BROKENNESS AND BLAME (Eve) – Genesis 3:8-20
The Rev. Dr. Richard W. Reifsnyder
1st Presbyterian Church
Winchester, VA
July 15, 2012
The man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God
Genesis 3:11
There is something in us which would like to believe in the intrinsic goodness of humanity: to believe, deep
down that people wish us well; that even strangers can be trusted; that folks regularly transcend their self interest;
that offerings of compassion and concern are genuine and heartfelt.
But there is also something in us which reminds us evidence says it is not always so:
The papers and the TV scream of human misbehavior: Jerry Sandusky's taking advantage of vulnerable kids; Glaxo
Smith Kline paying the biggest fine in history for corporate marketing fraud; another innocent child being killed
with stray bullets in Washington DC, Gifted politician John Edwards dealing with the aftermath of adultery. Daily
we are reminded of the reality of evil and sin. If we are honest we see this dark side not only in others, but
ourselves.
This reality drives us, as it did the biblical writers, back to the story of our origins, and to ask, "How did
humanity get into this situation?" And how does this fit into our idea of a loving God who reigns over all.
These questions take us back to Genesis, and to Adam and Eve, whose name in Hebrew means "living,"
and who in the Bible's terminology is the "mother of all living," the mother of us all. This is not primarily a
description of biological origins, of how we came to be physically created, so much as it describes how we came to
be spiritually, before God. Eve's story is the story of who we are intended to be and what we have come to be. In
Adam and Eve are seen everyman, everywoman.
Eve, according to Genesis 2, is created to be a "helper" suitable for Adam. By themselves, human beings
are incomplete, fragmented, partial. We are intrinsically social beings, created for community. There is no
inference of "subordination" in this term "helper," as if the relationship were between master and servant. This same
term, "helper," is used to describe God. Psalm 46—God is a very present helper in our time of need. No one would
suggest God is subordinate to us, waiting there to do our bidding.
Created to live in harmonious partnership with God and Adam, Eve is ensnared in the fall—that proclivity
we have not to accept the limits of our creatureliness. Eve has been identified with the fall—often unfairly—
throughout history. Eve, by her own description was tricked by the serpent to eat the forbidden fruit, and once
having succumbed, she entices Adam to join her in disobedience. In popular mythology, undoubtedly propagated by
male voices, Eve, and through her, all women, is either gullible, easily tricked, or she is the temptress, the seducer,
drawing poor innocent Adam, and all men, down with her. These powerful images shaped understanding of the
relationship between men and women for centuries—and in some churches still do—distorting the biblical intention,
which was to show Adam and Eve as equal partners in their defection. Presbyterian poet Thomas Carlisle put it this
way:
Women can rebel
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Against God
Quite as well
As men.
But let it be
Her conscience
striving to determine
and not some man's
convenient dictum
arrogating judgment
(or injustice)
To fit his scheme
For making her
Subservient
Second class
Inferior
Or less than a person
Prized equally
By God
In new creation.
This text isn't intended to assign blame to Adam and Eve and fuel the battle of the sexes, but to state decisively that
human beings have become alienated from God by their refusal to acknowledge God as Creator and accept human
limitations—and there are consequences to that.
The fall tells of ruptured relationships between human beings and between humans and God. Both Adam
and Eve participated in that brokenness and we are deceiving ourselves if we do not believe we live in a broken
world.
What Genesis 3 reveals to us is how we respond to our brokenness. Immediately Adam and Eve try to
hide. Whereas before they were naked and vulnerable and felt no shame, now they make loincloths to cover up.
Though there are sexual overtones in this story, it is not only in the realm of sexuality we try to hide and cover up.
Rather the need to cloth ourselves is symbolic of our tendency to keep out guard up, to protect ourselves, to prevent
others from getting too close for fear we will be hurt. It happens even in the relationship which is supposed to be
the most intimate, most open, marriage itself.
Beyond that Adam and Eve sought to hide from God, a behavior we have been re-enacting ever since.
Rather than seeing God as a loving friend, God is to be feared, and if feared, avoided, to be kept at arm's length,
distant from the hurts and concerns and joys which touch our lives.
Robert Fulgam – the Everything I Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten guy—tells of watching children
play hide and seek outside his window. He noticed one child who simply hid himself too well. Remember how
frustrating that was when you just couldn't find someone. The other kids tried hard to discover him, but then got
discouraged, and were eager to move on to something else. Fulgam said he had this great urge to shout to the hider
"get found, kid, get found." The experience got him thinking of a friend of his who had cancer but who never really
shared what he knew was going on inside his body with his family. And when he died, everyone said how noble he
was trying to spare his family all that pain and anxiety. But in fact his family was hurt, even angry, because he
didn't share with them, those who loved him most. He simply hid himself well, and needed the message "get found,
get found."
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As fallen men and women we hide ourselves quite well—pretending we've got it all together when we're
falling apart inside; posing as happy when we're lonely and craving affection from others; hoping others will see us
as good when we're conscious of deep stains in our lives; trying to convince ourselves we believe when we're
plagued by doubts we feel we can share with no one. We hide too well, and God cannot help us and the resources
God offers us through other people remain closed to us, and we need to hear the word "get found."
There were other consequences of the fall. Neither Adam nor Eve could accept responsibility for what they
had done; both cast the blame elsewhere. Adam began the blame game: the women, who you gave to be with me (
note the little dig at God there, if you had left me alone and hadn't given me HER, I wouldn't be in this mess); the
woman whom you gave to be with me. She gave me the fruit of the tree. Eve picks up the refrain, "it wasn't my
fault…the serpent tricked me and I ate." Flip Wilson's old trademark "the devil made me do it."
The refusal to take responsibility for one's own actions is a sure sign of our brokenness. It's my mother's
fault life has been so tough. She didn't love me enough. It's my boss's fault I didn't get the job done right; he didn't
provide the help I needed. He hit me first, it's not my fault I broke his nose. It's your fault we're having marital
problems. You're not the wife you're supposed to be. And on and on it goes.
Sometimes we get so good at this that we blame even those who are our victims. The rapist saying the
woman invited it; the spouse abuser saying the husband got what he deserved. Sadly, tragically, the victim
sometimes begins to believe it themselves, that they are responsible. Taking responsibility means owning up to
what is legitimately ours to take responsibility for, not taking all the blame for what goes wrong.
Every man and woman participates in the consequences of Adam and Eve's fall. Alienated from God,
suspicious and accusation replace trust and openness. The end of chapter 3 describes what happens in a fallen
world. Eve learns that childbearing will bring not only joy but the experience of pain. Harmonious egalitarian
relationships between men and women degenerate as we learn how to manipulate for our own ends, to use sex as a
tool of power. "Your desire will be for your husband," the text says, "but he will rule over you." Work becomes a
matter of toil, done in the sweat of one's brow rather than an opportunity to use creatively the talents given by God.
These are aberrations, Genesis 3 tells us, the result of sin. Paradise has been lost.
It no longer surprises me, though it still makes my heart ache, when I discover the capacity of decent
people to do bad things. People who can be good and kind in many realms of live are quite capable of being hateful
or spiteful or callous or unethical in some particular realm of life. You discover the person who is willing to visit
your grandmother in the nursing home is deeply prejudiced. You realize the person filled with conviviality at the
cocktail party and on the golf course is willing to lie to cut a business deal. You find out that the person who
volunteers in the school has been rather cruel in handling a family relationship. We experience ruptured
relationships in our lives, evidences that we are fallen creatures, capable of doing great wrong as well as great good.
Woody Allen's movie Crimes and Misdemeanors is full of religious themes. It is the story of Judah (good
biblical name) an ophthalmologist who gets involves in a mid life fling with a mistress, who is at first exciting, but
who becomes whining, demanding, clawing, and finally threatening. He wants to get rid of her, but without
compromising his respectability by having his infidelity revealed. Increasingly desperate, Judah has her murdered.
Having grown up in a deeply religious home, he remembers having heard his father say, "God always sees what you
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do, there is no hiding from the eye of God. It's an inexorable rule of the universe that God always insures evil will
be discovered. The idea that God sees obsesses him (remember he's an eye doctor). He is consumed by guilt, just
waiting to be caught, exposed. But then days drift into weeks and weeks into months and it spears that he has gotten
away with it. At the end of the film he has fallen back into his nice respectable life and his feelings of anguish have
diminished. Time has deadened his sense of responsibility for the evil. The movie suggests the pathway from Eden
leads to this, where conscience can be easily deadened and sin covered with a pleasant face, so we hardly notice that
something is wrong.
Christian hope does not leave us with such a pessimistic view of the world, even as it admits the fall from
innocence is real. In the story of the fall there is a hint of redemption, the foreshadowing of grace. To the serpent
God say, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your
head and you shall bruise his heel." This is a foretelling of the coming of Christ, the one who shall crush the head of
the serpent, the devil. Just as in Adam and Eve's fall we experience brokenness by trying to hide and throw blame,
so by our participation in Jesus' atoning death, by our faith in him, we are offered healing. We being to experience
wholeness instead of brokenness, and are emboldened to take responsibility rather than assigning blame.
Relationship in the human community can begin to be shaped as God intended, and we live into a world where there
is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.
God's forgiving embrace of us is immediate when we believe, but undoing the consequence of the fall is
lifelong, not fully accomplished in this life. But the journey we begin in Christ enables us to experience
authentically the harmony of relationships within families and between people, the satisfaction of labor in its right
perspective, the joy of accepting responsibility for our actins between we have a God who forgives and loves us.
The story of Eve, therefore, is a reminder of our need, but more importantly a reminder of the hope that is set before
us, of a new peaceable kingdom in Jesus Christ.
THANKS BE TO GOD WHO GIVES US THE VICTORY THROUGH JESUS CHRIST
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