Choices
Sermon Series “Through the Bible,” № 2, Genesis 2:4-17
And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” –Genesis 2:16-17
This second week in our journey through Genesis begins with a second story of creation. During graduate school, Old Testament 101, Presbyterian pastors are taught to observe the way the first (Priestly) account ends at chapter 2:4a, and the second (Yahwist) account begins at chapter 2:4b. Even without biblical-studies training, you’ve probably noticed how the wide angle of chapter one gives way, in chapter two, to a focus on one particular place, and one special garden.
In former centuries, and today among our Fundamentalist friends, attention has been given to determining the exact location of the garden. Where was the confluence of the four rivers? Have their courses changed since antiquity, or has one of the rivers dried up? Did Adam and Eve live in the hills of western Iran or somewhere on the Arabian Peninsula?[1]
If you take into account the limited geographical tools and historical records available when the creation narrative was written, then it’s easier to appreciate the poetic nature of this description. In part, its ancient form tells us what the DNA scientists say today: that we perpetually moving humans came from another place, a place where water was abundant, and plant and animals thrived. But the creation narrative goes further than many geneticists and anthropologists want to travel. It emphasizes that behind and underneath the waters that quenched the thirst of our ancestors is the true source of life, and that one true Source is God.
This past Sunday, in the first creation narrative, I called your attention to the Spirit of God (1:2). Depending on your translation of the Hebrew, the Spirit of God “vibrates,” “trembles,” or “stirs” over the face of the waters. God is the Divine Wind who sweeps in like a gracious breeze to speak the word that calls the world into being.
Today, in this second creation narrative, I call your attention to the curious new thing God does in 2:16-17. God introduces a moral dimension to human life, specifying actions allowed and an action forbidden. Remember that the editors of Genesis put together their larger narrative in a time when many bad choices had brought pain and heartache to their people. These verses foreshadow bad choices to follow, and help set up dramatic tension. A major purpose of this creation narrative was to remind people that God sets before them choices that can be made wisely and lead to good, or that can be made poorly, and lead to evil.
In our time, it’s not too difficult to identify and list many areas of life in which wise moral decisions are needed. It’s depressingly easy to point out poor decisions and their evil consequences, whether we look at individuals we know or read about in the news, or think of larger scale errors committed by institutions or nations. Nearly every day I observe or hear about some pandemic-related decision made by an individual or institution, and feel frustrated about a poor choice, and the level of disagreement about what constitutes a poor choice.
This week, The New York Times ran an op-ed by Paul Krugman with the apt title, “The Quiet Rage of the Responsible.”[2] Krugman is a Nobel-prize-winning economist. He worked on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors, and retired from teaching at Princeton University. Lately, he’s been thinking about the current anti-vaccination, anti-masking movement.
Krugman offers some well-considered criticism of those who, for cultural or political reasons, refuse vaccinations or actively impede efforts to contain the latest outbreak. Earlier in the pandemic, some Democrat governors offended people of faith by not including houses of worship on their lists of “essential businesses,” in essence not taking seriously enough the right to freely assemble and worship. Now, some Republican governors, who long have championed the rights of small-business owners and local school districts, are threatening to pull licenses and cut off funds to businesses and schools that enforce their own masking rules. To today’s theme, Krugman writes, “getting vaccinated and wearing a mask in public spaces aren’t ‘personal choices.’ When you reject your shots or refuse to mask up, you’re increasing my risk of catching a potentially deadly or disabling disease, and also helping to perpetuate the social and economic costs of the pandemic. In a very real sense, the irresponsible minority is depriving the rest of us of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”[3]
Helmut Thielicke was a German professor and pastor, active in the “Confessing Church” movement that stood against fascism. After WWII, he preached a series of sermons on Genesis from the pulpit of St. Michael’s Church in Hamburg. In one sermon, he connected the choice faced by Adam and Eve to the choice faced by the travelers in the gospel reading I’ve chosen for today, the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Just as Adam and Eve faced a choice to live according to God’s word, or to draw back and live for themselves, so also did the travelers. Thielicke says the wounded and helpless victim of highway robbery posed a moral choice as clear as if God said, “Here, you’ve got to help!” But the priest and Levite, worshiping their freedom from any responsibility to their neighbors, ignored God’s word, drew back from the unfolding tragedy, and passed by on the other side of the road.[4]
Thielicke skillfully describes our human tendency toward denying obvious truth to justify self-interest. In the story of Adam and Eve, sin is the voice that counters God’s word, saying, “You must have misunderstood what God meant. If you eat the fruit, surely you will not die.” In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, perhaps sin expressed itself to the Priest and Levite in thoughts like, “You can’t be expected to hang around a crime scene. It’s not safe, and the delay won’t fit your schedule.” Today, it’s the voice that says, “They’re worried about the safety of children and the sanity of health-care workers? Tough luck, you never will wear a mask because you are ‘free’.”
Among the books I consulted this week was a recent children’s story sponsored by UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund. It’s about a young girl named Sarah, who is trying to cope with the pandemic. One night in a dream, she meets a friendly dragon. Together, they fly around the world, meeting other children in pandemic-safe ways. Sarah’s friend teaches important lessons about things like social distancing, washing hands, and staying home when you feel sick. The pandemic has made Sarah feel especially small and helpless. But she learns that changes in her behavior can make a big difference. Near the end of the tale, she tells the friendly dragon, “You are my hero.” The dragon replies, “You are my hero too ….”[5]
The message of this story is not so very different from the message of today’s scripture texts. We face moral decisions every day, and some of the most immediate and important relate to how we will take care of one another during a pandemic. When you make wise and compassionate decisions to social distance, to wear face coverings, to get vaccinated (when possible) then the thought the friendly dragon expressed to Sarah, I echo when I say, “My hero is you.”
When it comes to the topic of freedom, Christians are called to think not just in terms of freedom from unpleasant personal constraints, but also in terms of freedom to do good. Think of unvaccinated children, tired and demoralized health-care workers, the business owner whose operations are threatened by sick staff and frail family members. In the words of Pastor Thielicke, “… We shall have to see them the way Jesus saw them, not from the point of view that says, ‘This my neighbor will have to look out for himself; nobody ever helped me’ …. When one stands beneath the eyes of Jesus, then suddenly people count for something …. Everything has changed.”[6]
May it be so for us. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.
NOTES
[1] Gerhard von Rad, “The Passage About the Rivers in Paradise,” II.3. in Genesis: A Commentary, Revised Edition, Old Testament Library, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1961, p. 79 ff.
[2] Paul Krugman, “The Quiet Rage of the Responsible,” The New York Times, 19 Aug. 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/opinion/covid-masks-vaccine-mandates.html.
[3] Ibid.
[4] In chapter 3, “The Light of the World,” Helmut Thielicke, How the World Began: Man in the First Chapters of the Bible, Trans. John W. Doberstein, Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1961, p. 36.
[5] https://www.unicef.org/coronavirus/my-hero-you
[6] Thielicke, p. 38.
PREVIOUS SERMON, https://www.fpcedw.org/blog/a-gracious-breeze
SUBSEQUENT SERMON, www.fpcedw.org/blog/faith-and-work
READ MORE, https://www.fpcedw.org/blog