Where Are You?

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

June 10, 2012

Where Are You?

Genesis 3:8-9

The snap as a twig is stepped on,

the crunch of leaves underfoot,

the rustle of branches in bushes

jostled by a passing figure.

What sounds did he make,

the Lord our God,

as he walked through his garden

in the cool of the evening?

We are quick to give God human features,

but Jesus reminds us that God is Spirit, not flesh.

(John 4:24)

Had God taken on human form in this wonderful story?

How big had he made himself?

Did he have hair?

A beard?

What color was his skin?

What was he wearing?

A robe?

A tunic?

Was it made from cotton? Wool?

Who made it for him?

What did he wear on his feet?

Sandals?

Who made them?

What size were his feet?

As he walked through the garden,

did brambles catch the folds of his robe?

Did briars stick to his robe?

Were there flies or mosquitoes he had to brush away

or was the cool evening breeze enough

to keep them from being a bother?

So many questions raised by 19 words in one verse!

And then there is the question God himself asked,

asked of the man and woman he had created:

“Where are you?”

What kind of question is that

from the omnipotent Lord God?

Surely if God was capable of creating

the sun and the stars,

the earth and the moon,

the mountains and the trees,

every living thing,

surely God must have known

where the man and woman were;

surely they could not have hidden themselves

from the Lord God’s sight!

Surely if God had created the tree they crouched behind,

God would have known they were there.

Why did the man and woman hide?

What did they think they had done wrong?

Their eyes had been opened we learn,

opened to the knowledge of good and evil,

right and wrong.

Had they learned that they had done something wrong?

Did they really understand this?

Why, once God confronted them,

did the man react defensively,

really rather pathetically,

without a shred of honor or integrity?

Why did he try to shift the blame not just to the woman,

but to God: “this woman YOU gave me –

it’s her fault.”

And the woman,

not wanting to bear all the responsibility herself,

tried her own hand at defense and deflection:

“The serpent tricked me.”

Do you suppose she wanted to follow the man’s lead

and say to God,

“the serpent you put in this place tricked me…”?

This is such a wonderful story.

May we call it a story, though?

Yes, of course we can.

It is a story and we need not concern ourselves

with the literal truth of what happened here.

It is a story that has over the centuries been

misinterpreted,

mistranslated,

misunderstood,

misused.

The Bible is filled with stories,

wonderful stories that we begin learning as children,

stories we teach the young and old.

We teach stories because that’s how we learn:

we hear them and we draw lessons from them.

We hear the words,

and then we take a step back

and work to discern meaning,

what is it that God wants us to learn

from the words we are reading and hearing.

When, for example, we hear Jesus tell us,

“If your right hand causes you to sin,

cut it off and throw it away.”

(Matthew 5:30),

surely the lesson is not

that we are to take the words literally.

This is where we need to do the hard work of studying,

of working to understand.

It is why we Presbyterians put so much emphasis on learning,

on education,

starting with Sunday School,

but continuing all the way through Adult Education.

The Bible may seems straightforward on its surface,

a simple rule book:

Here’s what you shall do,

and here’s what you shall not do.

But when we read with deeper eyes

we realize that is not the case.

God’s question to the man and the woman

seems on its surface such a simple question:

“where are you?”

It sounds like a question of geography,

of location.

“Tell me where the two of you are in my garden,

because I cannot see you.”

But is it a question about geography,

or is it question of relationship?

Is it God asking them,

“Where are you in relation to me?

Not physically, but spiritually.

Because something has just happened

that has moved you away from me

spiritually, not physically.”

What had been an intimate relationship

became fraught;

the man’s response says it all:

“I was afraid.”

Why was he afraid of God?

What had God done to instill fear in the man?

Was it fear the man really felt,

or was it perhaps shame?

Shame not at his nakedness,

the reason he gave for hiding,

but shame that he had failed to obey God,

shame that he had chosen to listen to the serpent

rather than to his Creator, the Lord God?

We have turned this story into “The Fall,”

the beginning of “Original Sin,”

but if only we’d take the time to learn,

to study, to open our minds,

we’d realize that there is nothing in the Bible

that teaches us that.

Those concepts come from

a 4^th century theologian,

a man named Augustine

Humanity may have made a bad choice in this story,

but what we learn is that this is how life works for us:

that we are confronted with choices throughout our lives

and we need to learn how to make good choices,

godly choices.                        

In his valedictory address to the children of Israel

Moses said just that: Children of Israel

you have two choices before you:

Make the right choice.

“Surely, …this is not too hard for you”

(Deuteronomy 30:11)

Joshua re-emphasized this idea when he said,

“Choose this day whom you will serve.”

Even Elijah said as much in that wonderful scene

with him and the prophets of Baal, the pagan god,

when he challenged the people,

“Quit waffling;

make a choice

one way or the other:

God or Baal,

but either way, do it all the way.”

As Moses taught the children of Israel,

and as our Lord Jesus teaches us:

if we are going to love the Lord,

then we are to do it with all our heart,

all our strength

all our soul,

and all our mind

as we grow in knowledge and understanding.

That’s what we learn as we dig into this story,

as we dig into the Bible.

Where you are in your learning

is absolutely correlated with where you are with God.

The more you learn,

the more you will choose the godly way.

When we learn together,

we learn that we need not waste time

worrying about Augustine’s term of Original Sin,

for, as Paul teaches us, while

“our outer nature is wasting away,

our inner nature is being renewed everyday.”

(2 Corinthians 4:16)

Renewed by the Holy Spirit,

renewed by the grace of God,

renewed to help us to make good choices,

better choices,

more faithful, godly choices.

The great scholar and teacher Walter Brueggemann

has written, “Our concern is not the origin of evil,

or the power of the fall.

It is, rather, God’s summons for us to be his creatures,

…to live in God’s world,

 not a world of [our] own making; …

but God’s world,

with God’s other creatures,

on God’s terms.”

We won’t know this if we don’t learn it;

if our mind is filled with myth and misunderstanding.

To learn is to grow closer to God,

not to be afraid of what obedience might cost us.

To learn is to grow in faith,

in godliness,

so that when God asks, “where are you,”

we each of us can respond with confidence,

“Right here Lord,

and learning constantly how to move

ever closer to you.”

AMEN