Proper 5B
June 10, 2018
Today, we hear of the first interchange between humanity and God. After creating humanity, God’s first comment is, “Where are you?” God was looking for Adam and Eve. And although God had created humanity and all of creation, God was not in Adam and Eve. God didn’t know where Adam & Eve were. To me this says that God was separate from Adam and Eve, during that encounter with the serpent and the tree. But after they hid, God pursued.
God’s second statement was, “Who told you that you were naked?” For God to be asking, suggests that it was not God. God had created these beings – created them naked. But something separate from God, separate from humanity influenced them at that precise moment. There was an influence other than God that drove them to disobey.
And to be clear, it wasn’t just Eve that had a problem. She is not the sole cause of the fall. Yes, she ate of the tree. But Adam did too, and he blamed Eve. I’m not sure where or why Eve took so much of the heat for this exchange, but it is not grounded in the passage we read.
So from these first two utterings between God & the created world, we learn that God was either temporarily distracted when A&E encountered the serpent, or present and silent as they ate of that fruit. Second, we learn that there is another voice or influence in their world. These two put together cause all sorts of trouble for people of faith. Yes, Adam and Eve were disobedient to God. And the big problem with that is that they – we – operate with very limited knowledge, and forces other than God. Their first assessment after getting this knowledge? They hid from God, ashamed and naked. But had they not been created by God, beautiful, complete, and naked?
I’m not suggesting that ignorance is bliss. But I do think that when we gain knowledge, we jump to thinking we can accurately assess everything, especially with the other voices and forces in the world, with our modern-day serpents. We make judgements and decisions that are not helpful. Like Adam and Eve, our acquisition of “knowledge” is wholly useless if we aren’t discerning God’s will at every step, every decision.
It is only grounded in God and bolstered against the other voices that we are able to rightly discern. The collect says that it is God that gives us the inspiration to think those things that are right, and to act on them.
I think this is part of what is happening in the Gospel story. Jesus’ family comes out to see him, but instead of following, loving, supporting, they try to restrain him, because people were saying that Jesus had gone out of his mind. The scribes went on to say he had a demon. So both his biological family and the scribes had knowledge and based on what they “knew”, judged him to be wrong, out of his mind or possessed by a demon. They had “knowledge” and again, got it wrong. Putting this back in Eden, I can imagine the exchange going some thing like this. God says, “don’t listen to the mob, don’t get hung up on the religious law”, and then humanity acts, based on the other forces and God says, “Who told you he was out of his head” or “Who told you he was possessed by a demon”?
From the beginning, humanity has substituted knowledge for faith. God said, trust me, and don’t eat from that tree. Adam and Eve learned that the tree enlighten them between good & evil. Jesus’ family tried to restrain him, because they’d heard he was out of his mind. Up until the end of his ministry on Earth, Jesus was battling with what we’d done with the knowledge we’d gained. From the cross, Jesus exclaimed, “Forgive them Father. They know not what they do.”
Knowledge. It’s a dangerous thing. It is one of the seven deadly social sins, published by Ghandi back in 1925. Knowledge without character.
I don’t think today’s Gospel from Mark is as much a condemnation of family, as much as it’s a conviction of how knowledge is only part of the story. With our knowledge of anything, we jump to action, conclusions and judgement. God doesn’t ask us to know. God asks us to trust and love.
How do we get it wrong so frequently? I think it’s because of all of the modern day serpents whispering in our ear. Power. Prestige. Money. Fame. These things entice us away from God’s will, and we don’t even see it happening.
To be clear, it isn’t easy. It wasn’t easy for the religious leaders of Jesus’ time, or for his family, or for Adam and Eve. Sometimes it’s downright hard to tell the difference between a choice that brings us closer to God, or one that moves us further away. There are social issues tearing up our nation, with well-intentioned Christians on all sides arguing they’re standing on God’s side. Immigration. Gun rights. Police brutality. Race relations. Hunger. In my previous job, I worked for the Eugene Police Chief. Most of the politically charged issues the police get wrapped up in are not nearly as one-sided as either side would have you believe.
But Presiding Bishop Michael Curry has tried to simplify it a bit. He has said, if it isn’t about love, it isn’t about God.
To be clear, I have strong opinions about many of those social issues, of political leaders, of institutions and oppression. But at the end of the day, my certitude is sometimes based on knowledge, and knowledge cannot get me to God’s heart. I can’t possibly have all of the knowledge to make a right judgement, particularly when it comes to people. Yes, all of humanity will be judged – by God. Yes, there may be people and positions that are patently “wrong”. But we can’t possibly have sufficient “knowledge” to know. That judgement is God’s, not ours.
At the end of the day, I think it’s all about love, about loving all of God’s people. Love for the immigrant. Love for the homeless. Love for the police officer. Love for the president, and the cake baker.
So in these politically and socially challenging times, one of our greatest challenges is to refrain from judgment, because we can’t possibly know enough to get it right. Instead our job is to follow the will of God. And love. Everyone.
Amen.
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