I took a trip to China back when I was in seminary. While there we went to visit the burial shrine of one of the emperors, I can’t remember which one but the illustration I’m trying to make doesn’t really depend on knowing that. What I do remember is our host and tour guide explaining to us how most Chinese graves are modeled to represent the womb, a rounded mound. I can remember seeing some of those mounds out of the window of the bus as we drove by graveyards. The emperors did not settle for simple mounds however...they created elaborate mountains in which to be enshrined after death.
We talked about mountains last week, about “going up” into the presence of the holy, and how God blesses people in those “mountain top” experiences. I thought it was beautiful symbolism that Chinese burial sites represent hope of rebirth, that their tomb was a womb for their next life. I was reminded of this as I read this week’s passage from Genesis. What does that have to do with death and mountains and blessing and wombs?
Well, it reminded me of the way my Hebrew professor taught this passage in the context of God’s grace. Adam and Eve’s disobedience is not the end of their story, it is the beginning of the story of God’s grace. You see, shortly after today’s passage when Adam and Eve discover what they’ve done and hide themselves from God in shame, shortly after they are found and accosted and driven out of the garden, shortly after they are reminded of their own impending mortality by that famous utterance of God “you are dust, and to dust you will return,” in the very first sentence of the next chapter, Adam and Eve conceive a child. Eve becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son Cain. And then in the very next sentence Eve gives birth a second time to Cain’s brother, Abel. They sin and then God blesses them with life. One must understand the very limited, that is to say nonexistent, scientific knowledge of conception and birth at this time. Sure there was something that a man and woman did, but the actual conception was nothing more nothing less than a gift from God (which despite our deeper modern understanding of biology is still a relevant statement, God’s blessing is that which brings life).
But here’s where all my rambling comes together, you see, the Hebrew word used when Eve becomes pregnant is tahar, the root of which is the word har which, interestingly enough, means “mountain.” I specifically remember my professor saying, “Adam knew Eve and Eve mountained.” Let that sink in now, along with last week’s story about Moses going up the mountain to receive God’s instruction for the people, and the story of Jesus, Peter, James and John going up on a high hill to bear witness to God’s affirmation of Jesus as the Christ, and the command to “listen to what he has to say.” The mountain not only represents the presence of the holy, elevated and set apart from the ordinary below, it also represents a source of new life in Jewish thought.
In our reformed faith, we do not discuss the concept of sin in a vacuum, but in the context of grace. As Paul writes in Romans 6, “The wages that sin pays are death; but God’s gift is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That is to say...God finds a way to make a Chinese burial shrine out of our sin. As he did for Adam and Eve in their disobedience, God also does for us.
Adam and Eve stood there in the garden thinking, “What have I done?” We’ve all been there, that shameful, naked experience...desperately desiring to cover up, to hide, to run away. Adam and Eve feared death. That tends to be how we deal with sin. We try to cover it up, hide it, distance ourselves from it...or worse, we justify it as necessary, we tell ourselves “it really wasn’t that bad,” or cast blame against others...because we fear the consequences and we’d much rather anyone else but us have to face them. We are so afraid of standing naked and vulnerable before our own disobedience that we even avoid asking the question, “What have I done?” altogether.
That’s a problem. Without honesty and humility there can be no growth, no learning, no reconciliation. And without reconciliation, there is no Kindom of God. God will not allow that vision to be thwarted, so God seeks out Adam and Eve, makes them face their fears, acknowledge their disobedience, speak honestly about what they had done, face the consequences of their actions...and then Eve mountains.
This is why, in the reformed faith, we do not speak of sin by itself. We end up avoiding the honesty and humility necessary to move past it. So we speak of sin in the context of grace to hold our own question of “What have I done” in tandem to the question “What has God done?” And that makes all the difference, doesn’t it? This is not a story about “how evil came into the world,” says Walter Breuggeman.
And I would agree, it’s a story that showcases the difference between how we deal with sin and how God deals with sin. When we face the consequences of our sin alone, the consequences of falling short of our vocation to love and care for creation, we are paralyzed...or, one could go so far as to say that when we are alone with our own thoughts and fears we even fall short of facing our own sin at all. When God calls us into confrontation with our vocation and our reality, however, there is a blessing, a reconciliation, a mountaining, and a new life. It is only in the context of God’s grace that the fear of confronting our sin is alleviated, and through faith in forgiveness we find ourselves facing our failures in a way that re-forms us.
I had the honor of serving on a commission for the ordination of a new pastor yesterday. I was asked to take on the role of leading the Call to Confession and Prayer of Confession. “This is my favorite part of the service,” I told the congregation, and then I explained myself. “Where else in this world are you going to get a group of consenting adults to say, ‘I messed up?’” You might see someone fess up if they get caught. But even then we have been largely trained by our culture to justify our behavior, to outright deny that it ever happened, or to distract the public’s attention by saying, “Well, what about so-and-so?” But plain and simple, Scripture tells us that “if we claim we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Then it goes on to say, “buuuuuut, if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from everything we’ve done wrong.”
It’s hard to listen to the ordination questions and participate in the laying on of hands and not think about my own calling and commissioning and ordination. I remember very little of the actual day, to be honest, it was rather overwhelming, but I do remember one poem that was shared during the sermon: “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
So, what have I done? I have made some tremendous relationships. I have also been through divorce and breakups. I have performed many weddings and baptisms and funerals. I have stood beside people in sickness, in grief, in death, and in joy, in new life, in love. But there have also been times when I haven’t been there for you, times when I wasn’t there when you needed me to be. I have spoken sermons which have instilled hope, inspired, and challenged you to think and grow, but there have also been times when I’ve felt as though I haven’t spoken the words you’ve needed to hear.
More importantly, though, what has God done? I can’t tell you how many times God has shown up when I haven’t. There have been Sundays when I have felt naked, vulnerable, useless...using the pulpit to hide. There have been days when I have been ashamed of the work I’ve done, or haven’t done. I remember in particular one week when I’m not even sure what I said from the pulpit. I was exhausted, underprepared, ashamed, afraid, frustrated with myself...probably came up with half of my sermon off the top of my head because I hadn’t even finished writing it. That Sunday I stepped out from the pulpit on my way to shed my robe and stole and escape into an afternoon of denial and self-deprecation when I was interrupted by the hearty handshake of a member of my congregation who looked me in the eye and said, “Pastor, that might have been the best sermon you’ve ever preached. You just keep getting better and better.”
In that moment God called me up on a mountain and reminded me, “Aaron, it’s not all about you. Every time you think you’re not enough, you’re doing a disservice to me. Now, take my blessing and get off this stupid mountaintop. I’m sure I’ll see you here again soon enough, but in the meantime, try to smile a little, okay? I love you.”
What has God done? God has found a way.
May the plan for your wild and precious life bring you time and again into the presence of God, just like that. Where honesty and humility and vulnerability and confession give birth to growth and learning and reconciliation and love and joy and hope and life and new possibility!