Trinity 7
Gen
2:1-17
8/3/14
When I was growing up in Indiana, we
always had a garden in our backyard. It’s a great memory because while I don’t
recall having to do all that much work in the garden, I do remember eating all of
the wonderful vegetables that we got from it.
In particular I remember having so many tomatoes that my dad and I would
eat them like an apple.
Amy had gardens too when she was
growing up. However, during our married
life we have never had one. Really, there are four reasons for this. They are named Timothy, Matthew, Abigail and
Michael. We would have had a garden when
we lived in Brookfield, IL, but before we had been there very long we had the
twins and needless to say that put everything else in life on hold.
When we moved to Marion our backyard
initially wasn’t conducive to a garden because of trees, and of course then we
had Michael. The inland hurricane and
the clean up that followed took care of all but one of those trees. And now the kids are old enough so that
instead of hindering activities they can actually help out with a garden. So, if all goes according to plan, that
despised sweet gum tree will be coming down and a garden will go in by next
spring.
In the meantime, this summer, we
have made a very small start. Amy bought
a tomato plant, a cherry tomato plant and a green pepper plant that are in pots
on the deck. Matthew, Abigail and
Michael have taken on the job of tending these plants, and I would not have
thought it was possible for three plants to produce so much excitement. Every morning the first thing they do is to
go out of the deck and water the plants.
They carefully inspect them to see how they are doing, whether they have
produced new blossoms, and how the fruit on them is growing. And then they come inside and share a
detailed report about what is happening with the plants.
For the kids, tending the tomato and
green pepper plants is enjoyable – it is something they want to do. And when we hear in our text this morning
that God put Adam in the Garden of Eden “to work it and keep it,” we should
probably have a very similar image in mind.
Our text teaches us that we were created to work – that this is part of
our God given purpose and that it is something in which we are intended to find
fulfillment. The fact that for us, work
can be drudgery, gives us insight into how sin has changed things. And from our text, we also get a better sense
of the hope that awaits us.
Genesis chapters one and two provide
the foundation for all that follows it in the Scriptures. Now I’m not trying to
be “Captain Obvious” here. Of course,
these are the first events narrated in the Bible. But more than that, I am talking about the
manner in which Genesis one and two establish the way we are to think about the
creation God has made and the bodily existence God has given to us.
God makes a material creation – he makes a world made out of “stuff.” It is a place of water and land; a place of
plants and animals. And the text of
Genesis leaves us in no doubt about God’s assessment of this material creation. As God makes the creation in Genesis one, six
times we hear the refrain that it was “good.”
This reaches its crescendo on the sixth day when we hear in the last
verse of the chapter, “God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very
good.’
In
our text from chapter two Moses gives us a close up look at the creation of
Adam. Here again, you can’t miss how
important the “stuff” is. We hear, “then
the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” God creates
a material body and breathes into that body the breath of life, and in that
unity Adam becomes a living being. Or as
we express things on the basis of what Jesus says, we are the unity of body and
soul.
Then
we learn that God planted a garden and put Adam there. Adam lived a bodily
existence. He was located in a place.
And he had a vocation – he had work to do. We read, “The LORD God took the man and put
him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” Adam was there to care for
the Garden. But there was nothing onerous about this work. Instead it was fulfilling – the fulfillment
of the purpose God had given to Adam.
Everything
we have talked about so far is material – it involves the “stuff” God had made
– good stuff. And the same thing was
true when it came to the way Adam worshipped God. We learn in our text that God commanded Adam,
saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it
you shall surely die.”
God
gave Adam an abundance of food. And then for his material creature who was
located in a place, he gave one command about a tree in a place. He commanded Adam not to eat of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil. God
located one thing in Eden by which Adam worshipped him. Adam demonstrated that
he feared, loved and trusted God by obeying him and not eating of that tree.
Of
course, things didn’t stay that way. Adam and Eve decided that they weren’t
satisfied with limitations as creatures. They weren’t going to listen to God.
They weren’t going to obey God. Tempted
by Satan they sought to be God – to become more than what God had made them to
be. And in doing so they found
themselves plunged into limitations they never could have imagined. Their life was now limited by death. Their joy was limited by sickness and
pain. And their experience of work was
limited by drudgery – work became real work.
Your
life now follows the same course as Adam and Eve. You refuse to listen to God and to obey
him. You refuse to put God first as you
focus upon yourself. You refuse to love
and honor your spouse as you look out for yourself. You refuse to help and
support those around you and instead help yourself. And work? Well, work is real work.
Because
that has been the way of life for Adam and you, and everyone else since the
Fall, God acted to provide the remedy for sin.
But when he did so, he didn’t ignore all that he had done in Genesis
chapters one and two. Instead, he
redeemed your material and bodily existence by sending his Son to take part in
it. Conceived by the Holy Spirit and
born of the virgin Mary the Son of God entered into this world and lived your
bodily existence. As Paul told the
Colossians, “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” Jesus Christ came as the second Adam. He came so that as Adam was overcome by the
temptation of a tree, Jesus might overcome sin by obedience that led to the
tree of the cross.
And
then on third day Jesus overcame death as he rose from the dead. He emerged from the tomb – not just alive
once again. He emerged with a body
transformed so that it can never die again.
Death was swallowed up in immortality as the second Adam began the
new creation.
This
is what Jesus Christ has done to win you forgiveness. And when it came time to give you the
forgiveness won through incarnation, God didn’t ignore all that he had done in
Genesis chapters one and two either.
Instead, he chose to use material means that are located in your
midst. In Holy Baptism he uses water in
the font as you share in Jesus’ saving death for the forgiveness of your sins.
And that water poured on your body guarantees that the Spirit who raised Jesus
from the dead will raise and transform your body too.
In
the Sacrament of the Altar he uses bread and wine at the altar. Through the power of his creative word,
Christ uses that bread and wine to give you his true body and blood. He puts into your mouth the very price he
paid for your salvation. And by doing so
he guarantees that he will raise and transform your body too, for Jesus said,
“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise
him up on the last day.”
In
Christ, through the work of the Spirit in the washing of regeneration and
renewal, you already are a new creation.
The new man in you seeks to live in the ways that God intended. And so work takes on a new perspective. Now because we live in the “not yet” of the
fallen world; and because we still have the struggle against the old Adam, work
has not ceased to be work. At times and
places there still is drudgery.
But
now, just as God placed Adam in the garden to work it and keep it, we begin to
see our work within God’s broader purposes.
We begin to see that God is actually working through us to care and
provide for our neighbor. The seemingly
mundane becomes freighted with the divine. God’s work and purpose is seen in
the midst of the ordinary.
This
work is not merely the work of a job that brings home a paycheck. It is the work of vocation. It is the work of a husband and father who
takes up the role of being spiritual head of the house - who sets the tone that
the Divine Service and family devotions are key things in our life; it is the work
that seeks to put the needs of his wife and children before his own, even when that
interferes with time in the “man cave.”
It is the work of a wife and mother who who cares for her children in
the middle of the night and seeks to meet her husband’s sexual needs even when
she isn’t entirely in the mood and
Now
this isn’t always easy. It isn’t always fun. But we are able to do it in hope. Hope is one of the most powerful forces in
the human experience. Where there is hope we are able to keep doing, to keep
going. He have hope because of the resurrection of Jesus. In fact Peter said, “Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy,
he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead.”
In
fact, we have a hope that extends beyond our own bodies to creation
itself. For you see, the Bible ends in
the same way as it begins. In Genesis
chapters one and two we learn about human bodily existence in the very good
creation God had made. And in Revelation
chapters twenty one and twenty two we learn about the restoration of what God
intended. After the resurrection we
learn about the new heaven and the new earth, and the new Jerusalem coming down
out of heaven.
There
John sees Eden restored – he sees heaven on earth. He says, “Then the angel showed me the river
of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of
the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of
the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit
each month.” We live in the hope of the
resurrection and the renewed creation in which everything will be very good once
again. And that is a hope that enable us
to live each day faithfully in the callings that God has given to us.
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