CURSES!

 We’re at the final part of Genesis 2-3. In the previous posts, we’ve enjoyed God creating the human and the garden for him to live in. We’ve enjoyed seeing how focused God is on the human (and us!). We’ve seen God perform surgery and create a partner fit for the man. We’ve seen the snake trick Eve, or maybe we’ve seen Eve act wisely. Either way, the people eat the apple and realize they are naked, which while it didn’t matter before, matters now – they’ve eaten the fruit of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad. Nakedness is clearly bad in this story. Since they realize this is shameful, they cover their private parts with fig leaves. And when God comes to the garden in the evening, their shame causes them to hide.

God finds them out while walking in the garden. He calls to them because he can’t find them like usual. They admit they hid because they were naked. God asked them who told them they were naked. God asks, but she already knows; her next question is, “did you eat of the tree which I had forbidden you to eat from?” The man, of course, minimizes his responsibility for his own actions by blaming the woman. “She gave it to me and I ate it.” Ignoring the fact that he heard the entire conversation between the serpent and the woman and didn’t protest or object to her action in any way. God turns to the woman and asks, “what is this you have done?” Here’s where Eve is not so awesome. She too downplays her own guilt (symbolized by her thinking it through!) and says the snake tricked her. 

Image Credit: https://uploads0.wikiart.org/images/michelangelo/adam-and-eve-1512.jpg!PinterestSmall.jpg

(Far be it from me to critique Michelangelo, but this image is incorrect. That snake has no legs …)

Now comes the most awesome and the most beautiful part of this whole story. First, remember the snake still has legs, but its about to lose them. God curses the snake as a consequence of its actions. “On your belly you shall crawl. You’ll be more cursed than all the beasts of the field and all the cattle. I will put enmity between you and the woman. You will always be enemies.” And to the woman he says, “because you’ve done this, I’m going to make childbearing really hard on you and sometimes it will kill you. However, you will still want your husband and he will rule over you.” The woman herself is not cursed – whether you think of pain in childbirth as a curse or not.

Then, God says to the man, “cursed be the ground because of you.” Cursed be the ground because you ate of the tree. The man himself is not cursed. But the ground is cursed. People will have to work harder for our living now. They will have to earn a living “by the sweat of their brows.”

This does not seem awesome and beautiful. Not yet; it’s coming!

To recap, the snake and the ground are cursed outright. The people are not cursed. The woman will have pains in childbearing, but that’s not the same as outright saying “You’ll be more cursed than all the beasts of the field!” The ground itself is not even really cursed either, just for the man. It’s hard to look out on a beautiful day like Cleveland has today and say, “Oh this is all cursed!” It’s equally hard to see new babies and people and say they are cursed. My point is this: we are not living under a curse. And God has definitely not cursed us.

Was that the awesome part? Yes! Part of it anyway.

Now, we come to the final section of the parable and the whole point. The parable answers the burning question of why snakes don’t have legs. Where did all the people and plants and trees come from. What was the beginning like? Specifically, where did people come from? Why are men and women different? Again, it answers the question of why people, plants, and animals all die. Of course, we don’t like it when our loved ones die. We want to know why and how to stop it. This section answers the question of why life is so hard; farming is hard and childbearing is hard. So much work! Most importantly, it gave people a story to tell about themselves and their ancestors. It gave them a story to bring them together as a people, as all the best stories do.

But the best part is that God continues to care for them and to love them even though they’ve disobeyed his one commandment. God says they can’t stay here, because now they’re going to die and only things that aren’t going to die can live in Eden.

How is this caring for them? It’s coming.

Because they were ashamed to be naked, God herself sews them clothes from animal skins to protect them when they leave the garden. God made them clothes! In previous installments, I talked about how intimately God is woven with them; He is focused on them and their comfort and this continues even after they leave the garden. To me, it’s so delightful to see just how focused and pleased God is with what She’s created. It’s delightful to see God’s care and compassion for them and for us!

Maybe we too are called to realize how intimately we are connected to God and to each other, to be focused on and care for each other in the way that God is focused on us. The Poor People’s Campaign had an assembly in Washington DC over the weekend. My spouse was there and I stayed and watched from home. The assembly gave one person from each state time to share how government policy has killed their family members or made their lives unnecessarily harder. We in the crowd were asked to listen. Just that. Listen. In fact, the Rev. Dr. William Barber II admonished the crowd several times to stop speaking while the speakers were speaking. Because we need to listen to each other as a sign that we care about each other.

It is only by listening to the pain and heartbreak of the oppressed that we learn how to partner with them to make a better world.

Go forth and listen.

B