Lent 1
Gen
3:1-21
3/9/14
When you schedule a wedding for the
beginning of July in central Illinois, there is an element of risk involved.
There is always the possibility that you could get some atrociously hot and
humid summer weather – the kind that makes a bride and her bride’s maids drip
away in sweat as carefully coiffed hair comes undone. You can get the kind heat that really makes
it day to remember.
Amy and I ran that risk in 1997 when
we scheduled our wedding for July 5 in Danville, IL. Thankfully, we woke up that Saturday morning
to an absolutely beautiful day. There
wasn’t a hint of rain and the temperature was in the mid-70’s. It was a gorgeous day and provided the
perfect setting for the photographer to take Amy outside and get some great
shots of her in the wedding dress.
After the wedding the wedding party
and those attending made their way to the Club House of the Harrison Park Golf
Course which was now owned by the city and provided a very nice and reasonably
priced setting for the reception. The
meal and all the usual post-wedding festivities began.
While the day had been very
comfortable, once everybody was in the Club House it did begin to feel a little
warm inside. I was enjoying myself too
much to really notice. But it turned out
that there was one guest who did not feel that way. A family friend who is a Lutheran pastor was
attending the wedding. He and his wife
had brought their four year old son Patrick. He was dressed up for the wedding.
But at some point, Patrick decided that
things were just too hot. And so he
carried out the natural response. He
started taking off clothes to cool off.
He started to take off his clothes … and he never stopped. He didn’t
stop until he was standing there completely naked at the wedding reception.
Patrick didn’t have any problem with
this. After all, he was feeling much
cooler – all over. However, as you would
expect people at the wedding reception did notice this naked little boy walking
around. Eventually Patrick’s parents
collected him and had him put some clothes on.
Patrick decided that naked was more
comfortable. Clearly, he didn’t think it
was any problem. He wasn’t ashamed.
After all, he was just hanging out at the wedding reception in the buff. What could be more natural?
As adults, we know that naked is not
the way the world works. And in our Old Testament lesson for the First Sunday
in Lent we learn why. We learn that our
need to cover up has been prompted by the entrance of sin into the world. We
find that our need for clothing – our need to cover ourselves – is a symptom of
the way that sin has harmed our relationship with God and with one another.
Our text this morning is the saddest
chapter in the Bible – the account of the Fall.
Of course to understand how bad this event is, we need to understand how
good things had been. God had made a
creation that he considered to be not just “good,” but in fact, “very good.” He
had created humanity in his own image and given it dominion over creation as
God’s representative.
In his loving care, God had created
woman, Eve, as the helper corresponding to Adam. God created Eve from Adam
because without her, things were not good.
He created Adam and Eve as the perfect complement for one another, a
fact that was grounded in the one flesh union of husband and wife. God gave man the vocation of tending the
garden and he provided the means by which Adam and Eve showed that they the
creatures worshipped God as God.
He gave them one command to obey – one thing by which they showed they
worshipped and acknowledged him as God.
He told them that they were not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil. If they disobeyed and did
so, they would die.
Adam and Eve lived in the one flesh
union as husband and wife. God had
personally created their bodies and so as they lived with one another according
to God’s will, we learn in the verse just before our text, “And the man and his
wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”
There was no shame in being naked and there was no fear in conversing
with the God who had created them.
However, in the very next verse our
text begins by saying, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of
the field that the LORD God had made.”
What you can’t see in English is that the Hebrew words for “crafty” and
“naked” look and sound very similar. The devil had entered creation in the form
of serpent. He, the crafty one, had come
to bring sin into the world. He had come
to bring the sin that would prompt shame at their nakedness.
The devil used the question that has
been at the heart of every temptation he has ever employed. He asked Eve, “Did God actually say, ‘You
shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
Did God actually say? This
invites us to question what God has revealed to us. It invites us to question
whether God’s word is true, or reasonable.
It tempts us to put ourselves in charge of evaluating whether God’s word
is to be accepted and obeyed.
We face this temptation all the
time. Did God really say, “Remember the Sabbath by keeping it holy”? Surely you can’t be expected to hold God’s
word sacred and gladly hear and learn it when there so many other things you
need to do with your time; things you want to do with your time? Did God really say, “You shall not commit
adultery”? Surely you can’t be expected
to live a sexually pure life when sex outside of marriage is what everyone is
doing and when there is so much pornography on the internet to rev your motor?
Did God really say, “Love your neighbor as yourself”? Surely you can’t be expected to put the needs
of others ahead of your own when there is so much you need to get down for
yourself? After all, you only live once.
“Did God really say?” The devil called God’s word into
question. And then he delivered his
lie. He offered the false god that none
of us can turn down – ourselves. When
Eve described how they were not to eat of the true he said, “You will not
surely 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.”
The devil told Eve that God was
holding out on them. God was preventing
them from being all they could be. He
was preventing them from being like God – from being god, their own god.
This was too good for Eve and so she bit – literally. She ate of the fruit of the tree and then she
gave some to Adam, who just went along with her rather than clinging to God’s
word.
The devil, the crafty one, promised
that by eating of the fruit their eyes would be opened. And oh, he was right – just not in the way
that Adam and Eve expected. Our text
tells us that after they ate, “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew
that they were naked.”
Their eyes were opened because of
the sin their disobedience had brought into the world. And because of sin they
now felt shame. They felt that they needed to hide. They hid their bodies as they sewed fig
leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And then when God came into the
garden they hid themselves out of fear.
There was nothing that they could do
about it. And there is nothing that you can do about it eitehr. Instead, God did something. He spoke Gospel – the first Gospel promise
that we hear in our text. He said to the devil, “I will put enmity between you
and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise
your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
He promised that a descendant of Eve would defeat the devil, even as he
himself was harmed in doing so.
God sent forth his Son, Jesus
Christ, into the world. The Father sent him to people who are ashamed of being
naked because of sin. We are ashamed
because we sense that there are parts that must be hidden. We are ashamed because our bodies reveal the impact
of sin – our bodies show the effects of time and age. We are ashamed because
nakedness prompts lust and desires that we know should not be there.
In order to save us from this, Jesus
Christ entered into this world naked.
Like all of us, he exited his mother’s womb with nothing on because
though true God, he was also true man.
And then he pursued a mission that led to the most shameful circumstances
of death.
During Lent we will follow Jesus as
he makes his way to the crucifixion of Good Friday. And we find here that most likely, Jesus
Christ died naked. Roman crucifixion
wasn’t meant just to kill you. It was
meant to be the most humiliating and shameful death possible. Typically the Romans crucified their victims
naked – what better way to strip away even the last shred of human
dignity? Everything about the accounts
in the Gospels leads us to believe this was the case for Jesus.
Jesus Christ hung in the shame of
the cross. He did it because he was laden with your sins. He took them upon himself so that he could
take away the shame of sin through his death.
And then in his resurrection on Easter he began a new bodily existence
that knows no shame.
We look forward to sharing in that
resurrection when Christ returns in glory.
Now we have not shared in this yet – not fully. But recognize that in the present you have
already been clothed with something that covers all shame. It happened when you were baptized. Paul told the Galatians, “For as many of you
as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” In baptism you were clothed with Christ. You “put on” Jesus Christ and his
righteousness. When God looks at you, he
does not see the naked sinner. Instead
he see’s Christ and his saving death and resurrection for you. He sees the victory that the offspring of Eve
won over the serpent when he crushed his head on Good Friday and Easter.
No longer as we stand before God do
we cower in loin clothes of fig leaves.
Instead we stand clothed in Christ – the most magnificent clothing there
has ever been. No longer is there need
for shame. Instead in Christ we stand as those who are precious and valuable –
we stand as those purchased by the suffering and death of the Son of God.
You have been clothed with Christ
through baptism. Now we all know how some
really nice, new clothes make us feel.
They can make you feel like a new person and provide an extra spring in
your step. And that is what happens
because of your baptism – but with an important difference. In baptism you have been clothed with Christ
on the outside, and you have also been born anew through the Spirit on the
inside. Through baptism the Spirit joins
you to the death and resurrection of Christ, so that in the present you can
begin to live in new ways. Because of
your baptism into Christ you can live in faith toward God and love toward your
neighbor.
In our text today, Adam and Eve
bring sin into the world in the Fall.
They are tempted by the devil with the promise that their eyes will be
opened. And indeed they are, as because
of sin they find shame in their nakedness.
Yet the good news of the Gospel is that God the Father sent his Son into
the world. He entered this world naked
so that he could die naked – so that he could die in the shame of the cross for
you. Through baptism you have been clothed with Christ the risen Lord. Because
of this, you can stand before God without shame as you can live as God’s servant
in the world.
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