Third Sunday after Pentecost (Mother Marisa)

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Adam and Eve 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.” 

We all know this particular story. We’ve heard it before, some of us even since we were children. Though they had been commanded not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the man and woman did precisely that. The snake tempted Eve, she tempted Adam, and the rest is history — which is really where we’ve all learned this story in unforgettable and sometimes deeply personal ways. 

No one, not even the most optimistic among us, can look at our world — or at our own selves — and conclude that everything is fine. As G.K. Chesterton once famously said, original sin (this disease or dysfunction that got its start somewhere behind the mists of myth and legend) is the one doctrine on which everyone can agree. The evidence is simply too great to deny. One glance at the news, one moment on any social media platform, and we know (if we’re being honest) that something has gone terribly wrong. In sinful hands, the fruit of that forbidden tree really is death.
Not that Adam and Eve were thinking about that when they dashed into the forest on that primordial evening. All they wanted to do was hide. To flee from their mistake, to deny their disobedience, to be exempted from responsibility — as if the absence of the criminal could reverse the crime. Adam and Eve were ashamed; and they were ashamed to be seen by the only One who could save them. 

You see, when the woman and the man ate the forbidden fruit, they didn’t actually gain anything. They lost something, even everything. Ever since that moment, humankind ceased to know God as he is. We stopped looking to the heavens with our arms raised in thanksgiving because we were too busy looking after ourselves, too concerned with our own self-preservation to recognize God as our creator and sustainer and friend. And so it is that Adam and Eve hid because they thought they knew what was coming, and they couldn’t bear to watch.

But if they had dared — if they had stayed, if they had stepped out from among the trees, what would they have found but the God who was coming to find them. And who is also coming to find us. 

Because we, too, hide from God. Like our forebears, we reach for something that we should not have or does not belong to us and then recoil when the consequences unfold. “But he deserved the harsh words,” we think. Or, “I wanted the dress or the car or the phone and have a right to it — and to my opinion.” That movement rarely results in healing or hope. In fact, more often than not it results in the kind of pain or alienation that can blind us to each other and to the world and to God. Wittingly or unwittingly, we hide — and so lose ourselves.

And yet God is not deterred. Nor is he dismayed. He loves us, he speaks to us, not only when we are “good,” but when we make mistakes. Maybe especially when we make mistakes. God approaches, calling us each by name, holding out a wounded hand to lead us back into the light. A light in which we are revealed just as much as God is.

For God made a promise to the frightened couple that night in the garden. He told them that their own offspring, their own flesh and blood, would face the same temptation they failed to withstand; but this time, he would overcome it, even if it cost him his life. 

Even then the gospel is spoken. Even then the Christ is revealed. Almost from the very beginning — when creation seemed to have come to its very end — we find the Son of God and Son of Man, the One in whose image we are made, who was born, who lived and died so that we might once more dwell in the presence of God without fear or shame but in quiet confidence and contented rest. 
Which is where the human being was always meant to be: at one with God, at home with God, at peace with Him. Christ achieved that for us. Opened up that garden again for us. Though Jesus suffered, though he was crucified, he crushed the serpent, and gave us what we thought had been lost forever: communion with God himself. 

That is our eternal reality, our belief and our hope, a hope that is unseen in so many ways and yet present and possible even in the here and now. For God does not find us only to let us hide again but draws the soul who desires him ever deeper into the life of his love and the light of his kingdom. There we are reborn. There we once more grow up. There we learn as an infant does — crawling, toddling, running, falling, again and again and again, always looking to dada, to “Abba” for our every need and our every good. 

Until one day we learn to give him everything and to expect everything from him. Until one day we learn to surrender our will to his, to long for him with the same intensity as a watchman guarding his city gates longs for the dawn. Until one day we know him, finally, as the God of mercy, who forgives that he might be revealed to us — and so he heals us. And when that happens, the watching becomes seeing, and the longing becomes enjoying, and we enter paradise again, not as the children of Adam and Eve but as the children of God, the brothers and sisters of Christ. 

For now, though, we wait. We wait in this world at the time of the evening breeze for the sound of the LORD God walking our way. May we listen for him. May we long for him. May we run out to meet him when he comes. AMEN.

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