Friday, February 10, 2023
Memorial of Saint Scholastica, Virgin
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
There’s a roaring in my ears
The serpent asked the woman, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?”
Most mornings Margaret and I read our devotion, pray, and sing a song, usually a hymn. Yesterday, we listened to Bob Dylan sing his song, “Man Gave Names to All The Animals.” He names the bear, cow, bull, pig and sheep. Dylan is beginning to sound like Old MacDonald.
Then comes the last animal in his song.
Man gave names to all the animals,
In the beginning, in the beginning
Man gave names to all the animals
In the beginning, long time ago
He saw an animal as smooth as glass
Slithering his way through the grass
He saw him disappear by a tree near a lake …
The song is incomplete. There’s no last line. But we know all about that slitherin’ snake.
The serpent said to the woman, “God knows that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods! You will know what is good and what is evil.”
Who cares? Why did she want to know? Couldn’t she just let God be God, let him do his job and make it clear to us his children what was good and what was evil? From her tiny vantage point between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, how could she know anything but her own tiny point of view? Good and evil? Never.
But the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked, so they sewed together fig leaves and made clothing for themselves.
Good and evil didn’t matter now, only survival. Darwin later called it “survival of the fittest.” Adam and Eve were not children anymore. Not on your life. They were all grown up.
When they heard the sound of the Lord God moving about in the garden at the breezy time of the day, the man and the woman hid themselves from Him among the trees of the garden.
Tomorrow we will read the next part of the Genesis story. We will see what a terrible turn this story takes. And we, like our ancestors, will turn away from the snake, that disgusting creature who caused our fall. To protect our own sense of dignity and pride, to save our ego from cracking like a rotten egg, we will blame it all on that lousy snake. How could he do such a thing? Let’s kill him!
So in the millennia since we’ve killed lots of people that we knew had been corrupted by the snake. We forgot how to see our own sin, and became killers. But things did not get better. If only, if only …
Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said to myself, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin.
There is only one path back into Eden. Jesus leads the way, but I can’t follow unless I stop looking at all the others, distressed and ashamed of their misbehavior, and instead look down at my own blackened hands, then to finally say, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.”
There was a deaf man with a speech impediment. Jesus took him off by himself, away from the crowd. Jesus put his fingers into the man’s ears and spitting, touched his tongue. Jesus looked up to heaven and groaned, “Be opened!” And immediately the man’s ears were opened, and he spoke plainly.
And we are all deaf with a speech impediment, I suppose. And we will stay that away, unable to acknowledge our own sin, until Jesus puts his fingers in our ears and spits, touching our tongues. “Be opened!” he will say. And thus Jesus will save us from ourselves.
Yesterday for me was filled with many blessings, as I listened and shared with several men and women thirsty for God and willing to see themselves as they really are. Jesus shows us all how we can be like them, knowing our own beauty and value even as we call ourselves out in our guilt.
Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputes not guilt, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
(Genesis 3, Psalm 32, Acts 16, Mark 7)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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