The Origins of Choosing –– First Sunday in Lent, Year A –– 5 March 2017

This may be a Sunday to teach a bit about Bible translation in order to dispel notions that have proliferated about original sin. Because the temptation story is, in conventional thinking, about a female’s cunning (i.e., a mistake), it has long fed negative views of females.

This is early Lent and always about Jesus' temptation in the desert. Put some perspective and context on how the church has viewed Satan's role by unmasking the origins of sin. 

Point out that God created the first human not as male but as adam––the one of dust. English translations named adam as “man” which, according to what was called gender neutral language, was intended to mean “human.” Today, people who are listening well will cringe at the assumption that a word which specifically refers to males also, sometimes, stands for all humans.

Omitted from this reading of Genesis is the creation of all creatures and of a “helper” for the adam. Only when the adam is called upon to name the helper, do the names ish and ishshah appear. Gendered distinctions came later than creation. The naming was given to only one creature. This is ripe for a conflict of interest charge if we look at the history of gendered human power struggles.

Most important in this story: In creation, the human is the only creature into whose body God breathes life. The proposal from scripture that we see the image of God in the adam or the ish and the ishshah should alert us to having been given attributes that God also owns, namely, creativity, yearning, love, inquisitiveness, and being capable of eating an apple to find out what it might evoke.

Matthew 4:1-11

The specific nature of the temptations in this episode are Christological (“if you are the Son of God,” 4:3, 6; see 3:17). Satan knows Jesus is God's Son, but seeks to appeal to his humanity. . .

Henri Nouwen has observed that the three temptations are related to three human aspirations that are distractions from God: to be relevant (turn stones into loaves), to be spectacular (throw yourself down), to be powerful (seek the kingdoms of this world; see Matthew 16:26). Matthew's Jesus proclaims the kingdom of heaven and comes to recognize that this kingdom extends beyond the limits of Israel (Matthew 15:28).

Setting the final temptation on a mountain to view the whole world, Matthew's Jesus, the new Moses. . . foreshadows the setting of the Great Commission to proclaim the gospel throughout the world that concludes Matthew's gospel. –– Regina Boisclair

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

. . . God places the human into a garden as steward, offers the human the fruit of all trees, excepting that of the tree of knowledge, and warns that eating from that tree will result in death. This selection omits the story of God's creation of humanity. Irene Nowell observes: “[I]t would be well to read the whole story (2:4a—3:24) in order to find God's command about the trees, the creation of animals, the creation of the sexes, the goodness of sexuality, and the consequences of sin” (Sing a New Song [Liturgical Press, 1993], 31). . . .

[This lection] skips over the creation of gender but introduces the first conversation in the Bible. . . between a talking snake and a woman. . . Identification of the serpent as Satan was a late postexilic Jewish innovation. . . [that] took on an enormous prominence in Christianity.

The woman deliberates and then decides. While her decision was wrong, she must be credited for her reflection and considerations; the man merely eats at her bidding. The serpent's promise that “you will be like gods, knowing good and evil” is indeed fulfilled when the couple senses that nakedness is shameful and fashion loincloths from fig leaves.

The story is a primitive way to speak of the emergence of human consciousness with the ability to assess choices; in Christian tradition, this story accounts for the deficiencies in the human condition and the reason for death. –– Regina Boisclair

Romans 5:12-19

From a poor translation of this passage St. Augustine devised his understanding of original sin. The text actually contrasts Christ's obedience with Adam's disobedience in ways that correspond directly one to the other. Adam's disobedience brought sin into the world, all sin; all are condemned to death that reigned until the coming of Christ.

Christ's obedience brought grace and acquittal that allows one to enter into a right relationship with God, and the reign of eternal life. Paul notes that sin existed before the law and the law added to human sinfulness. This reading contrasts with today's gospel.

Unlike Adam, Jesus resisted his temptations. This reading from Romans also identifies how Jesus rectifies the distortion derived from the original disobedience reported in the first reading. –– Regina Boisclair

Regina Boisclair, a Roman Catholic biblical scholar, teaches at Alaska Pacific University, Anchorage, Alaska.

Homily Service 41, no. 2 (2007): 15-29.

Re-Thinking that Snake – 7 June 2015 – Lectionary 10

Reading the Genesis 3 text in light of Jesus’ confrontations with people who thought he was “out of his mind,” focuses our attention on our expectations about the relationships between God and humans, and humans and creation.

From the beginning of this scene –– before we arrive at the articulated differences between God and the humans –– we hear an astonishing aspect of their relationship. The first sentence tells us that the Lord God walks in the garden. God has come to the place where people are living. It is a pleasant scene in which God strolls in the evening breeze without a hint of the bitter denunciation to come. God seeking-out-creation governs the action.

The story then gives us a number of pithy theological questions to ponder. Since God seems not to know where the humans are, does this mean God is not omniscient? When the human explains he was afraid because of his nakedness, does he not know that God will find this strange? How did the human even know there is something to fear in being naked?

God asks the sensible question: How did you know you should hide? Not waiting for an answer, God drives immediately to the suspicion that the knowledge of good and evil has come into the human: “Have you eaten from the tree...?” 

This story is hard to hear without centuries of built-up prejudices ruling the interpretation. In order to let the gospel rise to the surface, we have to expunge the idea that this story tells us the woman is inferior and that the snake is despicable. How can we do that?

Rather than seeing this story as depicting necessary dualism between human and divine, human and nature, good and evil, knowledge (bad) and ignorance (bliss), we might notice the harm that comes from such simplistic readings. Seeing the story only through the structures of oppositions leads to divisive and untrue views of creation.

1)  Pointedly, the story does not say the woman is a vixen for suggesting that the fruit should be eaten nor is she inferior to the man. If we wrongly see the woman in Genesis 3 through the view of her creation as the “helper” (Gen. 2:18), and we define “helper” as a subordinate creature (i.e., he initiates; she obeys or follows), we ignore the more generous interpretation offered by the word “helper” when it is used to refer to God. [Cf. Hosea 13:9; Exod. 18:4; Deut 33:26; Pss. 146:5; 33:20; 115:9-11; 70:5.]

2) This story shows us that truth does not come only from the divine but also from what God has created: the snake, the tree, and the initiative––the daring––of the woman in taking a risk. [See Robert Saler, “The Transformation of Reason in Genesis 2-3,” in Currents in Theology and Mission 36:4 (Aug 2009), 283-284.]

           

3) Try shedding the notion that the “fall” story is about sin––especially sexual sin––and the shame of the naked body. Imagine that gaining the knowledge given by the forbidden tree allows the humans to differentiate themselves from the rest of nature. This self-image is necessary for stewardship and care of creation. It also opens the opportunity to know God’s goodness in clothing them (Gen. 3:21-22). 

“Once the human beings have shown themselves willing to transgress the boundaries of God, nakedness becomes frightening, since even the boundaries of their bodies no longer seem secure.” Blame is their response to fear of vulnerability rather than shame. [See R.A. Oden, “Grace or Status, Yahweh’s Clothing of the First Humans,” in The Bible Without Theology (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), 102-103; Scott Bayder-Saye, “Fear in the Garden: The State of Emergency and the Politics of Blessing,” in Ex Auditu 24 (2008), 5.]

4) See what difference it makes to reinterpret the snake’s qualities. The Hebrew word for what NRSV calls “cunning” is arum which can also be crafty and prudent (Prov. 12:16) and clever (Prov. 12:23; 13:16; 14:8; and 22:3). We speak of “cunning” in negative terms while to be “clever” is positive. The snake did not simply cause disobedience but put an end to uncritical obeisance. Consider whether asking a question is evidence of evil, for that is what the snake, in fact, does. Asking what God really said is not the symbol of demonic powers but, rather, using one’s  intelligence.  [Arthur Walker-Jones, “Eden for Cyborgs: Ecocriticism and Genesis 2-3,” in Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008), 263-293.]

5) This Genesis story sets the stage for the vocation of the faithful. In the garden, when confronted with their fear [of nakedness, of vulnerability, of non-differentiation from animals because they are not yet clothed], the humans seek to place blame on someone other than themselves. The adam (creature of dust) blames the woman, and the woman blames the snake. As a story depicting human reaction to threats, this scene is perfect. What, if not blame of others, do humans exercise when attacked? What, if not oppression of the foreigner, do nations initiate when scared? We have come a long distance from the beginning of this scene. No longer is creation simply a garden in which the creator walks with the humans. Trouble has appeared.

            Jesus’ way is markedly different from that of the humans in Genesis 3. Jesus re-defines kinship, saying that his family is neither based in biology nor comprised of people like himself: fellow rabbis and theologians. His family are those who do “the will of God.” He challenges the expected structures of family and of power, creating community out of relationships centered in God.  The Old Adam and the New Adam stand in stark contrast. Jesus “refuses the idolatry of security." [Bayder-Saye, "Fear in the Garden," 11] 

            It remains for us humans to acknowledge our fear and, clothed with the garments of God’s care for us, to see how we might respond with our weaknesses rather than by asserting power over others. How might such a posture alter our relationships with Earth (and even  snakes!)?

Reprinted with permission from WorkingPreacher.org, this commentary by Melinda Quivik was first published in 2012. Please see http://www.workingpreacher.org for the original essay. 

–– Melinda Quivik is the Editor-in-Chief of The Liturgical Conference journal, Liturgy.