The Primeval Mythology of Genesis - The Fall

Genesis 3:8-24

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.” The Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”

To the woman he said,

“I will make your pangs in childbirth exceedingly great; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”

And to the man he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The man named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife and clothed them.

Then the Lord God said, “See, the humans have become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and now they might reach out their hands and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent them forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which they were taken.

He drove out the humans, 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.

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If ever there was a story in the Bible that has been misunderstood, misused, and abused, it is this one. The story of Adam and Eve, and their leave from Eden, is what many have used to justify patriarchy and the subjugation of women, the explanation and origin of evil, sin, and death in the world, and why sex has long been treated as something shameful and dangerous.

We come to these beliefs and practices by believing that there really were two people named Adam and Eve. And a serpent, who is clearly Satan, tricked the gullible Eve into eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Eve, being the temptress that she was, lured her husband into sampling the fruit, too. Suddenly, they realized they were naked, filled with shame, and ran to hide themselves with fig leaf loincloths. Then God shows up, gets them to confess to their sin, and punishes them both with painful labor: one in childbirth and the other in trying to bring life from the ground, and of course getting pushed out of paradise forever.

And now, every person after can blame Adam, but mostly Eve, for bringing sin and death into the world.

All from taking a bite of an apple…

But what if we don’t have to believe all of those things? What if the text itself doesn’t really support any of that? What if there are a lot more ways to understand the story of our mythical first parents and what it might mean for us today? And more importantly what it tells us about God our Creator.

So first things first - there was no apple. The text just says fruit. What kind of fruit, we don’t know. But I am pretty sure it wasn’t an apple, no matter what popular paintings portray.

Now to something more serious. Did Adam and Eve exist? Two individual people in a perfect garden, from whom the whole human race descended? No—probably not. The archaeological, historical, and especially genetic evidence just doesn’t support that reading.

And that’s where a lot of people start to worry. If that part of the Bible isn’t literally true, then what about the rest? If Adam and Eve weren’t real people—if this is a story rather than a historical event—then how can we trust the Gospels? Or the cross? Or anything else?

That fear is what one theologian called “house of cards theology.” If one part of the story feels shaky, then the whole thing must come crashing down. But that’s a fragile way to approach Scripture. It leads to an anxious, defensive kind of faith—one that clings to literal readings and misses deeper truths.

Yet we must remember, not only when we are looking at these stories in Genesis but throughout the Bible, God doesn’t only desire knowledge, but faith. And faith involves mystery, not certainty.

As for an origin story, this is a sort of an origin, but not one about evil, sin, and death.

Nowhere in the text is the serpent called Satan. Genesis 3:1 says, “The serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal the Lord God had made,” suggesting it too is an animal, created by God. If anything, based on what we know from the previous two chapters of Genesis, all of creation created by God, is good.

What that means for this crafty serpent, I am not sure. Perhaps this is where we lean into God saying that creation was good, not perfect. Perhaps the serpent was good, not perfect, but also not evil. Could it be that even in a good creation, not everything was meant to be simple or safe?

As for death, what rings in our ears is Paul saying, “the wages of sin is death.” So we often assume Adam and Eve were created immortal, and that because they sinned, now we all suffer the consequences—one of them being death.

However, the question of Adam and Eve being created immortal remains open and unclear.

If anything, God’s words in verse 22 suggest something different: “If they eat from the tree of life, they will live forever”—which implies they wouldn’t otherwise.In other words, part of being a creature is death. It is part of the created order. But if the serpent wasn’t Satan, and death wasn’t a punishment, then what about sin?

Sin is certainly central to the story, no doubt. But not sin in the abstract. This is the first instance of sin, so an origin story in that way. Yet the way we often hear this is that because Eve ate the forbidden fruit, all humanity after her is cursed—sin passed down like a hereditary disease.

But such a reading seems a little unfair to Eve and to us.

Afterall, Adam was there with Eve the whole time she was talking with the snake! [pic 3] It says so right in v. 6. He wasn’t off gathering other fruit. He stood silent, passive, seemingly unengaged from what was happening right in front of him. Eve on the other hand, though she is labeled and seen as a temptress, she is anything but.

Really, it is Eve who takes initiative. She rebuffs the serpent when it doesn’t tell the full truth. She makes decisions and is bold. All things we praise men for being, but not Eve. She doesn’t need to act as a temptress because she was clearly already in control. She handed Adam the fruit and he ate, no questions asked. No protest. No discernment. Just silence. Perhaps if Adam had been as engaged and discerning as Eve, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

So if there is blame, it is squarely on both. For not only were they equal in creation, they were equal in sin, too. And just so it’s stated, the story, not before eating the fruit and not after, does not call for men’s dominion over women. As one writer puts it, v. 16 “is not a mandate by God for male dominance but a description of the distortion that now marks human relationships.

A distortion brought by sin.

And what was the sin exactly? We’re told its disobedience - clearly they disobeyed God.

But disobedience is really the result of the actual sin at the heart of this story and the sin at center of our hearts, too. And that is mistrust.

Genesis 3 tells us that we live in a world where there are alternatives to God’s voice, in this case the serpent. And those voices tell half truths and lies that make us wonder if life could be better, we could be better if we just had that thing we are missing.

And we listen to those voices just enough that we begin to doubt not only ourselves, but God too. Creation is good, but not good enough. Perhaps it could be better. I am very good, according to God, but not good enough. Perhaps I could be better.

Maybe the snake is right, I am missing something. And once you believe that, you no longer trust God. And with trust out the window, disobedience is sure to follow.

We all have listened to the talking snake that tells us half truths and lies. If you just had this one fruit, this missing piece, then life would be better. If only I were skinnier or bulkier, if only I had more money or were more successful, if only I had more sex, or a nicer car, or a bigger house, then life would be better. It’s the same voice behind every perfectly filtered photo on instagram, every hustle culture mantra, every ad promising transformation if we just buy, try, or become something more. And finally we could be whole; we could be like God!

But don’t listen to the snake, it's a damned liar, always has been!

No human, no creature has it all. We are good, not perfect, remember? And the tragedy, as one pastor put it, is when we become so obsessive at securing what we think is missing from our lives, we end up losing the garden that was really good from the start.

The good news in all of this is what the story tells us about God our Creator.

Even though Adam and Eve listened to the snake, mistrusted God, and disobeyed, God still clothed them; meaning from the start God has never desired for us to walk around in shame or guilt. God has always desired to cover that for us. Whether it was leather garments for Adam and Eve, or the grace of Jesus Christ that now clothes us in baptism.

God, the perfect Creator, is always covering us with forgiveness and grace, even in our mistrust. Amen.

Dying, We Live

Romans 6:1-11

“What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. “

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Once upon a time, all humanity was trapped under the power of Sin. And by Sin, I mean a literal cosmic power that governs the entire world. This is Sin with a capital S. Sin is the chief power among the principalities and powers, and it has one goal: to work its way into our very bodies, making it impossible for us to live according to God’s ways.

Later in his letter to the Romans, Paul describes the predicament like this: I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. … I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. … When I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand (Romans 7:14-21).

This is a problem. The power of Sin is so all-encompassing that we cannot break free from it by our own strength. Now, thankfully, there is a solution to this problem. Paul explains, “Whoever has died is freed from sin.” Easy, right? Not so much. Thanks to Sin’s buddy, Death, when humans die, they stay dead. Whatever freedom we might find on the other side of death is not a freedom we could live into. And so this was the story Sin was writing for the world. Humans live, they struggle, and they die. The end.

But then, a child was born. That child grew up, became a man, and lived – just like all of us – in a world under the power of Sin. He lived a life so full that if its fullness were written down, “the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:24). In the end, his life was too much for a world where Sin reigns supreme. And so Sin did what it always does; it snuffed out life. It marshaled the full strength of the Roman imperial regime and put this man to death. But he did not stay dead. And remember: “Whoever has died is freed from sin.”

Christ’s resurrection changed everything. It made a way where there was no way. And Christ is the way. Through Christ, it became possible for us weak and finite humans to become recipients of eternal life – the kind of life that Sin could never conquer. But there’s still just one problem. Christ is risen – but we are not. We have not died. Sin and death still have dominion over us.

So how do we tap into what Christ has done for us? Do we just wait until we die and hope for the best? No, Paul says. We don’t have to wait at all. Freedom from Sin is not simply waiting for us on the other side of death; freedom is present to us right now. We can die right now, even while we are living. All we need is a little water.

As best we can tell, the earliest Christian communities practiced baptism by immersion – that is, your entire body would be submerged underwater, and then you would come back up. Going underneath the water and then coming back up was meant to physically reenact Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection.

But Paul does not view baptism as mere theater. He believes that when we are baptized, we are actually uniting with Christ, mystically participating in his death and resurrection through the power of the Holy Spirit. We really do die with Christ, and we really will rise again with Christ.

As a result, what is true for Christ becomes true for us. Remember: “Whoever has died is freed from sin.” Even though we live in a world governed by Sin, we are no longer governed by it. It no longer has the authority to write our story. That authority belongs to the risen Christ, who invites all who die with him to walk in newness of life. This is the story Paul tells in Romans.

Why tell this story? After all, the idea of Sin with a capital S feels like a relic of a bygone era. Invisible cosmic powers controlling our lives? inhabiting our bodies? Seems a bit outlandish. And yet, this is exactly how the world works. Paul did not know us, but the story he tells is about us. Our lives are – in so many ways – defined by forces beyond our control. Patriarchy. Capitalism. Racism. The list goes on and on.

These sinful, death-dealing powers are doing exactly what Paul says Sin does; working their way into our bodies, making it impossible for us to live according to God’s ways. Patriarchy constrains our concepts of gender and sexuality. Capitalism tells us our worth is determined by what we produce. Racism decides for us which bodies are worth protecting and prevents us from living in solidarity with one another.

No one is immune to these powers. They are constantly pushing and pulling us toward alienation and disintegration. And whether we blame “the system” or sin with a capital S, I am convinced that what Paul says is true: We can will what is right, but we cannot do it. … When we want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. But there is good news, friends. God cares enough about our living that God is not content to leave us as mere victims to the powers of this world.

In Christ, God has made a way for us to walk in newness of life. Even in the midst of a world where Sin still reigns, freedom is possible. Justice is possible. Life is possible. We just need to die.

Baptism is indeed the sacramental means of our death. Through the waters of baptism, we die with Christ and through the power of the Spirit are set free from the reign of Sin.

But in v. 12, right after Paul celebrates what baptism does for us, he says this: Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

Thanks to our baptism, Sin no longer reigns over us. It no longer defines us. But it can still affect us, influence us, even control us. Baptism is not merely a sacramental death. It is not merely a means of grace. It is an invitation to become instruments of righteousness, to actively resist the work of Sin in our bodies and in the world around us. It is an initiation into death as a way of life.

We die to all of the ways Sin tries to exercise its power within us. We die to our need for control; our fear of vulnerability; our reluctance to rest. We die to patriarchy’s scripts for gender and sexuality; to the productivity mindset that defines life under capitalism; to the internalized racism which distorts our social and political imaginations. As we live out these deaths, we become – in the words of the theologian Brian Bantum – “burning bushes and tongues of fire, bodies set ablaze with the Spirit.” (Redeeming Mulatto, pg. 163) We become beacons of the coming kingdom of God, a world where Sin has lost its power and Death has lost its sting.

Thankfully, we do not have to do this work alone. As Jesus told his disciples in John 17, God has sent God’s Spirit to be with us and to guide us into truth and life (John 17:4-15). God is literally with us, each and every day, as we die to ourselves. Indeed, it is God’s Spirit at work within us who transforms these deaths into life for us and for the world. And the Spirit is not all that God gives us. God also gives us one another, the body of Christ. And when that body is composed of people who are following Christ into death, it is like single, quiet notes combining into a resounding symphony of abundant life.

God even gives us creation, where life is sustained by death and decay. Through creation, God reminds us that death is beautiful, holy, and – most of all – necessary. This is hard work. It is a lifetime’s worth of work. But it is work sustained by God’s free gift of grace. And this means that it is work which is not too much for us. The late German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “When Christ calls a [person], he calls [them] to come and die.”

Today, friends, Christ is calling to us from the waters of our baptism. Can you hear him? He is calling us to join him, to take up our cross and follow him (Luke 9:23). He is calling us to leave behind the reign of sin and present ourselves to God as members of righteousness. He is calling us to a life of resisting the sinful, death-dealing forces at work in the world and in ourselves. He is calling us to die.

May we embrace the call to death. And in the dying, may we find life, and life everlasting.

Amen.