Original Goodness

First Sunday in Lent A, March 9, 2014, Sullivan Park Care Center, by Sr Annette Fricke, OP

            “This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”  I cannot help but hearken back to the words so plainly stated in last week’s gospel text.  Almost a direct parallel is found in today’s Old Testament lesson.  Here, it is God in the garden who is expecting Adam and Eve to listen.  God commends a pure and simple obedience; that is all.  But what do we do with that?  The beginning of the world starts out with trust and obedience in God and a relationship of intimacy with God. 

The relationship between God and humanity is a perfect one, unblemished, but then something happens.  The serpent and Eve have a conversation questioning what God said and the serpent even tries to get Eve to misquote God.  What did God say?  That you couldn’t eat of ANY tree in the garden?  Eve actually defends her relationship with God when she says, “No.  God did not say we couldn’t eat of ANY tree.  We can eat of any tree EXCEPT the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”  This is a test of logic.  If you only know good, how can you know what evil is?  Wouldn’t you like to know so you know the difference?  In the image of God, God made them.  The image of God was that of goodness.  If you look closely at this passage which is the quoted source of the doctrine of original sin, you can also see that it is also just as plausible to see it as a story of original goodness.  If humanity was made in the image of God and we say that God is good, we were born in original goodness.  This story is descriptive of what humans are like.  It is not proscriptive, that from then on we are to be cursed to live a life of suffering by the tilling of the soil and childbirth.

The story states that humans lived well; they thrived in the Garden of Eden.  If you wanted to eat, you simply plucked off fruit from a tree. A stream would rise from the earth and water the whole face of the ground.  Adam, before Eve was there, would till the ground.  This was the purpose of man: to till and keep God’s garden. Individual parts of creation are declared good, but the whole of creation is very good.  The trees were pleasing to the sight and good for food.

The purpose of humanity is to live in relationship to God: to till the ground, working in God’s garden.  God provided for the man creatures of all kinds as well as a woman to be his partner.  We were not created for ourselves.  We were created for God and for all of God’s creation—to till it, to keep it, to take care of it.  We are to take care of the animals as well as the environment. We are to preserve and protect all of God’s creation, without exception, because it is all God’s and it is all very good.

But all of this is more than a purpose.  It is our mission.  We are God’s servants and living our purpose fulfills God’s intention for us as the people of God.  We are the instruments or the tool of God’s created order.  Our mission is to do God’s work in the world.  This is not a leisurely activity or a never-ending getaway.  God’s mission through us is to work in the garden, to care for it, to plant, to nourish that garden.  If we sustain the garden, it will sustain us for our journey through this life.

The problem comes when we get distracted.  People will tell us to do other things.  We will pass the day being idle and talk about doing foolish things.  We will actually do foolish things.  We will drink wine and do foolish things.  We will become jealous of our neighbor’s possessions or success in life.  We will talk badly about people we don’t even know.  We will use our brain to rationalize doing things that are not part of God’s mission.  We will even repeat the same wanderings from God, all to pursue what looks good to eat or good to indulge our cravings, only to be disappointed, depressed, and dejected.  We will go along with the crowd even though we strongly disagree with them because we don’t want to stick out.  We will be proud of our accomplishments to the point of giving only ourselves credit, and not God.  We will be charming one moment and mean the next.  We will say, “Let the young people do it.  I’m too old.  I can’t do anything.”  We make up excuses for all kinds of behavior and words that fall from our mouths.

In all of this, our disobedience to God comes in the form of wayward desire.  Our erosion of trust leads us into temptation.  Our estrangement becomes alienation from God, between humans, between humans and animals, between humans and the environment.  All of this happens because we do not want to listen to God. 

Anyone who has ever tried to parent or babysit children knows what this is.  The very thing you tell a child not to do is what he or she does.  It happens all the time.  Emily, don’t stick your fingers in the cake.  What does Emily do?  I don’t even have to answer that.  So you call Emily in to talk to her and you say, “I thought I told you to keep your fingers out of the cake.”  Emily confirms by saying, “You did.”  “Then why did you do it?”  “I don’t know.”  The child knows that nothing he or she comes up with will be accepted. The next time you bake a cake, you better figure out a better way to hide it because you know it is likely to happen again. Either that, or make another cake.  The same thing happens with all food prepared for a picnic or pot luck. There’s always an excuse.

So why do we insist on being contrary and giving in to our temptations?  For some of us, that little kid in us never goes away.  I guess the rational answer to that question would be that we somehow think that we are smarter than God.

Never forget that we are to be in relationship to God and each other. When you truly love someone, it is your passion, your mission, and your calling to do that which is tending God’s garden. Oswald Chambers has this to say, “If we do something simply out of a sense of duty, we are trying to live up to a standard that competes with Jesus Christ.  We become a prideful, arrogant person, thinking we know what to do in every situation.  We have put our sense of duty on the throne of our life, instead of enthroning the resurrection life of Jesus.  We are not told to “walk in the light” of our conscience or in the light of a sense of duty, but to walk in the light as He is in the light.  When we do something out of a sense of duty, it is easy to explain the reasons for our actions to others.  But when we do something out of obedience to the Lord, there can be no other explanation---just obedience. 

The beginning of the world starts out with trust and obedience in God and a relationship of intimacy with God.  God invites us every day to live that life once again through our union with Jesus Christ, God’s son.  What are you going to do with your time today?  Resist that temptation to sit and watch TV hour after hour.  Do something different, like reaching out to a neighbor or a new resident.  Make that person feel welcome, just as you would welcome a relative---because that person is a relative, he or she, just like you, is a child of God made in God’s image. Amen.