“Snake!”
Genesis 3:1-24
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
7/16/17
There’s a cliché that I can understand, but can’t stand: “The
only good snake is a dead snake.”
I’ve
never grieved the death of fire ants or cockroaches. With clear conscience, I’ve
ended the lives of houseflies and stink bugs. And with my bare fingers I’ll
help my wife squish Japanese beetles by the dozen in her garden. But there’s
something about snakes that I can’t shake. I’m fascinated with them. I don’t
want to be surprised by them, and I don’t go around catching them and handling
them. But when I’m outside, I look for them. I want to see them.
These
prehistoric creatures show up frequently in my dreams, too. Having a prominent
place in the pantheon of archetypes, snakes possess a mythical hold on the
human psyche. Slithering and lurking, hissing and striking, they symbolize
danger and fear. But because poisonous species carry the cure to their bites in
their own venom, snakes often represent healing, as well. The symbol for the
medical community is the caduceus – two snakes winding their way up a winged
staff. Living beneath the ground, they frequently represent a deep and earthy
wisdom. And because they shed their skin, snakes often represent transformation
and new life. Whatever the association, anything that draws out of us such
visceral reactions is begging for attention.
As someone steeped in the Judeo-Christian tradition, when I
think of the Genesis story snaking its way through the interpretive forests of centuries
and cultures, I have trouble limiting my understanding of even that serpent to a symbol for
treachery and sin. Most of us have been taught that this story illustrates how
evil and suffering entered the world. But such readings ignore the rich
revelations below the surface.
By interacting with this forked-tongued symbol of danger,
the man and the woman move from security to vulnerability. And by interacting
with this skin-shedding symbol of transformation, they also move from innocence
and unawareness to a state of deeper understanding of themselves, of the
creation and their place in it, and, most importantly, of the holiness of God. At
first, it looks and feels like a painful snake bite, but maybe this story also reveals
potential for human health and wholeness.
Ancestors that predate all of our parents and Sunday school
teachers bequeathed to us an image of Eden that describes both a garden that
was and a heaven that awaits. And personally, I’m coming to understand the
descriptions of this garden/heaven are the honest longings of human hearts and minds
overwhelmed by human suffering. Thus, we have images of an existence where
there’s no pain, no cancer, or war, or famine, or mosquitoes, and where we don’t
even remember snakes.
I can’t say what my own timeless heart of hearts remembers
of Eden. And my continually evolving expectations of the life to come look
nothing like what they did years ago. All I have, all any of us has is the here
and now. And who can imagine this life without story, without the ebb and flow
of weariness and wonder, ecstasy and agony, heartache and healing? So, what
would life be like without “snakes”? It’s right here, in what often feels like the
snake pit of real life that we experience and cling to God’s grace.
In Genesis, God declares the consequence of eating of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil: “In the day that you eat of it you will
die.” But after eating the fruit, Adam and Eve shed their skins of innocence. The
misty ignorance clears from their eyes. And instead of dying, they are tended
to by God.
Yes,
giving in to temptation does mean that human life now includes death. It
includes experiences from which human beings need deliverance and recovery, and
in which we need strength for endurance. The story also reveals that humankind,
having moved beyond its original state, now has the opportunity to truly understand
what it means to bear God’s image.
I’m beginning to see the events of that last day in Eden as much
more than a “fall” or a death. I’m beginning to see a birth and an ascent, as
well. In this story, humankind begins to make peace with the reality of
suffering and evil, and with our part in perpetuating it. But this story is not
about fault-finding. It’s not about
laying blame. It’s about declaring that regardless of where all the snakish
evil comes from, God enters our suffering, choosing to transform and redeem
both our accidental and intentional brokenness. Spiritual maturity depends on
accepting that reality and following God into suffering – our own and that of
others – with faith, hope, and love. That’s
what it means to be made in God’s image. I think the storytellers say as much
by attributing to God these words: “See, the man has become like one of us,
knowing good and evil.”
The
creation has always been wounded by evil, by deliberate sin, and by plain old
bad luck. Our world is fraught with disease, poverty, and war, with neglect and
abuse of people and the environment. Thorns and thistles can choke our energy
and creativity. Our labors, which are meant to sustain us, can tear us down. Destroyed
by dishonesty, greed, and arrogance, relationships and communities become petri
dishes for violence and cynicism. In the midst of everything that can make this
life a living hell, life-restoring examples of beauty, kindness, wonder, and joy
also weave their way into our experiences.
We are both cursed and blessed by the knowledge of good and
evil. Out of love for a broken and suffering world, God gives to humankind, to you and me, gifts of vision, compassion,
and creativity. And without such gifts, without people willing to claim them,
nurture them, and share them, what would happen to our hope? As the Church, we
are called to be a reminder of the Love that creates us, and a foretaste of the
Love that awaits us. And God not only calls us to that work, God entrusts us with the burden of doing it
in the throes of the creation’s brokenness and suffering.
Ask people who are passionately involved in a particular
church what makes their commitment strong. I’m willing to bet that it’s not
what the preacher says or what songs we sing on Sundays, but how they serve God
and neighbor in and through that faith community. If folks show passion in
worship, it’s because they are personally involved in that congregation’s
ministries of compassion and justice in and for a hurting creation. What they
experience in the sanctuary is connected to experiences of freely-offered
discipleship. God is not real and alive because the preacher says so, but
because the worshipers have relationships with hungry people at the food
pantry, homeless children in Family Promise, sick and dying people in hospitals
and nursing homes.
Without
entering human suffering, “church” all-too-easily becomes a plastic Eden – a
place where we try to hide from God, a place where faith is reduced to
moralistic obligation, or to some kind of civic duty.
The
Garden of Eden may be a long-ago memory in the hearts of humankind, but the
Kingdom of God exists visibly, audibly, and palpably whenever and wherever we
forsake the temptation to live fearfully and selfishly, and choose instead to
live gratefully and compassionately, in the midst of the world’s grief, loneliness,
and despair.
Jesus
reveals and embodies that truth for us. When he says, “Follow me,” he invites
us into salvation. And the path of salvation leads not around or away from evil
and suffering, but straight into the heart of it. And there we proclaim, in all
manner of actions, and “when necessary”* in words: “He is risen! He
is risen, indeed!”
*This quotation is often and probably mistakenly attributed
to St. Francis of Asisi. (http://appleseeds.org/St-Fran_Preach-Gospel.htm)
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