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

Context of the text This text comes in the first Sunday in Lent. Lent is a powerful season that reminds the church of its deep sinfulness. This sinfulness is to create this desperate recognition of Christ as a savior. Lent also reminds the church of its physical mortality.  While Christians are getting better at rejecting neo-Gnosticism, where leaving the sinful earth is our goal. Lent does remind all of us or our physical mortality and cautions against an idolatrous temptation that all of one’s hopes and dreams are to be found here on earth. Finally Lent is an invitation to follow Jesus right into the shadow of the Cross. This pilgrimage is a discipline that prepares persons for the resurrection hope to be actual hope. 

Moreover, many Christians will have just come from Ash Wednesday services where these themes are close to them and recalling those themes are important. Yet if this is not true of your local congregation taking time to review those themes is probably important for everyone.

While our Genesis text does not have an immediate connection to the pilgrimage with Jesus, the ideas of sinfulness and death are the center of these Genesis texts.

Chapter 2 began as another perspective of the creation account. Great care is taken to focus on the Garden’s beauty. Verse 9 celebrates all the bountiful trees God has made that were pleasing to the eye and then notes that in the middle are two trees, a tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Within the narrative of sin, it is crucial to celebrate creation is good, trees are good, humans are good. Therefore, sin and death are the outliers, they do not belong. Even after sin the garden, the trees, the fruit, and even humans are still good, but the disease of sin is pervasive and toxic and needs a healing. While the disease of sin is about broken relationships the healing will also be about a restoration and healing of relationships.

In between chapter 2:19 and 3 we have the blessed arrival of Eve, who comes as a gift to Adam, so that there is a fellow laborer in whom God’s love in creation can flourish.

Theology of the text Why does God give Adam a tree called the “knowledge of good and evil” and tell him not to eat of it? Would not it have been easier for God to not have this tree there at all? Often students ask “Did God create sin or evil?” While that is a longer discussion, the short answer is no. Sin and Evil are “no-things” they are a lack of something. Just like darkness is a lack of light and death is the absence of life, so to evil and sin is simply the lack of love. Yet with this tree God gives Adam a place of choice. This is connected to free will, which is very complex. But suffice to say that this tree gives Adam a chance to love God more fully or to not love God, sin. So while we would not say God creates sin, God creates an opportunity for Adam to love God more deeply or not. Sadly, Adam will choose to not love well in this instance.  This choice was first and foremost telling God that there was a better way than what God offered. Sin is complex. In this case sin is telling God you have a better idea and hence when Adam will eat it is a fracturing of the relationship. 

Notes on the text V. 15 This verse is probably one of the most important verses that is so often overlooked. God put Adam in the Garden to work. If Christians were to talk about Adam and Eve and the fall they would casually note that Eve’s punishment is the pain of childbirth and Adam’s is work and toil in the land.  Yet this call to work the garden is part doxological act of body and earth working in love toward and with one another. A Hebrew Scholar, Brad Kelle, reminded me that the best translation of “work” is to serve.  How important this is to see humanity’s calling is that of serving creation rather than treating it as a commodity to objectify and use for our own end. 

V.16: This positive celebration to eat “freely” from any tree in the garden needs to be seen in light of Verse 15. The order feels very important. After you work and served creation you are then invited to share in the bounty of the work. Moreover, this verse will set up the prohibition in Verse 17.

V. 17: After the hard wok in verse 15, and the invitation to freely eat of any of the trees in verse 16, this verse notes there is one tree, “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” that if you eat of it you will die. The junior higher in me knows this is not going to go well. You can give me all the freedom in the world, but once you give me one rule, even if it is for my own good, the temptation to break that rule is powerful. Whether it is to assert my own identity or simply wanting to “know” what I am missing out on. As the story will unfold, death comes with a knowledge of both the good and evil. This death has many ramifications. Again think of the idea of know as not simply cognitive knowledge, but in Gen. 4.1 Adam knew Eve (hence sex) and she conceived children. To know is intimate knowledge that seeps into the very marrow of our being. In this knowing of good and evil death will come.

3:1 In many ways this serpent is the first part of creation with a tinge of negativity. While it does not say evil, its sense of being crafty leads to an influence on Adam and Eve that was not helpful.

In the discourse to Eve is it noteworthy that here the serpent does not lie to Eve but simply asks her to check her memory. What is fascinating is that the command to not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was given to Adam before Eve came along. So reading the text closely Adam would have been responsible for telling Eve about this prohibition of the one tree along with the invitation to work and serve the land and then eat of its bounty.

3:2-3 Eve reports back to the serpent precisely what God commanded of Adam in Chapter 2. So on this point either Adam did a good job passing on the Garden rules or God also gave these to Eve. While we do not how Eve learned of these rules, she does know them. What is curious is that the end of verse 3 is a bit different from 2:17. In verse 17 to eat it causes death, here in verse 3 to touch it results in the death.

4-5: Here the serpent begins to challenge Eve and the teaching she has received. The serpent declares that if you eat of it “you will not die.” The serpent now falsely teaches Eve about God’s mind and intentions. If you eat of this fruit your eyes will be opened and you can be like God knowing God and evil. In many ways the serpent is not lying here. In many ways to eat the apple, to choose away from God’s command and invitation to love God, was to say “I am god.” While this is not true of all sin, some sin is about declaring an individual sovereignty. “I know what is best for me.”  But again it seems true that once the fruit was eaten, with that intimate awareness of “know” they did know good and evil in ways they never did before. Yet with this intimate knowledge, death certainly comes. 

6-7 Eve makes no response to the serpent’s claims other than the text notes that the forbidden fruit looks really good. What is also curious is that it is not simply to eat the fruit, but this “knowledge” of good and evil the serpent enticed her with was part of the allure. After all what would you expect from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If you eat it you would know good and evil. It is this knowledge that is part of the enticement. And if this serpent is correct that one can have that knowledge and not die then what can the harm be. 

So she takes and eats and gave some to her husband. Let us affirm clearly both Adam and Eve fail together.

After this eating the first impact of this new knowledge is eyes being opened and a realization of being naked and so the first need to cover themselves. Books and books can be written over these 2 verses. Part of the issues of shame, guilt, and a despising of human bodies are all effects of sin and part of the “death.” This new knowledge forces them to see the world differently and this new vision is filled with guilt and shame.

Preaching the text There are 15 different ways to preach this text. The theological depth of perspectives are dripping in every verse. It seems leaning on the Lenten themes of sin and death for this first week of Lent is a good way to go. Watch out for the many tempting off ramps or rabbit trails that can distract from the core ideas.  I have not been impressed by focusing on the serpent or even on Eve’s guilt compared to Adams. 

Even as sin is an outside intruder that does not take away from the goodness of creation and humans -including their bodies. But certainly, to choose away from God’s desires is a path towards death in all its dimensions. One of the important themes of Lent and the fuller story of Adam and Eve and humanity is that our bad choices to eat that fruit, want the knowledge with the allure to “be like God”, to choose death, is not the final word. Within all the intense heaviness in Lent of sinfulness and death, even there it is important to celebrate a God who keeps inviting us back through repentance and confession.