We have started our Lenten journey through the desert towards death, and resurrection. Today we listen to one of the best known stories in the bible (Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7). We hear about Adam and Eve, how they fell from grace, out of the intimate presence of God, to a state of shame and separation from God.
This story must be up there with the Christmas story as one of those known by so many people, even those with no involvement in, or even interest in, Judaism or Christianity. It has been depicted in countless works of art, it has led to wholly unjust discrimination against women as somehow being more responsible for human failings than men, it has provoked unresolvable debates about when and where Adam and Eve lived.
The early Fathers of the Church were very aware of the challenges of taking the creation stories as literal historical accounts. They recognized that such an approach can lead to absurd, contradictory, conclusions. St Augustine wrote at length on this topic in his “On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis”. That hasn’t stopped others subsequently taking this path, with the unfortunate consequence that many people find the story of Adam and Eve irrelevant and even offensive.
Like any part of scripture, the story of Adam and Eve comes out of a particular culture at a particular time. What is striking is not that we see things differently from the people who originated this story, but that so much of it, the core of it, is still relevant today.
What is that core? It’s nothing to do with attitudes towards snakes or even towards the differences between men and women. Like everything in the bible it talks to us about the relationship between God and his beloved creation. And specifically it puts knowledge at the center of that relationship, at the center of God’s garden, of His care for us.
We expect that we should know the difference between good and evil. The serpent was half right – knowing that difference makes us like God – beings created in his image. Where the serpent was deceitful was in encouraging the woman to take that knowledge, rather than wait for God to provide it to her and the man. And the man then joined her in this claim of independence from God, a claim that echoes from then till now, the claim that it is legitimate to take what we want, that our will, our rights are paramount. That attitude separates us from God and causes our spiritual death.
The good news (the gospel) is that God still loves his creation and can remedy this failing on our part, this absurd claim of independence from the love of the one who brought us into existence. Matthew has as the first act in Jesus’ ministry, following his baptism, his journey into the desert (Matthew 4:1-11). There he demonstrates his complete submission to God, a submission which he repeats as he gets close to his death by execution, when he says to the God that he calls father: “not my will, but yours be done”.
In as much as we can make that same prayer as Jesus, we reverse the error of Eve and Adam. We line up with Paul in knowing that “through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:12-19). That knowledge is the fruit of the tree that God always wanted to share. We don’t need to go and grab it – it is freely given to us.