Preaching on Eve is a bit overwhelming. Next to Mary, the mother of Jesus, she is the most written about woman in the Bible so the amount of literature from which to study is over whelming. Even if you are not a person who reads the Bible, everyone knows the story. It is easy for a child to even recite it in a Sunday School class. Eve evokes emotion. Commentators throughout history have painted her either as the flawed woman who was tricked by a serpent and then tricked her husband, or an intelligent woman who was in search of wisdom. AND, the Adam and Eve story has been used to explain and enforce all sorts of prejudices and ways in which we can demean others such as why women should be subservient to men, why homosexuality is wrong, and why we fell from grace and deserve the bad things in life….
But, I have become increasingly convinced that, much like the creation story that precedes this, what we have here is a poetic and beautiful story to explain our world and relationship to our God from a pre-modern science, pre-modern psychology era.
So, as we retell the story, I am going to ask you to open your pew Bibles to page 2 and 3 of the Hebrew Scriptures and follow along beginning with Chapter 2.
The beginning of chapter 2 is the end of the first creation story… You know the one that begins with ‘In the beginning’…and ends with the seventh day of rest. Immediately following the first creation story begins the second which is a modified and primarily concerned with the creation of the human (Adam), and the plants and the animals in the Garden of Eden where they all lived. Adam was allowed to name all the animals. In naming them, he became their overseer, not their equal. And, in verse 20, we learn that Adam was not happy in that role and wanted an equal… a partner… so God created Eve. She was made from Adam’s rib and was there to complete the creation. And at the end of Chapter 2 we read in verse 25 that the couple were naked and not ashamed.
All this had been exegetes for centuries as a statement of man’s dominance over women and beginning in the 19th and 20th centuries as a statement against homosexuality. That was until the 1970’s with the woman’s movement. A theologian named Phyllis Trible, from who I had the good fortune to take several classes during graduate school, said that we had not understood the text. We needed to rethink the story and take out the sexist and pre-judgements to get to the meaning of the text.
Dr. Trible wrote that Eve was created as the culmination of the God’s work. Eve was the end of God’s creation in this story. God created two humans as humans are meant to be in community and not to be alone. We are happier when we are together. We need to be in relationship with others. Eve was created not to serve Adam but to be Adam’s companion and equal. Their relationship was mutual and not user based or one person dominating the other. And their sexuality had no hang ups…. They had no shame about their bodies or their sexuality. Sexuality was a gift from God meant to be enjoyed. AND… Yes, Eve was a woman and Adam was a man, but there is absolutely nothing written in this story that says that couples had to be that way or that same sex coupe are sinful. It’s just not there. But, because part of the story is about having children, it is necessary to have them be a man and woman here.
The third chapter starts right out with the wily serpent discussing with Eve the attributes to eating the fruit from the one tree of which God forbade them to eat. Eve worries she will die if she eats from it and the snake tells her God only told here that so she won’t become God-like and know evil from good. The serpent and Eve discuss what could be wrong with gaining more knowledge?
I think of the story from ancient mythology about Icarus. Do you remember it? Icarus was the son of a master craftsman named Daedalus who created the labyrinth. The two of them tried to escape from Crete by flying with wings constructed from feathers and wax. Although his father warns him not to fly too close to the sun Icarus ignored him. He wanted to fly higher and higher like the gods. He got too close to the sun and the wax holding together his wings melted and he plunged into the sea. Sometimes we are not meant to know all things and be all powerful. There is even a psychological term of having an Icarus complex. Sometimes the things we aspire to reach can harm us.
But Eve takes a bite of the apple and it tastes good. She offers it to Adam who eats from it as well. Phyllis Trible says that Adam did not argue with Eve about this. He was right there with her the whole time… It says so in the text. AND, you never hear him question Eve’s action at all. He willingly chomps the next bite after hers… And things changed immediately. It describes how their eyes were opened. Immediately they see the need to cover up their nakedness from each other and hide from God. Which they do. And I believe this is the first time they felt the distance from being God-like. Before God was in a personal relationship with them and now they feared that same God.
But we know there is no hiding from God. And when God asks them about not following the one rule in the garden, Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the serpent. (I just want to stop here and really enjoy this little part of the story No one takes responsibility for their actions except for the snake who was described already as cunning and wily. The snake never pretends to be anything but a snake… and well, to be honest, the snake reminds me a bit of Stormy Daniels.)
And God punishes them. Things changed then they received the knowledge of good and evil. The relationship they had previously enjoyed was different. Adam and Eve were not the same, their lives went from care-free to being lives of hardships and of enduring great pains. Their lives continued in this new way of tilling the soil instead of living in a fertile garden and even having children would not be easy. But, it was not the end of the story of their relationship with God. God did not abandon them. That relationship was different but it was there. It’s not the end of the story but the beginning of another.
So why have the Adam and Eve story? I have thought about this and have come to a couple conclusions.
We need the story to explain how we got from God’s good creation to where we are now. In the beginning things were created perfect by our perfect God….and our experience is that creation is not in a good place and neither are we. How do we move from God creating everything and calling it good to our imperfect world with disease, poverty, pollution in our earth, and prejudice and greed in God’s people? How do we come to terms with our all-powerful God creating creatures who experience pain, heartache, and hardship in life? If God is all love and all powerful, why are we not all still living in the Garden of Eden today?
But, would we even relate to the story of creation if there was not a fall from paradise. Ours is not the pre-apple life experience and we look at Adam and Eve living in Eden and they seem simple and one dimensional. Theirs was not a deep life…. It was too easy to have any depth. AND Eve… well, listening to the serpent and rationalizing eating from the forbidden fruit, might have made her a bad girl, but she was a girl to whom we all relate. Adam and Eve, with their hard working lives and all the following troubles they had parenting their naughty children is our story as well.
And if the truth be told, sometimes it feels as though we live in the Garden of Eden and sometimes, OK, most the time, we feel that we are like Adam and Eve, living outside of it. But the good news for us, and perhaps the whole message of the story, is that whether you are in a time of your life when all things are coming together and life is perfect, or whether you are in a bad space where you have to congratulate yourself for pulling yourself out of bed and beginning the painful daily grind again, God is with you. God does not abandon us and is with us in all the times of our lives.
The story continues… This is only the first few pages of the Bible. And our Book is filled with stories of God’s relationship and love for God’s people. And this story continues today and it will for the generations that come after us. God never abandons. God loves. Amen.