness or even disobedience. It’s selfishness. When we gained knowledge of ourselves and our vulnerability, we became distracted from the original command of God—till and keep the garden—and we were all of a sudden focused on ourselves. Now, the fruit was the fruit of good and evil, so it’s not all bad; as I quoted in my Ash Wednesday reflection and in my note to the church this week, from essayist Isaac Fitzgerald, “There are very few saints in this world. And very few monsters. Most of us are a mix of both--” but the monster in us, in humanity seems to be that of extreme selfishness. This, in tow with climate change is a lot to combat. It’s too much for any one person, that’s clear.
Thankfully it’s Lent—a solemn time of contemplation, repentance, and righting wrongs. And in this case, I wonder if it can be a time of going back to basics. I wonder if we can try to go back to the time before the first humans ate of that apple, before they became aware of their fragility. I wonder if we can go back to God’s first command—till and keep the earth. This might look different for each of us. I don’t have a green thumb, for instance, but despite that, I am excited to work on killing some of that non-native grass in my yard and start a low-maintenance pollinator meadow to help the birds and butterflies and bees. But it doesn’t even have to be that literal. We can see what our local representatives are doing do make sure something like what happened in eastern Ohio doesn’t happen here. We can get involved on Town Hall Day coming up in just a week and a half. These are ways to keep and to steward this planet. Before we had any concept of good or evil or ourselves, that’s all God wanted.
This Lent we can try to discern how we can get back to that original command in some intentional silence. We know that God is much more interested in that intentional silence working out how best to till and keep this earth rather than some kind of disingenuous rationalization or theology that only benefits an already privileged few.
This Lent, I challenge you, I challenge all of us to try to rewind, try to get back to basics before that original sin of selfishness took hold. Let’s work to bring this planet back to its original state— the original state of an earth as it is in heaven… a new original state, which is now in the form of resurrection. Amen.
