Sermon February 10, 2008

Lent 1, Year A

Genesis 2: 15-17; 3:1-7, Psalm 32, Romans 5:12-19, Matthew 4:1-77

In the beginning the personified sweet-water (Apsu) and saltwater (Tiamat) oceans bore the younger gods, whose subsequent frolicking made so much noise that the elder gods resolved to kill them so they could sleep. But this plot of the elder gods was discovered, and the younger gods decided to act preemptively, killing their father – Apsu the sweet-water ocean god. Their mother – Tiamat the Saltwater Ocean – pledges revenge.

So – terrified by the threat of their extinction – these young, rebel gods run for salvation to their youngest brother Marduk. He exacts a steep price for saving them: If he succeeds, he must be given chief and undisputed power in the assembly of the gods. Having extorted this promise, he catches his mother Tiamat in a net, blows her full of an evil wind and shoots an arrow that bursts her distended belly and pierces her heart. He then splits her skull with a club, and scatters the blood in the out-of-the-way places. He stretches out her corpse full length, and from it creates the cosmos.

This "charming" creation myth belongs to the Babylonians, and I want you to notice some telling points contained in it. In particular, you'll notice, creation is an act of violence, the order of the universe is established by means of disorder, and evil precedes all else. This is Original Evil.

The Jews were confronted with this story all the time, because Babylon was, for most of Israelite history, the Superpower of the region – it was impossible to avoid Babylonian myths, therefore.

But the Israelites rejected this Babylonian creation myth. They rejected it because it didn't match the wisdom of their own community when it came to encounters with the Sacred – with God.

As with so much in the history of belief, being clear about what we don't believe is the ‘cattle-prod' to laying down what we do believe, and so Jewish writers sought to describe creation as they understood it. That's why we get the first Creation story: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth....."

The first Creation story is markedly different, than the nasty Babylonian one, isn't it? Creation is still related to the oceans – darkness moved over the face of the deep – but this creation story is not an act of violence; evil does not precede all else. Rather, the poet repeats, it is good, it is good, it is good. It is good and it is peaceful and it is orderly.

And it is relational – it's not about competition and violence, but cooperation and relationship. It's not about a destructive God but an inter-dependent cosmos created from original blessing.

That same basic orientation – the goodness of God and the goodness of creation; cooperation and relationship – is repeated in the second creation story – the one we hear today.

Our fundamental identity as creatures of the Creator is, Genesis tells us, good, and generous, and relational – and holy.

So you can see that both Genesis stories are told in opposition to those of surrounding cultures, and the Babylonian story in particular; and both presume the stewardship of creation by human beings – in the second story the First Man and the First Woman are responsible for all the creatures in the garden.

But there's an obvious difference between the two: while the first creation story answers the ‘how' of the Cosmos the second is seeking to explain something else: why it seems that humanity suffers.

That suffering, this second poet says, is not a result of some war between the childish and vindictive gods but has come as a result of faulty human choices.

It's a familiar story and there's no need to retell it. What I want to do is invite you to reflect on what the final result is in this creation myth – and what it isn't.

There's no vindictive retribution exercised by an evil god. No fighting between First Man and First Woman.

And if we take Christian theology seriously we can trace back into this story to origins of our understanding of the God we meet in Jesus and add to the metaphor that we have heard today. If, indeed, the God we meet in this story is the loving and compassionate God we continually encounter throughout the bible then the end of this story of the Garden is not the end of the story.

It would be the vindictive Babylonian god who would stand gloating at the gates of Eden, perhaps having tricked First Man and First woman into leaving, then, slamming the gates behind them.

The God of Jesus would have helped them sew their clothes, and then would have walked with them out of the Garden, leaving the perfection of Eden behind to be with them in the rough and tumble of the real world – the harsh everyday world of undeserved suffering and inexplicable tragedy.

And where is that place? In the wilderness. The story of Israel's 40 year sojourn in the Wilderness is surely an echo of the story of exile from the Garden – which, of course, helps explain today's Gospel.

The wilderness provides the bridge from the Genesis story to the story of Jesus.

Fundamentally, the story of Jesus – leaving the Father's side to enter into a world full of brokenness and become a part of it – is a repetition of the end of story of the Garden – a story that talks, not of God above us, but of God with us

And this relational story finds its supreme expression, of course, in the cross.

The story of First Man and First Woman leaving the garden is where the story of a new beginning, where things are different, where the world is different, where there are new challenges to face – but not alone – and where we can say "now we understand that so much of the suffering we face is a result of our own flawed choices.

So the story in today's gospel is a reverse image of the story of the Garden – about another set of human choices that – this time – are not flawed, and about someone – Jesus – who can walk back out of the wilderness and into the garden of God as a result – and help us to walk that way with him as well.

So where does that leave us, today? What is there to say?

• We are not, originally, evil. Our fundamental identity as created beings is goodness, compassion, kindness, responsibility for others.
• We have the potential to take responsibility for ourselves because that is what God has offered us.
• We have the example of one who shows us that the departure from the garden can be reversed.
• We have the knowledge that this will not be without great cost, but that the great cost – seen in the cross – is not the last word.
• The last word is God's, and it is, and always will be, an invitation to make our way back into the Garden, back into the Original Blessing of God who makes all things new, and we will again know that all things are good, and good, and good, always good.

Amen.