And the LORD God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them.
It’s easy to skip over this verse and miss the mercy that is present here. We have listened to a narrative that declares the goodness of the world and all God has made – a narrative written in time of great desolation. We have seen God’s tender hand in the formation of humanity, bending down to breathe the breath of life into the first human. We have seen God’s concern for that human, creating all the creatures of the earth as possible companions, and then taking a bone from the first human to make two. We have seen the garden and heard the call to tend God’s garden, to be good shepherds of the creation. It is a wondrous word of grace to a people in the aftermath of violence, chaos, and devastation, to a people for whom the future seems lost. The prophet Ezekiel will describe the people of that time as dry bones scattered across the desert – and be given a promise of life for those dry bones.
But we have also wrestled with the tragedy of humanity’s turn away from trusting God’s voice, the manipulation of God’s word, the grasping at equality with God, the knowledge of life’s goodness and its evils. We have seen the world thrown off balance. Humanity’s relationship with God, with one another, with the animals, and with the ground itself – all of it disrupted. Humanity has come to know sorrow and tears.
This could have been the end of the story: humanity thrust out of the garden into a world of sweat and tears with no way back.
According to the stories alive in the ancient near east, the gods try to rid themselves of the humans because they disturb the peace of the gods (although the gods themselves were warring!). The God proclaimed to us in the scriptures is a god unwilling to surrender the task of creating a good and beautiful world.
Even as God has confronted humanity with the dire consequences of their rebellion, God provides clothes to those first humans. They were naked and ashamed. The best they could do were fig leaves. But God provides them “garments of skins.”
God doesn’t leave us naked. And we should consider the price God paid to clothe us. We have no killing yet in the garden. The animals all eat vegetation. God has to sacrifice some of God’s precious creatures to clothe these faithless humans. God carries that burden in order to do mercy.
The great drama of the scriptures is found here. God creates. God suffers our sorrows. God chooses mercy. God sacrifices for our sake.
We will see it again and again in the scriptures. And it will find its fullest expression in Jesus on Good Friday.
Such mercy is not to be taken for granted. It is costly. And it bids us come and follow. It bids us join God’s creating and redeeming work of healing the world.
Wondrous Grace, Daring Mercy, Grant us wisdom and courage to follow your way.
22Then the LORD God said, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— 23therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. 24He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.
The large snake was sunning itself on the path. My dog Frances saw it first. She was on a lead in front of me, became very curious, and began to pull. My heart jumped when I heard the hiss and saw the ground move. In the rush of adrenalin and fear – especially for Frances – my mind didn’t have time to process that it was just a gopher snake.
Snakes tend to evoke fear in us. There’s the element of surprise. There’s the uncertainty of danger. It’s a far different creature than the bunnies we saw on the path or the peaceful gliding pelicans on the lake. Besides, most other creatures have legs (sometimes too many legs – there are some bugs that creep me out!)
It’s understandable we would find in the scriptures an ancient story hinting at the origin of snakes. But, again, that’s not why this story is here.
Genesis is being compiled in Babylon after Jerusalem had been destroyed and the people led into exile in chains. The Babylonian origin story is about war among the gods. The Gilgamesh Epic also tells of a snake, but this one comes out of a tree to steal the plant that grants immortality and carries it into the depths of a spring. Gilgamesh, grieving the death of a friend, had outwitted the gods to survive the flood and been told the secret of this plant. He retrieved it from the bottom of the sea by tying stones to his feet. But on the way home he stopped to bathe in a spring only to have the gift of immortality stolen by the snake.
The story the biblical writers tell is no longer the story of an ancient hero (in a world already violent) who sought to reach beyond our natural limits; it is about the whole human community and the sorrows of life. The snake doesn’t rob humanity of immortality, humans make the choice to break faith that costs them the garden and brings near the shadow of death.
Adam and Eve were mortal creatures, dependent on the life-giving breath/spirit of God – but there was in the garden a tree of life. There was no grief, no tears, no bedside vigils or sleepless nights. There was a beautiful garden, meaningful work, rich abundance, communion with God, communion with the creatures, and a perfect intimacy with one another. There was life in perfect goodness.
But they broke it.
God warned they would know not only life’s joys but its sorrows. There is the wonder of holding a newborn in your arms, and the devastation of laying its body in the ground. Cain will kill his brother, Abel. Jubal will make music, but his brother will make weapons. And their father, Lamech, will kill in revenge of a wound, boasting of 77-fold revenge. The human story is both glory and gory. Our speech can soar in exquisite poetry and be filled with lies and hate – and we will sometimes not care about the difference. We will explore the stars and build death camps. We will betray perfect goodness and hear it speak forgiveness from the cross.
God doesn’t hurl lightning bolts at our first parents. That is not God’s way. But death comes. They lose the garden. They gain sweat and tears. They gain a sundered relationship to God and one another. They hide from one another and, vainly, from God. God has become a threat, someone we fear. The ground resists them. There are weeds. Childbirth comes with pain. Women become vulnerable to men. We all become vulnerable to one another. Now there are secrets. Now there is ache and longing and shame. Now there is grief and the grave.
We cannot go back to the garden. The flaming sword is a gift lest we live in unending brokenness. But we are not abandoned. There is another garden. And another tree of life. A strange tree where humanity strikes at the perfect love of God – yet love triumphs. And its fruit is for all.
6On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. 7And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. 8Then the LORD God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. (Isaiah 25:6-8)
Creating Grace Faithful Love, feed us from your tree of life.
Previous posts in this series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
So far, in Genesis 1 & 2, we have talked about the biblical affirmation of the goodness of the creation, the power of that assertion in its time of great woe, the proclamation of the majesty of God, the creative power of the divine word, and the fact that the creating of a good world is an ongoing work of God. We have seen that humanity is called into being by the word of God and also formed from the dust and breath of God. We bear the image of God as caretakers of the world and as beings built for belonging, for community.
8And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9Out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food…
15The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.
Where the account of the origin of all things in Genesis 1 emphasizes the majesty of God, the creative power of God’s word, and the order and goodness of the world, the second chapter of Genesis tells an older story focused on the relationship between God and humans. Here God breathes the breath of life into the nostrils of the first human, is concerned about and working for humanity’s well-being, and walks through the garden in the cool of the evening. In this narrative God is not just proclaiming humanity into existence; God speaks with them.
Having formed the first human, God plants a garden for it. The ancient storyteller borrows the image of a great king with a royal garden. God makes a perfect place where humanity and the creatures can live in harmony and every need for food is satisfied. Then God gives humans the responsibility to tend the garden.
God is not going to cultivate the flowers and prune the shrubs. God is not going to plant and harvest. God is not going to tend the vines or make the wine. We have been given a vocation. Work is an essential part of our humanity. Some important part of us is lost when we do not have meaningful work – work that benefits others.
This work, however, is not yet laborious. The garden does not resist human care. Weeds and sweat will come later when the garden has been lost.
We need to work. This is not a moral or political judgment. This is not just a necessity of survival. We need to work because work is a participation in God’s creating. The work of feeding our neighbors, the work of caring for the sick, the work of tending children, the work of creating beauty, the work of teaching and leading, it is all part of God’s creating of a good and noble world. Something is lost in us when we do not have minds and hands at work in serving our neighbor.
There is a reward in every act of creating, a feeling of accomplishment, a sense of satisfaction whether I have baked bread, formed steel, or flown an airplane full of passengers across the country. Such work vibrates in harmony with the core of our being.
We are not wired to work for a paycheck, we are created to tend the garden, to make the world better. Contrary to Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street (and all who think like him), greed is not good; it corrupts the image of God within us. To enrich ourselves at the expense of our neighbor violates humanity’s core calling. Jesus, who manifests our true and complete humanity, “came not to be served, but to serve.” Jesus didn’t just come to die on the cross, he brought the gifts of God to others. This is the nature of all true work: not to plunder others but to bless them.
We are made to participate in God’s creating and nurturing of a good world. We are gardeners in God’s creation. And some important part of us needs to have our hands in the soil. We are in some primal way farmers, needing to grow things. My father had a job with great responsibility and prestige, but when he came home in the evening he would go down to a small garden in our back yard and sit and run the water down the small furrows to nourish the corn and vegetables he had planted. We need green things. We need flowers and trees and fresh tomatoes or whatever it is that grows in our place. Though we are filled with the breath of God, we are also creatures of the soil and tenders of God’s garden.
Breath of Life, Wondrous Maker, lead us in your life-giving work.
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Some footnotes about the verses we skipped:
9Out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food,
The trees of the garden nourish the soul as well as the body. They are “pleasant to the sight and good for food.” Our gardening is not just for material necessity, for our bellies, but for our spirit, for our eyes.
the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Now there are these two particular trees: one that gives life, and one that reveals not only life’s joys but its sorrows, not only life’s laughter but its tears, not only what is noble but what is cruel. As we have said, the people of the ancient Near East all knew the story of such trees. What matters is how the biblical writers tell the story.
For the moment, the trees just are. They are not placed there to tempt humanity. They are not symbolic of anything. They are simply noted – though they become important in the story that will follow.
10A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches. 11The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. 13The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Cush. 14The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
Ancient life thrived on the banks of these rivers. Indeed, human societies are built on rivers. The image here is that all the great rivers of the ancient Near East had their source in the garden of God’s creating. The image of rivers flowing and bringing life to all will weave all through the scriptures. Ezekiel will see a river flowing from the new temple, growing ever deeper and wider, bringing life to everyone – even to the Dead Sea. Jesus will proclaim himself the source of the water of life and declare that rivers shall flow from the hearts of those who show allegiance to him. And Revelation will take up Ezekiel’s vision of a river of the water of life flowing from the throne of God in the New Jerusalem.
Here in the beginning of the biblical story is an abundance of life-giving water and an anticipation of the ultimate redemption of the earth.