Tellico Village Community Church Sermons

"Poisonous Snakes in the Garden of Eden"

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

February 21, 1999

Of all the couples I’ve performed wedding ceremonies for, Gary and Peggy are very dear to my memory. He was a ruggedly handsome young man, personable, successful, joyful, on his way to becoming an airline pilot. She was a soft-spoken Texan whose life had been deeply scarred by a history of great tragedy and, most recently, a long-term abusive relationship with a man from whom she’d finally escaped.

Now they had found each other, and they wanted to be married. Well, at least Peggy did. Although Gary loved Peggy very much, he couldn’t quite see why they had to go through all the trouble of getting married. Most of their couple friends lived together, and Gary saw no reason why they couldn’t be just as happy doing that.

But Peggy saw things differently. One night, I tried to help Gary truly hear what Peggy was saying. And when he listened, what he heard was a touching story of a young woman who’d been used and abused all her life – a young woman who wanted so very much to finally have a relationship she could be proud of, a relationship lived out in the sight of God, a relationship with commitments instead of empty promises, a relationship in which she knew she was loved as fully as she loved the other. Being married to Gary represented for Peggy a breaking free of the failures and tragedies of the past.

And when Gary heard what Peggy was saying that night, he began to weep. And he took her hand, and looked into her eyes and said, "Peggy I WANT to marry you. Will you marry me?"

A month or so later, we had the wedding ceremony and it was a time of wondrous redemption and great joy. And then Gary and Peggy rode off into the proverbial sunset, moving away to Arkansas where a new life awaited them.

But in that jubilant moment of renewal and redemption, no one could possibly have imagined that just a year later, we would once again gather at the church where Gary and Peggy had wed. And this time we would gather not to celebrate, but to mourn. For Gary had been killed in a plane crash. And many of the friends who came to surround Peggy with love and support expressed this somber observation about their dear friend’s life: it just wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair for Peggy to have finally found a little bit of happiness for the first time in her life… only to have it snatched away like this.

Now, today is the first Sunday in the season of Lent, and this morning I want to preach a sermon entitled "Poisonous Snakes In The Garden of Eden".

As you listened to today’s Scripture lesson in Genesis 2 and 3, you may have been struck by a strange inconsistency. For here is Paradise – a setting in which all is well.

But carefully camouflaged among the leaves and branches of this perfect place slithers a poisonous, venom-spitting, human-deceiving snake.

Perhaps we might pose the title of this sermon in the form of a question: "What in the world is a poisonous snake doing in a place like Paradise?"

For this is similar to the question human beings ask whenever life turns on us. When our joys are turned to sorrow, or health is turned to illness, or dreams are turned to nightmares. This is the question people like Peggy ask when their nearly perfect world suddenly falls apart. This is the question the poor ask, in the midst of an affluent society. This is the question hungry people ask in a world that produces enough food for everyone. This is the question African-Americans ask when the land in which civil rights are promised to all becomes an east Texas road where a black man named James Byrd, Jr. is dragged to death behind a pickup truck on a dark June night in 1998. This is a question people in every generation have asked.

Well, the truth is, the Bible doesn’t provide us an answer. Here in the opening chapters of Genesis, the snake is simply there. No explanation is given. No etiology is offered. You see, the Bible is not so much a book about theology and philosophy as it is a book about reality. It is, as Walter Brueggemann says, "the true story of our lives." And the true-story-of-your-life, and Peggy’s life, and James Byrd’s life, and my life includes the presence of evil and all the awful stuff that flows from it.

And here in Genesis 2 and 3, we’re provided some valuable insight that can help us face up to evil, and learn how to overcome its power to destroy us and others.

Insight number one is that evil is real, and it is everywhere.

Now most of us don’t really want to believe this. We would prefer to think that the world is basically a good place, and that, if there is evil in it, we can overcome it, or at least inoculate ourselves against it. We think education will do it. Or economic success. If only we could instill good family values, evil would be pushed aside. Maybe good eating habits will spare us from evil. Or a comprehensive insurance policy. Surely a Star Wars anti-missile defense system will protect us from evil, as will the hiring of more police officers. And perhaps if we move to a protected place like Tellico Village we will be spared from the powers of darkness that exist in places like Michigan.

But its just not so. One of the main points of this true-story-of-our-lives that we read in Genesis is that, even if you could achieve true Paradise, that old snake would come slithering along.

He even came to Jesus, you know. On the first Sunday of Lent each year, the lectionary Gospel reading is always one of the stories about the temptation of Jesus. It is the spiritual high point of his life. Jesus has just been baptized by John. He goes into the desert to fast and pray, and while he is there, the call to ministry is crystallizing and becoming more and more clear. And just at that moment – at the apex, at the summit, at the paradise-like peak of closeness with God – the Devil shows up to tempt him. I wonder if you notice the similarity of this story with the Genesis true-story-of-our-lives?

Oh, that old poisonous snake manages to show up at just the right moment. In all sorts of settings. And in all sorts of disguises. Why, did you know he even slithers into the upper room on that Maundy Thursday long ago? He sits right there at the table with the Lord at the Last Supper. He watches Jesus break the bread, and pour the wine. He waits for just the right moment to reveal himself. And it comes later that night in a quiet garden when the snake kisses Jesus on the cheek through the lips of Judas Iscariot whom he has possessed. A poisonous snake in the garden of Gethsemane.

Oh, insight number one is that evil is real, and try as we may, we cannot keep it from touching our lives any more than Jesus could keep it from touching his.

Insight number two, is that – not only is evil real and pervasive in our world – but you and I are exposed and vulnerable to it. If you’re looking at the text in Genesis 3, you’ll notice it says that "the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal…" Now the Hebrew word for crafty is arum and it means shrewd or capable of manipulating. And after Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, Genesis says they realize they are naked which, interestingly enough in Hebrew, is arum-mim. And the more literal translation of this little play-on-words is not naked, but rather exposed to shrewdness. In other words the result of eating the forbidden fruit is that human beings become exposed and vulnerable to the manipulations of evil. Now do you understand why Adam and Eve are hiding in the bushes?

And you and I hide, too. We hide from God because we are afraid of what he will do to us or require of us. We hide from intimacy with others because we don’t want to be exposed to hurt and rejection and misunderstanding. We hide from the true generosity we are actually capable of because, if we were to give away too much of ourselves, we fear it could be the end of us. We hide from giving forgiveness because we may expose ourselves to further hurt. We hide from standing up for what’s right because it could expose us to ridicule and bring risk to our well-being.

You see, this is the-true-story-of-our-lives. Evil is real and pervades our world. And we are stark naked standing before it. And so long as we are, we will never know what it means to truly live and be free!!!

But then comes a third insight. When God finds humanity hiding in the bushes – completely exposed to the powers of darkness - what does the Lord do? Why God makes clothes for Adam and Eve!

I wonder if you’ve ever imagined that the way to confront evil in the world, the way to contend with the effects of evil as it touches your own life, the way to truly help others who are experiencing the fallout from evil in their lives, is by letting God clothe you!

A few years after Gary’s death, Peggy wrote me a note. In it, she shared the wonderful news that she’d met another good man. She’d found some happiness. And she wanted to tell me most especially how God had saved her from that evil time when her life came tumbling down. She said she had no one left to trust but God alone. And as she trusted the Lord and walked with him every day, Peggy said he gave her the strength for facing her loss; he gave her the energy and motivation and guidance for taking the steps she needed to take to begin again. Day after day, God clothed her with the resources of heaven.

How can you triumph over the power of evil? How can you overcome the damaging things evil has done to you?

Well, you can’t. You see, that’s the true-story-of-our-lives.

Just as God made clothes for Adam and Eve, just as God clothed Peggy with the resources of heaven, God will clothe you too. For right here in this congregation are some whose gardens have been intruded by poisonous snakes. And if you are one of those people, I hope you’ll cling to this true-story-of-our-lives. For from the very beginning of time, God has come looking for people like us, hiding among the bushes of hurt and fear because we are exposed and vulnerable to evil.

And God calls us by name. And gives us the gifts we need to overcome.

Oh, yes, evil is real. It’s power is pervasive. And we are exposed to its touch.

But we have a friend who is greater than evil.

Bill Jones says that, in his native Kentucky, hunters know about something called the snake line. Its an unseen boundary, up in the mountains, above which snakes can’t survive. Smart hunters always pitch their tents above the snake line.

And we too, are called to face the poisonous snakes in the garden of our lives, not by despairing and hunkering down, but by orienting ourselves upwardly, moving ourselves toward the One in whose presence snakes are unable to survive. And receiving from him the resources we need to overcome.

And this is so not only for us personally, but also as a church. For our job is to confront the power of evil in society, illuminating it with the light of God, offering people the alternative of moving to higher ground!

So as we consider the dilemma of poverty, the tragedy of violence, the propensity for war, the shame of hunger, the horror of racism, what we can do as Christians is to point people higher…higher…higher…

To the One in whose presence snakes can’t survive for long. And where human beings – like you and me – can truly begin to live!