Prepare

If last week’s text was weird, this text (Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7), commonly called the fall , has baggage. It is the story of the original sin, which we all inherit. So maybe it’s a story about our baggage, but it also has some baggage of its own. It’s weighed down by readings that continue the blame game of 3:12, which, even in the story, seems to make everything worse. Specifically, some interpretations of this text blame women for the fall. I would assume that people who know this story are familiar with those interpretations. I would assume people have feelings about those interpretations. It is important to acknowledge both those feelings and those readings.

It is helpful to note that the blame game doesn’t help. In verses 12 and 13, the man blames the woman, and the woman blames the serpent, and God assesses consequences on everyone. Blame is an attempt at control; however, there is so much of life that is always beyond our control.

In the article, I talk about guilt and shame. Guilt says, “I did a bad thing,” while shame says, “I am bad.” Both are important for this text. So, too, is reconciliation, where relationships are repaired and forgiveness is shared.

Opening Exercise

Give participants a stack of scratch paper or some index cards. Read a word, and have participants write down or draw the first word, phrase, or icon (it’s okay to invent one) that comes to mind. Count to three and then have the group reveal their response. Ask if anyone would like to share and explore together what is similar and what is different. Go as many rounds as make sense for your group. (I’m grateful to Lyle Griner’s Really, Really Greats! for this idea.)

• Fruit
• Snake
• Guilt
• Shame
• Good
• Evil
• Forgiveness

Alternatively, break up into pairs and ask:

• What is the difference between guilt and shame? Is one worse than the other?
• How do you cope with feelings of guilt and shame?

Text Read Aloud

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7

The Knowledge of Good: God’s Answer to Shame

Isn’t it strange that this story doesn’t say that Eve—and Adam—felt guilty for eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of

Illustration by Kayla Shiao.

good and evil, but ashamed of their nakedness? Maybe it isn’t that surprising, because surely they had bumped into one another accidentally while gardening, or taken the last bite of something the other was hoping to savor? Guilt is the feeling we have when we’ve done something wrong—accidentally or purposefully—and we know it. Guilt says, “I did something bad.” But shame says, “I am bad.” When Adam and Eve eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, what they know first is shame.

The family Madrigal in the Disney movie Encanto knows something about shame (for a quick plot refresher, you can watch the trailer here). The family is ashamed because Bruno’s gift doesn’t work the way they want it to. And they are ashamed because Mirabel isn’t given a magical gift like the rest of the family. Shame breaks apart their family’s home.

The knowledge of evil seems to be this: things are tangled up for us, and that tangledness makes it hard for us to do what is right. We live within systems that tell us because we don’t fit in just so, if we don’t look just so, if we don’t have certain things, then we should be ashamed. Adam and Eve realize they aren’t, in a sense, dressed properly, and now they know it, and it makes them ashamed. In other words, the first thing they learn from the tree is not some new sin; it is that they are exposed as inadequate. They’re ashamed. That is the knowledge of evil.

But if that’s the knowledge of evil, what’s the knowledge of good?

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The knowledge of good is the antidote to shame. Shame isolates, but reconciliation reunites. After the Madrigals’ Casita is destroyed by an earthquake, Mirabel runs away and her abuela finds her. They are reconciled. They work to repair their relationship and forgive one another. Think about the last big singing number. The family is all together, but the house is in ruins. Together, with their community’s help, they rebuild Casita. The knowledge of good is that God is always making things right, and we’re invited to be a part of it. That’s reconciliation. That’s the good.

Past the verses we read from this story, God gives consequences to the woman and the man and the serpent. They’re all going to have to leave the garden, but God takes the time to make clothes for them. God sees their shame and works to make things right, moving toward them, not away from them. God doesn’t abandon them.

It can be tempting to treat this story like humanity’s biggest mistake, but it certainly seems to me that this story is the beginning of God’s biggest triumph. The theologian Richard Rohr points out that Jesus is God’s Plan A, as in, Jesus isn’t the backup plan because we messed everything up so badly. Jesus is God’s ongoing pattern of reconciliation made visible. In Jesus, God is reconciling the world to God’s self (2 Corinthians 5:19). God isn’t counting our faults but working to restore relationship with us and with the world. This is the good.

This story can absolutely be the story about how sin entered the world. It can be the story about all the tangled-up realities of life on earth. It can be the story about broken relationships between God and humanity and between humans. And it can be the story about how God is committed—from the very beginning—to repairing, restoring, and reconciling. This is the knowledge of good.

Reflection Questions

Read the text again.

• What did you notice in the story this time that you hadn’t noticed before?
• Why do you think God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden in the first place?
• What happens to Eve and Adam after they eat the fruit? What was supposed to happen?
• How do you think God reacts to us when we mess up?

Closing Activity & Prayer

Say a confession and forgiveness together, such as the one in Setting 12 in All Creation Sings (pgs. 29-30), or one that is familiar to participants. Before you begin, encourage them to listen for words of reconciliation: where God is forgiving and making things right for us, for everyone else, and for all of creation.

Bio

Adrianne Meier is an ELCA pastor who serves among the people at St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Bloomington, Indiana. When she’s not working—and even when she is working—you can find her furiously knitting.

Contributed by Bob Chell, University Lutheran Center, Brookings, SD

Warm-up Question

If God is in all places, at all times, how can God stand by while bad things happen?

Unspoken Questions

In 1862 the largest mass hanging in United States history occurred in Mankato, Minnesota. Thirty- eight Dakota men of the Santee nation were executed for taking part in what has been called “Little Crow’s War.”

The Dakota people were promised much but received little in payment for the land taken from them by the U.S. government. Unscrupulous traders and dishonest agents stole food and annuity payments until hunger and hardship drove the Santee to send out a hunting party of four in mid-August. The hunting party encountered white settlers and five settlers died. Things spun out of control and, after order was restored, President Abraham Lincoln ordered the hanging of 38 Santee men.

Jim Miller had a dream. Jim is a member of the Santee Nation. In 2008 he organized what has become an annual trek on horseback from the Crow Creek reservation of South Dakota to the riverbank where the executions took place, a distance of 330 miles.  Jim’s dream was not simply to make the trek, but to bring healing and reconciliation. The ride was commemorated in the film, Dakota 38 Engaging History.

Discussion Questions

• Does God take an active role in the world?
• To what degree are greedy Indian agents from the 1850s responsible for widespread poverty on reservations today?
• Many children of divorced families struggle. Who is to blame?
• Are retribution and reconciliation compatible?

Scripture Texts (NRSV) for Sunday, April 10, 2011 (Fifth Sunday in Lent)

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Romans 8:6-11

John 11:1-45

(Text links are to Oremus Bible Browser. Oremus Bible Browser is not affiliated with or supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. You can find the calendar of readings for Year C at Lectionary Readings.)

For lectionary humor and insight, check the weekly comic Agnus Day.

Gospel Reflection

As a campus pastor, people come to me with hard questions, questions with no easy answers.  I get a call in the middle of the night asking, “If a person commits suicide, do they go to hell?” I’m pretty sure this is more than a disinterested quest for information.  So I want to know if the caller has a term paper due at 8:00 a.m. or if, perhaps, their fiancé broke off their engagement earlier in the evening.  The asked question is theological; the unspoken one is personal.  The first is about God, the second about the person’s deepest pain.

We can ponder the source of monstrously evil people and events in the world. Think Hitler and Holocaust.  We can probe for an explanation of great tragedy arising from nature. Think earthquake and tsunami.  These are theological questions.  Martha says to Jesus, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died,” and the unspoken question is, “Why weren’t you here when I needed you most?”   That question comes to our hearts and lips when death darkens our house, when our parent’s divorce, when the person we love does not return our affection. It is a profoundly personal question.  We can discuss the former questions but often only sit in silence in the face of the latter.

I hesitated writing the last of the above discussion questions, knowing that for some it is a deeply personal question.  I kept it because the gospel is deeply personal.  Jesus didn’t come to tell bad people to be good people or to explain away deep, unrelenting pain with soothing words. Jesus did proclaim God’s promises to Martha.  Jesus did raise her brother Lazarus that day but Jesus response first response on seeing the body of his friend was to weep.  Many have memorized John 11:35 because it is the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.”   I contend it is among the most profound. It reminds us that Jesus stands with us in our pain, not over us in judgment when our lives are in turmoil.

Where is Jesus when my parent’s divorce, when a young Native American girl takes her own life, when thousands die in a tsunami or at the hand of evil tyrants? Jesus is there; weeping, standing with all in their deepest pain, their sharpest grief, their greatest regret.

Discussion Questions

• Can you identify a time in your life when you felt abandoned by God? Looking back, was God with you? If so, how was God present?
• When your pain has been deep and unrelenting, which words were helpful? Hurtful?
• Can a person be close to God and far away from God at the same time?
• Is trusting God different than believing in God?

Activity Suggestion

Make a timeline of your faith history:   Draw a line horizontally in the middle of a sheet of paper and label it with significant events in your life; your birth on one end and today on the other. Write joys and sorrows as they happened; great joys high on the page and deep sorrows near the bottom.  Connect them and you’ll see how your life has ups and downs. Now place a G when your faith was greatest, an A where your faith was absent, and an O where you weren’t thinking about God at all. Connect them and you’ll see the ups and downs of your faith journey.

Share with one other person your greatest joy and your deepest sorrow. Do the ways you felt about God’s presence at those times coincide with what you believe about God’s presence at those times now that you look back?

Closing Prayer

God, you know our deep pain, our secret shames, and the unrelenting pain which threatens us to make us despair. Help us to feel your presence in our hearts and not just in our heads. Give us confidence in your promises, so that we will trust you and cling to your promises when doubt gnaws at our faith.  Amen.